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Originally Posted by Kasept
As DougS noted elsewhere talking about yesterday, the World Cup did a great job making itself as marginal as the Lanes' End. Steve Crist succinctly sums it up:
Dubai World Crapshoot
CruistBlog
- The richest horse race in history was staged in Dubai earlier today, and it was a $10 million advertisement for how synthetic surfaces can make a complete mess of so-called world-class championship racing. For all that it proved about the quality of the contestants either individually or as a group, the results of the Dubai World Cup might as well have been drawn out of a hat.
- Tapeta may well be a lovely training surface, and it has gotten high marks among synthetic tracks, but no one can really explain why anyone needs a third type of horse racing to go along with the dirt and turf racing that has defined the sport and its great horses for centuries. The Maktoums' decision to replace dirt with Tapeta at their gaudy new racing palace was a premature guess that these new surfaces might somehow magically combine dirt and turf racing into one globally-accepted footing. That hasn't happened and isn't going to anytime soon, or probably ever.
I wouldn't be so sure about that.
- Instead, it remains entirely unclear what this World Cup proved other than Bob Baffert's adage that synthetic tracks make good horses look ordinary and ordinary horses look good.
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That is a blanket statement that could be applied to turf racing and to a lesser degree perhaps to dirt racing (the lower percentage of close finishes.)
By whose measure is a horse great? Turf racing was here long before dirt racing. Quality Road tries turf and fails miserably making the surface of turf a farce because turf racing makes good horses look ordinary and ordinary horses look good.
Sea The Stars comes to Churchill Downs and never picks up his feet against (name any dirt specialist from last year other than Quality Road or Rachel) Summer Bird perhaps or Mine that Bird, making the surface of dirt a farce because dirt racing makes good horses look ordinary and ordinary horses look great.
Seriously, Bullsbay was maybe a length away from being voted top older male last year. Other than Quality Road or Rachel what American dirt superstar would have validated the world cup if it had been run on dirt?
We sent our champion older male from last year over there on a surface he supposedly likes and he failed. Maybe it's because he is not as good as we believe. Or maybe the surface is to blame.