[King Glorious]

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

No doubt that one of the things that separates decent horses from exceptional horses is their respective abilities to run through soreness. There have certainly been many top horses that have run through soreness. Banshee Breeze is a recent top horse that comes to mind. Everyone I know that understands these things ( not myself ) said she was as sore a working horse as they saw. But, on raceday, she put it all together.

No doubt on raceday Discreet Cat puts those issues behind him. I would say, however, that they have a lot to do with his light campaign. After seeing him today I hope we get to see a lot more of him. He may not have beaten much but that was a scary display. It's not as though Valid Notebook is a total bum. Four of his last five races have produced Beyer figures in the high 90s and Discreet Cat laughed at him like he was a 10 claimer. Anybody that doesn't think Discreet Cat is capable of monsterous performances is kidding themselves. The only question left, and it's a legitimate one, is how he will do when challenged by a relative equal. I say relative because it isn't entirely clear he has an equal.

I have a question for u. I've heard from u and others about Discreet Cat not being the soundest or physically correct horse in the world for a while now. Not saying that this is not the case but my question is how does anyone know how he would respond to a tougher schedule? I take Barbaro for instance. On another forum, I questioned before the Preakness whether his training/racing schedule was by design or by necessity? Matz always said that the horse needed more time between his races and that he performed best with a lot of spacing. But how did he know that? After his first race, he was given a break and they never actually tried racing him on a short turnaround. So there was no way they could know how he'd actually respond to a quick turnaround because he'd never had one. So my question then was did they give him the long breaks because he was coming out of his races showing that he needed it (physically spent or sore perhaps?) or were they giving him the breaks just because they THOUGHT it was what was best for him in the long run? If it was because he needed it, then that could have been a precursor to something bad happening when they ran back quick in the Preakness.

Is Discreet Cat's light campaign because of numerous physical setbacks and out of necessity to give him time to recover from his races? Do u think that the presence of Bernardini in the family has allowed them to take a much more conservative approach with him than they might have taken, or needed to take, if he was the only star in a one-star stable?

Hope this makes sense.