Quote:
Originally Posted by NTamm1215
Spectacular Bid is not remembered as kindly because he lost the Belmont. It's entirely unfair, but that's just the approach many people have taken.
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Yep.
I think Spectacular Bid's best moment at age 3 was probably his 5 length win in the Malboro Cup over an extremely strong group.
General Assembley was a 15 length Travers winner in still standing track record time last out - and a next out Vosburgh winner. Costal had easily won six straight races - including the Belmont Stakes coming in. Star De Naskra had won his last 7 in a row including the Whitney. Cox's Ridge had won 16 out of 28 lifetime including the Met Mile over the track and was in good form. Text was another older horse - he was a 6 time Graded Stakes winner who had a Grade 1 win two starts back.
To bury a field that impressive by 5 lengths without running much faster than your typical race all season long - that's impressive.
Even both Affirmed and Alydar were truly great, great 3yo's. If you want to talk about overrated - relatively speaking - Seattle Slew had no prayer against these kind of horses at age 3. After his flop at Hollywood Park - he left the Billy Turner barn and was an outstanding 4-year-old.