Quote:
Originally Posted by The Indomitable DrugS
Interesting start to a typical brutally long-winded Vosburgh column about the dubious state of the handicap division going into the 1920 racing season:
If the print is too small - basically, everyone and their mother age four and up was either sore, broke down, going abroad, or retiring to stud.... except for three horses in the same stable.
As it turned out - Sir Barton wasn't as sore as feared and came back to make five starts between April 19th and May 4th alone.
Exterminator basically appeared to emerge from a very troubled division - and never got a crack at Man O' War - but the rest of MOW's badly maligned newly turned 3yo crop was his to feast on after MOW's retirement. |
Could you imagine if Exterminator had gone in the Sir Barton-MOW match race? They tried to get him, but I think his owner wanted at least 1 3/4 miles if memory serves. Kinda crazy that only one horse faced MOW in the Belmont. It was 11 furlongs that year in 2:14 1/5. I doubt MOW was hauling too fast to beat Donnaconna (I'm guessing he was gearing down at that point), but what were his last couple fractions?
Kinda hard to tell what he could've been capable of at 1 1/2 if he tried to go as fast as he could. He cruised at 10F to 2:03 and 2:01 4/5 with large win margins and carried 129lbs for the latter. Could MOW've done 9 lengths better at 126lbs in the Travers against Upset? (Basically could he have met or surpassed the 2:00 mark?) I know John P. Grier notoriously pushed him in the Dwyer, but JPG was never the same again, and Upset wasn't really capable of pushing MOW to his top gear on a fairly run race. MOW carried 130 at age 2 to Upset's 115 and got beaten in a 1:11 1/5 for 6F after everything that could go wrong for him did. I was just looking at the Belmont times and thinking about what MOW could've accomplished keeping in mind Secretariat's 2:24, Easy Goer's 2:26, etc.