I was more impressed with Black Caviar than I thought I would be when I spent the time studying her form, performances, and home competition the best I could.
She is a true killer at her specialist distance. It's hard to win by those type of margins in turf sprints and the caliber of turf sprinter in AUS and NZ are better than I assumed.
20 wins over males and splitting them open and running times that appear very fast for the track in a lot of cases.
Obviously fillies and mares have more success against the boys in sprint races than route races. A lot of female speed sprinters have performed outstanding in the BC Sprint and few have been tried. Fillies and Mares also have more success against males on turf than they do on dirt. It's obviously a lot more rare for females to do well in dirt routes than turf sprints.
Like BTW mentioned earlier in the thread, there is a value system in horse racing and it's very hard to put turf sprint specialists with racers in the upper echelon. They just aren't even close to being important relative to horses who compete in the big races between 8-to-12 furlongs.
To use a general sports analogy -- Mariano Rivera was GREAT at throwing one pitch (a cut fast-ball) and pitching one inning. He was a specialist. Black Caviar has done a lot of great things and looks impossible to beat going 5 furlongs. However, a closer in baseball is far more valued than a turf sprinter is in horse racing.
Closers like Dennis Eckersley and Eric Gagne have won Cy Young awards. You'll have players in the Hall of Fame for what they've done as a closer. Turf sprinters get absolutely no respect in American horse racing year-end awards and Hall of Fame voting. And in Europe, only one turf sprinter has ever been European Horse of the Year ... that was the mare Lochsong in 1993.
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