[jpops757]

Originally Posted by oracle80

This is nonsense, all of it.
Criticizing Ghostzapper for running sparingly would be like criticizing Barbaro for never racing again or Don Mattingly or Bo Jackson for retiring early.
Newsflash, these things ain't machines. They are flesh and blood living creatures with a tendency to have physical problems.
He wasn't raced sparingly to set up an easy schedule, he had all sorts of physical issues and racing him back to back on short rest would have meant an early breeding shed for him.
Frankel's training job with him is 2nd only to Shug's job with Personal Ensign in my mind as the two greatest training jobs I've ever seen.
Despite the fact that he had these issues and couldn't be trained hard, or raced quick enough back to maintain form and fitness off racing(which is MUCH easier than training one of a layoff, despite what some knuckleheads may tell you), he won at all 4 ages you mentioned, and did so against teh very best of his contempoaries and at all distances and at SA, saratoga, Belmont, Monmouth, and Lone Star.
Fact is that without the problems that necessitated the abbreviated schedule, he would have been even faster and better.
I don't need to see a horse run a million times to evaluate them anyway. What else exactly did he need to prove to be considered great?

I guess you could call him a specialist, and that was winning. It made no differance the distance or the venue. He wasnt perfect but oh so close.