Jim I'm gonna take a guess that you are over 30.
Part of the problem I have with conversing about the context of how good a horse is or may be with anyone under 30 these days is that they lack the perspective that we have. Its certainly not their fault that they were watching Sesame Street when we were watching races in the 80's(thats as far back as I go) and early 90's.
Its just that all these very small fields in dirt gade ones most of the time have rendered "races" into the "performances" category as Steve so aptly described them.
We don't get SS-EG battles or big fields like we used to get and matchups throughout the year. Some of the younger folks in the crowd may find this hard to believe, but horses used to meet each other more than once a year at the highest level and the fields were larger and that meant traffic trouble and obstacles to overcome. I kinda laugh when I talk to some these days who tell me what an awful trip a horse had because he had to steady one time, or that "the jockey moved too soon, or too late".
I suppose with the small fields you get in the big ones now that steadying one time or a slighty premature move may indeed seem like a tragedy. But in the good ole days horses most often had to overcome trips and traffic in races and it made winning consistently at the highest level a very hard task. If you didn't get beat because one of the other good ones you met 2-4 times a year was better that day, you could get beat because of traffic.
Winning streaks used to really define a grade one horse as very good, now they play dodgeball all year and a bad trip is steadying one time or not getting the exact setup you needed during a race.
There's no way to get someone younger to get the perspective that someone older has from remembering racing as it once was. They can read about it all they want, but just reading about something rather than actually experiencing it won't ususally give someone the perspective.
And so it goes and will continue to go. The only perspective that younger fans have is that of which they know, and over recent years thats meant more long winning streaks in small fields where main rivals duck each other all year long. To older fans, its gonna be hard for most of todays proclaimed "superhorses" to come close to measuring up to the days of yesterday.
Its not gonna change, and I expect the conflict over how good these horses are to continue for quite some time. It will continue until the last of the racing fans who remembers racing before the Breeders Cup took over as the pinnacle of the racing year dies off.