Rachel Alexandra - what would her odds be in the BC Distaff?

[parsixfarms]

Originally Posted by NTamm1215

Now, we have these nauseating 5-6 race campaigns where horses run every 8 weeks, in what trainers deem the easiest possible spots, so that they can get out of the year with a horse ready for stud duty and a possible Eclipse Award.

Hell, I'm a fan of Blame and think that his campaign this year has been a complete joke. Quality Road's has arguably been even worse. Trainers and owners are not willing to put good horses to the test anymore and that's wrecking the game.

Actually, Blame's campaign is not a great example of the problem. Since he returned in a May prep race, he's basically run in all the "championship" races in his division, with the exception of the Woodward. (Even Quality Road ran in races like the Donn, Met Mile, Whitney and Woodward. He just hasn't run enough.) The problem is that the division is weak, not the races in which they have been competing. To me, the poster child for the ridiculousness of the "modern" campaigns is Boys at Tosconova.

About 5 or 6 years ago, we started to see the time between major races stretched out to satisfy the trainers like Pletcher, Frankel and Dutrow that wanted more time between engagements. Great historic races like the Futurity have become "Grade II" in status (or are on the verge of extinction) because today's "top trainers" are apparently incapable of running their horses every 4-5 weeks, let alone the 2-4 weeks that used to be standard. The irony is that, even with the amount of time between the Whitney, Woodward and JCGC lengthened, for example, Pletcher passed on the JCGC with Quality Road. One other implication being that, in the Breeders Cup era, races that used to determine championships such as the JCGC, Champagne and Vosburgh are now viewed by the top trainers as "nothing" races.

Racing's leaders need to seriously rethink the racing calendar and, through the Graded Stakes Committee, reduce significantly the number of Grade I races, thereby creating a limited number of "championship" events without a lot of interference. That's why the Whitney and Alabama have repeatedly produced championship-caliber matchups, while the Travers rarely gets such matchups. Of course, the owners and breeders that sit on that committee and benefit from the over-abundance of graded races are unlikely to do this, as they benefit (from enhanced catalog pages) from the system being the way it is.