Rachel Alexandra (116 Beyer for Haskell)

[tector]

Originally Posted by Cannon Shell

Are you kidding? The Haskell asnt even televised? Everyone wants to talk about the "good of the sport". What would be worse than skipping a $6 million dollar nationally televised race with the best and most well known horse in the country because another horse lost on the surface the year before? it is ridiclous that people make the assertion that no one else would have run in these races with her. Hell most everyone thought that she would have won the Derby, what is the big stretch? Wayne Lukas has run a lot of fillies against the colts over the years and no one ever swooned about what a sportsman he is. People who believe that they should teach the BC a lesson and skip the race are not seeing the big picture here. The general public wont understand the issues and having our "championship" day be trivialized because the horse everyone wants to see run, not run is a negative. The Breeders Cup is not going away and the way that guys campaign horses these days, the good old days of the fall championship meet at Belmont arent going to be recreated. Hell when people are ducking $5 million dollar races why wouldnt they duck and dive in $1 million dollar ones.

Try to be coherent--more people might listen to you (although, in this case, it is doubtful).

I understand the "big picture" perfectly fine. The "big picture" is that the BC is a clusterf**k run by nincompoops, and the mad rush to relatively untested artificial surfaces was incredibly stupid. You answer is, basically, to ignore all this and just have everyone pretend that everything is fine "for the good of the game".

People just like you ruined the formerly great sport of boxing, by refusing to take a stand while step after step debased that sport. There was time when baseball, boxing and horse racing were the three most prominent sports in the US. Now boxing and horse racing have fallen off the map. Emulating boxing further is no solution.

Screw the BC, screw Santa Anita and screw ABC. Jackson paid 10 million for his filly, and he doesn't owe any of those losers a damn thing. I will be just fine watching RA in the JCGC or whatever. It will be a hell of a lot more interesting than almost any of the BC "dirt" races (I still hold out hope for some of the turf races). You're deluded if you think the BC means much to the general public--that is reserved solely to the Derby and Triple Crown. The BC is supposed to be championship series for US, horse racing fans. Instead, it is now a joke, a completely self-inflicted wound.