:zz:

[Thunder Gulch]

After watching things settle to some norm after the early voting distortions, it would still be interesting to see how many votes were cast for each. One of the real problems as others have noted, is that it's a popularity contest. New fans without historical perspective or familiarity of all (or most) of the horses vote for a handful and move on (the Zenyatta fans also throw in a 3 for Rachel Alexandra and Blame). If all you know is Barbaro, Curlin, Zenyatta, and Secretariat, you're likely to selectively vote for just those and give them all 10's. If you go through the list and try to rate each, you end up placing much lower numbers on the likes of Barbaro, Curlin, Bernardini, AP Indy when you compare them to Count Fleet, Citation, Bid, Forego, Damascus, and Dr. Fager who were all time greats from another generation.