Top 25 Most Overrated Performances of '06

[todko]

Originally Posted by Gander

Stunning? This year? Are you kidding? For me it was a year to forget. Worst year I have seen in some time. The big days like Travers Day and Jockey Club Gold Cup were all horrible betting cards. Belmont Stakes Day was a huge disappointment as well. So far the Aqu Inner has been a hige bore. People getting caught cheating all over the place.

Give me the Skip Away and Cigar days back! That was a glorious time.

Arromanches and Shoop on the Inner.

New York graded stakes are the pits. But because the "old boy network" Graded Stakes Committee favors New York (and CA) you will always have 2nd or 3rd rate races listed as GI or GII.

Any GI race should have a purse of $1,000,000 and it should also have at least a field of 8 horses. Bring on the purse money and you'll get the field sizes. And some of those horses that win big against short fields of nobodys won't look so good.

It's the Graded Stakes Committee that has ruined the breed just as much as perhaps Lasix and other drugs. Mediocre horses win graded stakes in New York and California against allowance competition and short fields -- then those same horses go to the breeding shed and produce inferior offspring.

The real money is in the breeding shed and the Graded Stakes committee perpetuates the corruption by allowing New York and California races GI and GII status. Look at the GI winners in California who can't win outside the state. What does that tell you? They race the same old horses in short fields over and over again and yet they are graded stakes winners. Ship 'em and they lose by lengths. Face 2nd rate Euros on turf and our horses flounder (on turf -- most of "our" best horses are really Euros to begin with).