How do you.....

[Danzig]

Originally Posted by the_fat_man

I somehow fail to 'appreciate' the quality of this horse. If Bernie handles the track better and/OR doesn't move prematurely, he gets dusted in the BC. Why is he even mentioned in a discussion of great horses?

i think he may have entrapped as well...spiked a fever the next day too...

[blackthroatedwind]

Originally Posted by the_fat_man

I somehow fail to 'appreciate' the quality of this horse. If Bernie handles the track better and/OR doesn't move prematurely, he gets dusted in the BC. Why is he even mentioned in a discussion of great horses?

He handled the track fine. He just got the usual rush-rush panic ride that Castellano has apparently patented. He's been doing it virtually every race at Gulfstream so far this meet.

[SniperSB23]

Originally Posted by the_fat_man

I somehow fail to 'appreciate' the quality of this horse. If Bernie handles the track better and/OR doesn't move prematurely, he gets dusted in the BC. Why is he even mentioned in a discussion of great horses?

He wasn't great but he belongs in that discussion long before Bernardini. Bernardini handled that track just fine, he just was beat by a better a horse.

[Sightseek]

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

Here's the problem as I see it, to many people who haven't followed the game for that long, and don't know the history, these horses are special....because relative to what they've seen they are, in fact, special. Now, in the short term there's nothing specifically wrong with that, but in relation to the true greats these horses are also rans. That doesn't mean they aren't very good horses, but it also doesn't put them in the rarified air of the true greats, and if you are going to attach the word " great " to a horse it is competing with history....and not just the personal history of the judger.

"Most people have difficulty in defining what was truly great, and what they simply have heard of." - Memoirs of a Geisha

[my miss storm cat]

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

Here's the problem as I see it, to many people who haven't followed the game for that long, and don't know the history, these horses are special....because relative to what they've seen they are, in fact, special. Now, in the short term there's nothing specifically wrong with that, but in relation to the true greats these horses are also rans. That doesn't mean they aren't very good horses, but it also doesn't put them in the rarified air of the true greats, and if you are going to attach the word " great " to a horse it is competing with history....and not just the personal history of the judger.

This is a really good point but I want to ask something and I'll use king's Silent Witness thought as an example....

He and I have had that discussion quite a few times... horses like Silent Witness and Makybe Diva and whether or not they were greats.

I realize I'm a newer fan and so my frame of reference is a lot different, but don't the older fans also do this... consider the horses who first excited them as great?

I mean on King's tagline for example.....I'm assuming he's saying King Glorious and Java Gold were great (?). I'm not saying they were or weren't... I have no idea.

Silent Witness won 18 races... 18 - 3 - 2 out of 29. Went to Japan a couple of times, won the Sprinters Stakes over there, in his career repeatedly beat G1 winners.

So for someone who came into the game when he was undefeated and just phenomenal, for someone who didn't know any of the history of the sport, he defined greatness and that's why.

I can understand the other side though, the people who say he beat the same horses over and over.

My problem with that is that not everyone realizes just how good these other horses were. Cape of Good Hope for example.

Do the older fans do this? I'm not trying to be cute, I really want to know.

Does history make a great horse greater?

The great horses of the past..... if one were to look at who they beat, whether or not they remained in one area, etc. would they still measure up in general or have they become part of folklore?

It seems like no present day horse ever measures up to the past and I'm trying to figure out if this is valid or not.

I realize it probably is, but.....

[blackthroatedwind]

Of course people are influenced by personal favorites of their's but hopefully that doesn't cloud their judgement. If you're a serious horseplayer it certainly better not and most likely doesn't. You shouldn't bet horses just because you have some sort of affinity for them and you shouldn't overrate them for the same reason. Hopefully KG realizes that King Glorious and Java Gold weren't great horses.....because they weren't ( and I loved Java Gold as much as any horse I ever saw race ).

I think in the past people had a much better field of comparison than they do these days as horses raced more often and for longer and thus their warts got exposed more readily. For that reason, the few that showed exceptional talent proved it on the racetrack. Horses like Buckpasser ( who was mentioned earlier ) and Dr. Fager left indisputable proof on the racetrack of their massive talents. I think the proponents of some of the paper tigers of recent years should take a good look at the lifetime pps of Foolish Pleasure, a horse hardly considered great, and thus get a good dose of what it must have taken to be placed on that pedestal even 30 short years ago.

Silent Witness was probably at least a very substantial racehorse to have accomplished what he did but I just don't know nearly enough about him to measure his real talent.

[my miss storm cat]

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

Of course people are influenced by personal favorites of their's but hopefully that doesn't cloud their judgement. If you're a serious horseplayer it certainly better not and most likely doesn't. You shouldn't bet horses just because you have some sort of affinity for them and you shouldn't overrate them for the same reason. Hopefully KG realizes that King Glorious and Java Gold weren't great horses.....because they weren't ( and I loved Java Gold as much as any horse I ever saw race ).

I think in the past people had a much better field of comparison than they do these days as horses raced more often and for longer and thus their warts got exposed more readily. For that reason, the few that showed exceptional talent proved it on the racetrack. Horses like Buckpasser ( who was mentioned earlier ) and Dr. Fager left indisputable proof on the racetrack of their massive talents. I think the proponents of some of the paper tigers of recent years should take a good look at the lifetime pps of Foolish Pleasure, a horse hardly considered great, and thus get a good dose of what it must have taken to be placed on that pedestal even 30 short years ago.

Silent Witness was probably at least a very substantial racehorse to have accomplished what he did but I just don't know nearly enough about him to measure his real talent.

Again, that's a good point.

[King Glorious]

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

Of course people are influenced by personal favorites of their's but hopefully that doesn't cloud their judgement. If you're a serious horseplayer it certainly better not and most likely doesn't. You shouldn't bet horses just because you have some sort of affinity for them and you shouldn't overrate them for the same reason. Hopefully KG realizes that King Glorious and Java Gold weren't great horses.....because they weren't ( and I loved Java Gold as much as any horse I ever saw race ).

I think in the past people had a much better field of comparison than they do these days as horses raced more often and for longer and thus their warts got exposed more readily. For that reason, the few that showed exceptional talent proved it on the racetrack. Horses like Buckpasser ( who was mentioned earlier ) and Dr. Fager left indisputable proof on the racetrack of their massive talents. I think the proponents of some of the paper tigers of recent years should take a good look at the lifetime pps of Foolish Pleasure, a horse hardly considered great, and thus get a good dose of what it must have taken to be placed on that pedestal even 30 short years ago.

Silent Witness was probably at least a very substantial racehorse to have accomplished what he did but I just don't know nearly enough about him to measure his real talent.

I absolutely do think KG and Java Gold were great horses. I think Ghostzapper and Smarty Jones were great horses. I think Lammatarra and Arazi were great horses as well. I didn't watch horses race before 1986 though so I don't think it's fair for me to accurately try to judge horses that ran before then. Sure, I can look over the history books and look at who they faced and beat, how fast they ran and how much weight they carried, how many championships they won, etc and form a pretty educated opinion on them but without having been there when it was happening, I wouldn't try to make the judgement. While I do think the horses that I listed were great horses, I wouldn't ever try to make the argument that they were better than the horses generally regarded as the best ever, horses like Bid or Secretariat or Dr. Fager. My opinion is not based on proven and tested facts as much as it is on limited evidence and belief. What I don't like, however, is the belief that some of the horses we've seen over the past 20 years COULDN'T have done what some of the greats of the past did. It's not fair to the horses to downgrade them because of what the humans have done to the game. Maybe King Glorious couldn't have carried 130+ and set a world record at a mile. But if Dr. Fager had been running today instead of when he was running, he wouldn't ever have gotten the chance to do some of the things he did. If Spectacular Bid was running today, chances are he'd not get a chance to run a 4yo campaign, which is where he showed his complete greatness. So it's about opportunity as well as ability. Today's horses may or may not have some of the ability of the past horses. We'll never know. Take a horse like Bernardini. He was dominant over his peers as a 3yo. He lost to a champion older horse by a length at the end of his 3yo season and every cynic pointed to that as proof that he was overrated. Didn't the great Spectacular Bid as a 3yo lose to the 4yo Affirmed in the 1979 JCGC? Didn't the great Affirmed as a 3yo lose to the 4yo Seattle Slew in the 1978 JCGC (both beaten by Exceller)? The difference was that each of those 3yo's got the chance to continue on as 4yo's an prove their greatness. Sometimes, opportunity and timing can be just as, if not more important than ability. I mention timing because I think that often, perception is important in how a horse is judged. Going back to Affirmed, think about his TC win. Without Alydar around, Affirmed would have streaked to wins of about three, eight, and 13 lengths and not only been a TC winner but a DOMINATING winner. I believe that the perception of just how good he was would be higher under that scenario. Same thing with Easy Goer/Sunday Silence. Without the other around, either of them would have been a runaway TC winner. I believe that had there been no Sunday Silence, people today would be talking about Easy Goer as one of the five best horses of all-time. An undeated 3yo season that included not only a TC sweep but wins in the Gotham, Wood, Travers and four grade one wins against older horses in the Suburban, Whitney, Woodward, and JCGC. I'm sure he'd be mentioned as top five ever. But....there was a Sunday Silence around. Does that mean that Easy Goer's actual talent level wasn't as high as it was? No. He was as good as we thought he was. He just wasn't as good as Sunday Silence. Ability+opportunity+timing.

[SentToStud]

Originally Posted by my miss storm cat

This is a really good point but I want to ask something and I'll use king's Silent Witness thought as an example....

He and I have had that discussion quite a few times... horses like Silent Witness and Makybe Diva and whether or not they were greats.

I realize I'm a newer fan and so my frame of reference is a lot different, but don't the older fans also do this... consider the horses who first excited them as great?

I mean on King's tagline for example.....I'm assuming he's saying King Glorious and Java Gold were great (?). I'm not saying they were or weren't... I have no idea.

Silent Witness won 18 races... 18 - 3 - 2 out of 29. Went to Japan a couple of times, won the Sprinters Stakes over there, in his career repeatedly beat G1 winners.

So for someone who came into the game when he was undefeated and just phenomenal, for someone who didn't know any of the history of the sport, he defined greatness and that's why.

I can understand the other side though, the people who say he beat the same horses over and over.

My problem with that is that not everyone realizes just how good these other horses were. Cape of Good Hope for example.

Do the older fans do this? I'm not trying to be cute, I really want to know.

Does history make a great horse greater?

The great horses of the past..... if one were to look at who they beat, whether or not they remained in one area, etc. would they still measure up in general or have they become part of folklore?

It seems like no present day horse ever measures up to the past and I'm trying to figure out if this is valid or not.

I realize it probably is, but.....

I don't know anything about Silent Witness, other than very casually. But I do think that who a horse beat during his races is very important as well as overall record, track records, overcoming adversity and Eclipse Awards.

I just recently had a conversation about a horse with a good friend. It was about Cigar. Despite winning four Elcipse Awards, my friend argued that Cigar was just a "marginally great" horse. He rattled off name of several horses that finished 2nd to Cigar during the streak; Dramatic Gold, Personal Merit, Wekeva Springs, Soul of the Matter, Devil His Due and Silver Goblin, among others.

I said these were all nice horses and he said yes, they were nice but they were not champions (I could be wrong but I beieve the only Eclipse winners Cigar beat were Holy Bull and Heavenly Prize).

Finally he asked me who was the best horse Cigar ran against. It was Skip Away who Cigar lost narrowly to in the JCGC (great race). So, his argument was that Cigar was just marginally great since he didn't beat champons and lost at weight-for-age vs the best horse he competed against.

Finally what seems to subordinate the best contemporary horses compared to the past is weight. Horses just don't carry and give major weight any more. It used to be the summer races for 4 yo's+ were meaningful handicaps and the fall series brought 3 yo's and older together to see who was the best of the season. It just does not happen any longer.

Cigar is ranked 18th on that Bloodhorse top 100 list that came out in 1999. Cigar, John Henry(23rd) and Spectacular Bid(10th) are the only horses in the top 25 of that list to have raced since 1980.

[KirisClown]

Originally Posted by SentToStud

I could be wrong but I beieve the only Eclipse winners Cigar beat were Holy Bull and Heavenly Prize.

Thunder Gulch as well... although im not a big fan of giving a horse too much credit for beating breakdowns..

[VOL JACK]

Originally Posted by robfla

like Invasor in the Whitney - way too close to a fast pace, crazy middle move and still wins.



edit: lets not forget his Donn race... where is Jara now??

I really got the feeling that Invasor was just getting real good and could've been great. He was also the type that only ran as fast as necessary to win.
However, we could speculate all night about horses that were injured before thier prime.


As for Jarhead Jara, he is plucking oranges somewhere near Gulfstream.

[smuthg]

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

It also helps to overcome adversity at a very high level.....like Seattle Slew in the Jockey Club Gold Cup and Ghostzapper when he was carried out 15 paths by Saint Liam in the Woodward.

The ability to win at a very high level when things don't go your own way.

Was Ouija Board "Great"? What about Makybe Diva?

[Sightseek]

Originally Posted by smuthg

Was Ouija Board "Great"? What about Makybe Diva?

Pride was better.

[horseofcourse]

1. Curlin...he simply did more. Ran all 3 TC races and won the Classic. HIs Preakness was great and his last two races were great.

2. Bernardini...skipped the Belmont to focus on the Travers...whereas Curlin was using the Haskell as more a return race/prep for the fall races.

3. Smarty Jones

4. Afleet Alex

5. Barbaro.

The bottom 3 simply stopped running and the top 2 finished out there 3 year old years very strong. I don't know how you rate horses that simply stop running. Speculating whether they win the BC Classic or what not is all that...speculation. If Curlin/Bernardini also stopped running after the TC I would rank them...

1. Smarty Jones
2. Afleet Alex
3. Barbaro
4. Bernardini
5. Curlin.

I dont' know what the question was or if there were stipulations on how to rank them...