Steve Haskin's latest: 'Leave Crown Alone'

[dalakhani]

Originally Posted by Danzig

i guess staggering is in the eye of the beholder. smarty ran well that day and would most likely have won had some of the other jocks not ridden their own horses into the ground trying to keep him from winning. did birdstone 'stagger home'? no. neither did rags to riches when she went head to head with curlin. i don't think MDO staggered home when he narrowly lost to sarava. victory gallop ran a hell of a race to nip real quiet at the wire.

smarty wasn't quite good enough to win all three races. so, change the races? i don't think so.

it's funny tho-everyone is focused on the belmont part of the equation-but lukas saying the ky derby should be shortened to 9f hasn't got any mention. i think his idea to change that is even crazier than changing the belmont.


btw, i think true champs have won the belmont. the horses should be tested-the test shouldn't be lessened to produce more 'champions*'.

MDO lost to Sarava...at 70-1 and the race went in 2:29.71 making it second only to commendable as slowest this decade. Yes...he fought...but it was still a crawl.

The final quarter mile of the Birdstone-smarty race was one of the slowest in belmont history...yes they were crawling its just smarty crawled slower.

Rags to riches was certainly not crawling. She ran a great last quarter although the rest of the race was slow.


I disagree with Lukas about the derby. 10f is pretty much the classic distance these days.