How do you.....

[Cajungator26]

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

You need to read up on racing history.

Opinions are like a$$holes. He impressed me.

[blackthroatedwind]

Originally Posted by Cajungator26

Opinions are like a$$holes. He impressed me.

He impressed you therefore he's great?

I was wrong, it's not history you need to study, it's the dictionary.

[PSH]

Three horses who never got a chance to show how great they might have been: Danzig, Hoist the Flag, and Roberto. All were pretty good in the breeding shed though....

Great horses that i remember from my early days in racing

Forego - carried the weight. Loved to go to Belmont and see him give 10-15 lbs to Quiet Little Table and others...
Affirmed, Alydar, Seattle Slew come to mind right away of course....

Pearl Necklace would not be a great horse but the Roger Laurin trained filly was my first real love in horse racing in New York.... Always competed against Greentree, Darby Dan and Rokeby horses. The good old days...

Loved when Pebbles came to Aqueduct to win the Breeders Cup race from overseas....

Curlin might become great if he is allowed to race. We shall see....

Ghostzapper was fast real fast, have to call him great....

PSH

[blackthroatedwind]

Originally Posted by PSH

Pearl Necklace would not be a great horse but the Roger Laurin trained filly was my first real love in horse racing in New York....

That's funny you brought her up. I was a big fan of her's as well and I was recently telling someone about what a wonderful horse Waya was and how she dusted Pearl Necklace in that record setting Diana......which was quite an accomplishment.

[PSH]

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

That's funny you brought her up. I was a big fan of her's as well and I was recently telling someone about what a wonderful horse Waya was and how she dusted Pearl Necklace in that record setting Diana......which was quite an accomplishment.

Believe she was by Ambernash (spelling) - Another Jane and Jeffrey Fell use to ride her? Whatever happened to Jeff Fell???? Maryland bred.

[blackthroatedwind]

Originally Posted by PSH

Believe she was by Ambernash (spelling) - Another Jane and Jeffrey Fell use to ride her? Whatever happened to Jeff Fell???? Maryland bred.

Wow! That's impressive. Exactly right.....even the spelling.

She ran 48 times with 21 wins, 11 seconds, 6 thirds and won $737K in the 70s which is quite an accomplishment. She won 9 graded stakes races.

What a horse.

She was certainly a better horse than Jeffrey Fell was a rider. I have absolutely no idea what happened to him.

[santana]

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

Wow! That's impressive. Exactly right.....even the spelling.

She ran 48 times with 21 wins, 11 seconds, 6 thirds and won $737K in the 70s which is quite an accomplishment. She won 9 graded stakes races.

What a horse.

She was certainly a better horse than Jeffrey Fell was a rider. I have absolutely no idea what happened to him.

Way back when, Jeffrey Fell won an Arkansas Derby, defeating a colt called linkage.,who was like 2/5, With a horse i cant remember his name.He got me out for the weekend with that horse. He paid about 30.00. I remember that because i was dead broke ! I am pretty sure Jeff is in the Canadian Hall of Fame.

[King Glorious]

I think that the thing people need to do is understand the difference between what you THINK is great or could be great and what's PROVEN as great. On the first list, I have horses like Java Gold and King Glorious. They wouldn't make the second list though.

I also believe that it's unfair to compare horses of different eras because so many things that are out of the horses control have changed. It's not fair, for example, to give a horse from the 60's more credit for carrying high weights when a horse in today's era never gets that same chance. I feel like to assume that they COULDN'T do it is not fair at all. It's not right to downgrade a Bernardini or Curlin (maybe) because they didn't race as 4yo's. Many of the greats of the past, if they ran in today's era, would not race at the age of four either. I think that in order to properly judge them, one has to look at how they fare against the other horses in their era and not the ones from past ones.

Look at baseball for example.
1968 Bob Gibson led the league in ERA at 1.12
Second place was 1.60
The top 10 were all at 2.08 or better.
Seven guys under 2.00
League ERA was 2.98

1994 Greg Maddux led in 1.56
Second place was 2.65
There were only eight players under 3.00
League ERA was 4.51

2000 Pedro Martinez led at 1.74
Second place was 2.58
There were only four players under 3.00
League ERA was 4.77

Looking at it based solely on raw numbers, one would see Gibson's 1.12 and figure he had the best season. But when you look deeper, you see that in comparison to their peers, Maddux and Martinez had far more dominant years.

Same goes with these horses. They've got to be judged under the conditions of their times and not against others. If they go above and beyond what is normal for good horses of their time, they've done all they can do and deserve some consideration for that.

[blackthroatedwind]

I'm not sure King that you don't make a better argument against your point by using your baseball stats. What it shows to me is that Maddox and Pedro are great and the others aren't. If horses want to prove they are great then they need to do it on the racetrack....not in our minds and in our hopes. The simple fact is that King Glorious and Java Gold, while perhaps showing flashes of greatness, didn't prove it even close to conclusively on the racetrack. That's what really matters.

Silver Charm is actually an interesting example. He raced a full career and danced a zillion dances. He was a wonderful racehorse but by racing as much as he did he also proved conclusively that he wasn't " great. " But, at least he gave us a full resume with which to evaluate him. These other horses just leave us with conjecture. Because they have rewritten the rules doesn't mean evaluation should adapt. It shouldn't.

" Great " is a poorly used term these days in many fields. It needs to be reserved for the very few that rise way above even the extraordinarily talented.

[King Glorious]

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

I'm not sure King that you don't make a better argument against your point by using your baseball stats. What it shows to me is that Maddox and Pedro are great and the others aren't. If horses want to prove they are great then they need to do it on the racetrack....not in our minds and in our hopes. The simple fact is that King Glorious and Java Gold, while perhaps showing flashes of greatness, didn't prove it even close to conclusively on the racetrack. That's what really matters.

Silver Charm is actually an interesting example. He raced a full career and danced a zillion dances. He was a wonderful racehorse but by racing as much as he did he also proved conclusively that he wasn't " great. " But, at least he gave us a full resume with which to evaluate him. These other horses just leave us with conjecture. Because they have rewritten the rules doesn't mean evaluation should adapt. It shouldn't.

" Great " is a poorly used term these days in many fields. It needs to be reserved for the very few that rise way above even the extraordinarily talented.

You see that I did (grudgingly) admit that horses like KG and JG would not be included in my list if I had to list those that had proven their greatness. I understand that difference.

The way the game is currently going, there won't be very many horses that are top of their class at three that get to continue racing till they are four or five. The racing secretaries will never put 135 lbs on their backs anymore. With so many racetracks and races around the country, actually the world nowdays, the chances for top horses to meet each other are becoming increasingly rare. The way the industry is now, it's unlikely that any horse will ever even have a chance to reach the standards of greatness that the horses of the past had. Does that mean that none of them have it in them? I don't think that's true.

I do absolutely agree with you that the term is overused these days. I saw someone say that this Lecomte field is great and I wanted to throw my computer out of the window. I do also agree with you that it needs to be reserved for those that rise far above the level of good and reach extraordinary. The key is in deciding what's ordinary and what's extraordinary for any given era. It's not going to be the same for every era. I talked about home runs earlier. If next year, the league average is four and one guy hits 20, he will have had a great year. Those 20 will look like nothing compared to 73 and 70 and 60, etc but when taken in it's context, it will look like 200 in comparison.

[philcski]

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

I'm not sure King that you don't make a better argument against your point by using your baseball stats. What it shows to me is that Maddox and Pedro are great and the others aren't. If horses want to prove they are great then they need to do it on the racetrack....not in our minds and in our hopes. The simple fact is that King Glorious and Java Gold, while perhaps showing flashes of greatness, didn't prove it even close to conclusively on the racetrack. That's what really matters.

Silver Charm is actually an interesting example. He raced a full career and danced a zillion dances. He was a wonderful racehorse but by racing as much as he did he also proved conclusively that he wasn't " great. " But, at least he gave us a full resume with which to evaluate him. These other horses just leave us with conjecture. Because they have rewritten the rules doesn't mean evaluation should adapt. It shouldn't.

" Great " is a poorly used term these days in many fields. It needs to be reserved for the very few that rise way above even the extraordinarily talented.

Silver Charm was an outstanding racehorse, one of my all time favorites and definitely worthy of his place in the Hall of Fame, but I also don't consider him "great". He had some spectacular races in his career, but too many clunkers to forget. A true great only gets a few mulligans.

[King Glorious]

Originally Posted by philcski

Silver Charm was an outstanding racehorse, one of my all time favorites and definitely worthy of his place in the Hall of Fame, but I also don't consider him "great". He had some spectacular races in his career, but too many clunkers to forget. A true great only gets a few mulligans.

This is interesting. I have a hard time putting anyone into any hall of fame if I don't think they were great.

[Cajungator26]

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

He impressed you therefore he's great?

I was wrong, it's not history you need to study, it's the dictionary.

Okay, Andy. My OPINION is that he was a great horse. The last time I checked there wasn't a definition in the dictionary categorizing what a 'great' horse is. Perhaps I need to get the edition that you have?

[blackthroatedwind]

Originally Posted by Cajungator26

Okay, Andy. My OPINION is that he was a great horse. The last time I checked there wasn't a definition in the dictionary categorizing what a 'great' horse is. Perhaps I need to get the edition that you have?

In my personal opinion I'm a better basketball player than Michael Jordan, a better baseball player than Alex Rodriguez and a better hockey player than Wayne Gretzky.

Hard to believe? Maybe.....but it's my OPINION.













I just bought your dictionary. It was very enlightening.

[Cajungator26]

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

I just bought your dictionary. It was very enlightening.

Congrats! It will be a great edition to your library.