Shirreffs says Zenyatta deserves '10 Horse of the Year

[Duvalier]

Originally Posted by Coach Pants

Well that's just devastating. Thank goodness we still have trainers that are competitive and don't base every decision they make on silly awards.

No they base every decision on sheet numbers...can't run em too often you know...there's a chance they might bounce.

[Clip-Clop]

Right now, Blind Luck deserves it more than Zenyatta.

[randallscott35]

Originally Posted by Clip-Clop

Right now, Blind Luck deserves it more than Zenyatta.

Yes

[alysheba4]

who cares.

[Dahoss]

What bothers me the most about Team Zenyatta is they think everyone has the horse racing acumen of Smooth Operator.

This is the team that was responsible for the travelling over the rockies comment earlier. Then Rail Trip was the highest mountain. Now regardless of her finish, in the race they coddled her for all year, she deserves HOY? Amazing.

HOY isn't some kind of lifetime achievement award. That's what the Hall of Fame is for and she'll be in there in due time. HOY is for the horse who has accomplished the most over the course of the year on the track. IMO a case could be made that even with a win in the Classic she doesn't deserve the award this year.

Anyone who doesn't think Team Zenyatta doesn't care about HOY is fooling themselves. They desperately want it, to fuel their own ego.

[RockHardTen1985]

Originally Posted by Dahoss

What bothers me the most about Team Zenyatta is they think everyone has the horse racing acumen of Smooth Operator.

This is the team that was responsible for the travelling over the rockies comment earlier. Then Rail Trip was the highest mountain. Now regardless of her finish, in the race they coddled her for all year, she deserves HOY? Amazing.

HOY isn't some kind of lifetime achievement award. That's what the Hall of Fame is for and she'll be in there in due time. HOY is for the horse who has accomplished the most over the course of the year on the track. IMO a case could be made that even with a win in the Classic she doesn't deserve the award this year.

Anyone who doesn't think Team Zenyatta doesn't care about HOY is fooling themselves. They desperately want it, to fuel their own ego.

I agree with most of your points, but.... For a while Rail Trip was the highest mountain out there, sure the connections are lame and should have won the Pacific Classic, but whatever... A lot of people really liked Rail Trip, and thought he would move way up on dirt, BTW being one of them.....What Rail Trip has done since, should not take away from his form when they did duck him. Win the Classic and still not be HOY, that is totally absurd. The group is deep, all the major players will be there.... If she runs 2-3 and anyone but QR, Blame, L@L win it, she still might be HOY.

[Dahoss]

Originally Posted by RockHardTen1985

I agree with most of your points, but.... For a while Rail Trip was the highest mountain out there, sure the connections are lame and should have won the Pacific Classic, but whatever... A lot of people really liked Rail Trip, and thought he would move way up on dirt, BTW being one of them.....What Rail Trip has done since, should not take away from his form when they did duck him. Win the Classic and still not be HOY, that is totally absurd. The group is deep, all the major players will be there.... If she runs 2-3 and anyone but QR, Blame, L@L win it, she still might be HOY.

They were ducking Rail Trip. I don't care how good he looked, it's Rail Trip. It was ridiculous then and even more so now. But that is what they do. What was so special about his form before that makes it logical to duck him? Because he could run a little?

Sorry, I don't believe in rewarding ducking and making 1 real start per year. You do and I find that absurd.

[miraja2]

Originally Posted by Dahoss

What bothers me the most about Team Zenyatta is they think everyone has the horse racing acumen of Smooth Operator.

But....if they spend a lot of time watching TVG that could be a relatively easy assumption to make.

[Thunder Gulch]

Anyone outside of the nutty Zenyatta fans- and there are a lot of them- has enough common sense to know she can't lose to Blame, QR, or even Lucky and still win HOY. If an outsider wins, she has a good shot even though it's pretty clear that she hasn't had the best campaign (2010) to this point. If she wins it's hers. Hopefully it won't set the precedent for how to win the award in the future by ducking competition until the end, but there would be no way to deny her if it's won on this track.

[10 pnt move up]

Originally Posted by miraja2

But....if they spend a lot of time watching TVG that could be a relatively easy assumption to make.

or just tune into this place on a daily basis

[johnny pinwheel]

Originally Posted by alysheba4

who cares.

right???? this is where i laugh out loud. theres probably half a dozen connections that feel they deserve horse of the year. happens every year. anyone that follows racing knows this horse is in the running. so what if the guy says they deserve it......its some kind of a crime....i guess.....who cares? then these people come up with all kinds of crap...."oh shes not running next month"..."punch him in the face" and all the absolutely brilliant responses...i thought most of the morons hung out in that political thread....i was wrong. then they are making fun of the guy thats not popular....who cares again? thats a badge of honor with the garbage i'm reading here.....lol

[Danzig]

Originally Posted by johnny pinwheel

right???? this is where i laugh out loud. theres probably half a dozen connections that feel they deserve horse of the year. happens every year. anyone that follows racing knows this horse is in the running. so what if the guy says they deserve it......its some kind of a crime....i guess.....who cares? then these people come up with all kinds of crap...."oh shes not running next month"..."punch him in the face" and all the absolutely brilliant responses...i thought most of the morons hung out in that political thread....i was wrong. then they are making fun of the guy thats not popular....who cares again? thats a badge of honor with the garbage i'm reading here.....lol

your post, and another i saw recently by someone else, makes me wonder why some bother coming here? why do people hang around DT if it's so insufferable?

as for zenyatta, what has she done this year that's HOY material? she didn't win 19 races this year. she won a few vs lackluster competition in restricted races. how does that make her eligible?

[RockHardTen1985]

Originally Posted by Clip-Clop

Right now, Blind Luck deserves it more than Zenyatta.

I think Z is 5-10 lenghts faster/better on any surface. Funny BL finds ways to lose. I think at least twice this year? Her wins are Kinda like Zenyatta, barley wins half the time.

[Clip-Clop]

Originally Posted by RockHardTen1985

I think Z is 5-10 lenghts faster/better on any surface. Funny BL finds ways to lose. I think at least twice this year? Her wins are Kinda like Zenyatta, barley wins half the time.

BL has been beating better horses than Z all year. I am a fan of both horses. I strongly disagree that Z is that much faster at all. There is no evidence at all that would make that believable. It is an opinion that will never be proven though, so you are entitled. Sad that BL's best is 10F and she likely won't get to do it again.

[RockHardTen1985]

Originally Posted by Clip-Clop

BL has been beating better horses than Z all year. I am a fan of both horses. I strongly disagree that Z is that much faster at all. There is no evidence at all that would make that believable. It is an opinion that will never be proven though, so you are entitled. Sad that BL's best is 10F and she likely won't get to do it again.

Z is going in the Classic. Rachel faced males as a 3yr old last year. Why is BL not going in the Classic then?

[Clip-Clop]

Originally Posted by RockHardTen1985

Z is going in the Classic. Rachel faced males as a 3yr old last year. Why is BL not going in the Classic then?

Frankly I wish she were. Might get beat but it would show some balls. She looks like a really small filly though. Maybe next year. Nice to keep a traveler, running all over the country, beating all kinds on all different surfaces.

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by RockHardTen1985

I think Z is 5-10 lenghts faster/better on any surface. Funny BL finds ways to lose. I think at least twice this year? Her wins are Kinda like Zenyatta, barley wins half the time.

I've been a Zenyatta fan since the beginning, but I think there's a fundamental problem with measuring her ability relative to other horses (even though I agree she is better than Blind Luck).

When everyone and their brother realizes you are the horse to beat, they ride the race to beat you.

If you are a high level speed horse, they throw a rabbit at you.

If you run like Zenyatta, they back down the pace as much as they can and force you to make your first move on the turn at the exact point the pace is picking up sharply. That in turn forces you to out finish the fresh horses in front of you after already exerting yourself hard just to get into contention.

No horse with her style that ever lived could have won by a large margin or ran a very fast race given some of the conditions she's faced this year and last year. Just look at some of the closing times! In fact, there are examples from last year of pretty good mares that were left in her wake given similar conditions.

The thing is, even if you know she's much better than the horses she's barely beating and capable of running a faster final time given a more "dirt like" pace, that still doesn't tell you how fast she's capable of running with more average conditions, whether she's as good on dirt as on synthetic, or whether she's even as good in 2010 as she was in 2008 and in the Classic in 2009.

If I had to venture a guess, I doubt her connections are sure either. They know what we know.

1. They've seen how fast her peak efforts were when she had a decent "synthetic level pace" in front of her.

2. They've seen how fast she ran in the 2008 Apple Blossom on dirt in only her 4th career start before she peaked on synthetic.

3. They've seen how she handles Hollywood's "DIRT" training track in regular morning gallops and know how she handled Churchill Downs when she was shipped there to run (but subsequently scratched when the track came up wet).

4. They know how she's doing physically now.

But the honest truth is that no one knows where she is now or how good she was at her peak because of the nature of synthetic racing and the conditions of most of her races. That's why people point to the streak. Until you are exposed to rough conditions and get beat a few times (like Blind Luck), you don't know where the bottom is. And running reasonably fast when conditions warrant and managing to win even when conditions are terrible signals there's a pretty deep bottom.

She may be a major contender to win the Classic despite running slowly this year and barely beating some very mediocre rivals that would be 100-1 in the Classic.

She might finish well beaten because she's not as good this year as she was last year and in 2008 or doesn't like the dirt as much.

She might get beat but run a very good race.

You look at the odds and make your bet based on the tools you use to evaluate things like that.

All her connections have been trying to do is give her the best chance they can of her firing her "A" race on that day. They avoided many of the possible challenges along the way because they didn't want to go to CD with a tired horse or to lose her for the year to an accumulation of small injuries as a tough season developed. Right or wrong, that was the plan and it seems to at least have gotten her there in one piece and fresh. They more or less did what they did last year. It failed to get her HOTY in 2009 because there was a once in 100 year great campaign by another horse. They gambled that wouldn't happen again and they would get HOTY if they could repeat in the Classic.

[Smooth Operator]

Originally Posted by classhandicapper

I've been a Zenyatta fan since the beginning, but I think there's a fundamental problem with measuring her ability relative to other horses (even though I agree she is better than Blind Luck).

When everyone and their brother realizes you are the horse to beat, they ride the race to beat you.

If you are a high level speed horse, they throw a rabbit at you.

If you run like Zenyatta, they back down the pace as much as they can and force you to make your first move on the turn at the exact point the pace is picking up sharply. That in turn forces you to out finish the fresh horses in front of you after already exerting yourself hard just to get into contention.

No horse with her style that ever lived could have won by a large margin or ran a very fast race given some of the conditions she's faced this year and last year. Just look at some of the closing times! In fact, there are examples from last year of pretty good mares that were left in her wake given similar conditions.

The thing is, even if you know she's much better than the horses she's barely beating and capable of running a faster final time given a more "dirt like" pace, that still doesn't tell you how fast she's capable of running with more average conditions, whether she's as good on dirt as on synthetic, or whether she's even as good in 2010 as she was in 2008 and in the Classic in 2009.

If I had to venture a guess, I doubt her connections are sure either. They know what we know.

1. They've seen how fast her peak efforts were when she had a decent "synthetic level pace" in front of her.

2. They've seen how fast she ran in the 2008 Apple Blossom on dirt in only her 4th career start before she peaked on synthetic.

3. They've seen how she handles Hollywood's "DIRT" training track in regular morning gallops and know how she handled Churchill Downs when she was shipped there to run (but subsequently scratched when the track came up wet).

4. They know how she's doing physically now.

But the honest truth is that no one knows where she is now or how good she was at her peak because of the nature of synthetic racing and the conditions of most of her races. That's why people point to the streak. Until you are exposed to rough conditions and get beat a few times (like Blind Luck), you don't know where the bottom is. And running reasonably fast when conditions warrant and managing to win even when conditions are terrible signals there's a pretty deep bottom.

She may be a major contender to win the Classic despite running slowly this year and barely beating some very mediocre rivals that would be 100-1 in the Classic.

She might finish well beaten because she's not as good this year as she was last year and in 2008 or doesn't like the dirt as much.

She might get beat but run a very good race.

You look at the odds and make your bet based on the tools you use to evaluate things like that.

All her connections have been trying to do is give her the best chance they can of her firing her "A" race on that day. They avoided many of the possible challenges along the way because they didn't want to go to CD with a tired horse or to lose her for the year to an accumulation of small injuries as a tough season developed. Right or wrong, that was the plan and it seems to at least have gotten her there in one piece and fresh. They more or less did what they did last year. It failed to get her HOTY in 2009 because there was a once in 100 year great campaign by another horse. They gambled that wouldn't happen again and they would get HOTY if they could repeat in the Classic.

Fine post … particularly the highlighted sentences … and especially that last paragraph


Like I said on here before, John never took his eye off the ball (BCC)

The campaign was designed to get her to that contest fresh and primed to deliver a peak performance (amazing how many on this board can't seem to understand this).

Forget about HotY … a 6-year-old MARE taking down back-to-back Classics would be INSANE … not to mention HISTORIC…

[Danzig]

i think people are getting hung up on the fact that its zenyatta being talked about, and they get hung up on her entire career. hoy is for this year only, and if it was any horse not named zenyatta with the same season shes had, they wouldnt even be on the radar.

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by Smooth Operator

The campaign was designed to get her to that contest fresh and primed to deliver a peak performance (amazing how many on this board can't seem to understand this).

That's exactly correct.

It's reasonable to be disappointed they didn't take a few more shots on dirt or against older males.

It's reasonable to think that running on synthetic tracks against weak mares isn't the best way to prepare a horse for the Classic.

It's reasonable to think the CA mare crop was very weak this year.

It's reasonable to say other people would have done it a totally different way.

But IMO it's not reasonable "to at least understand the thinking" behind the goal of getting a horse to a specific year end race by spacing her campaign and staying with her own sex.

Sure some horses do well despite all the shipping and tough races, they remain sound, etc.. and make until the end of the year still fresh and ready to fire, but that says nothing about the probabilities and all the horses that don't.