I believe this one.

[Cannon Shell]

Originally Posted by RolloTomasi

Tom Amoss's opinion was based on the horse's stride (I think in his 3yo debut), which seems shaky ground to stand on, as the surfaces in UK are not consistent, even, etc. and certainly not comparable to anything in the USA. Had he been watching the horse galloping on the main track in preparation for the Kentucky Derby or something, then his opinion would hold more water.

As for reasons why he could handle dirt:

As far as the pedigree, I don't think we've seen any Galileo's on dirt. Galileo himself ran on dirt in the '01 BC Classic, splitting the field while beaten about 7 lengths. Include, Aptitude, and Orientate finished behind him. He certainly didn't move up on it (which is not what I was suggesting with Frankel), but it's not like he eased the way horses like Steinlen, Dylan Thomas, etc. were. Danehill stood in Ireland and Australia. Why would he have a bunch of dirt runners? I presume that most of his offspring that tried were Euros in a one-off dirt attempt in the BC or similar.

Frankel has speed. His run-off type style in Europe may prevent his connections from stretching him out there, but the popular generalization in this country is that you need to have speed to be competitive. Might not be necessarily so for the Churchill surface, but his frontrunning speed would be an asset for the transition to dirt.

Frankel is better than everyone else (at least in the UK) if you buy into his reputation. Nothing about the BC Classic would be ideal for him (shipping, surface switch, different style of racing, longer distance, no time to adapt, etc.), but he could be the type of horse that overcomes those things because of the talent level. A similar argument as to why Zenyatta should have come out of her comfort zone more often in '09 and '10.

A horse stride doesnt change that much from surface to surface.

European turf speed is not even remotely close to what he would face in a BC race.

Galileo's dont dirt. Danehill's dont dirt. Danehill was a spectacular success as a stalion and I dont believe ever even have a minor stakes winner on the dirt anywhere. The ones that have tried here have failed miserably. George Washington and Oratorio.

Zenyatta wasnt a question mark at the distance or surface. If you say that she should have tried a turf mile at Ascot you might have a better analogy.