Neither did Zenyatta though.

The comment that made me chuckle the most on this thread is that Rachel will win Horse of the Year and Zenyatta will retire as the "people's horse." Really? Is that why the Breeders Cup Classic got approximately 1/7 the viewers as Rachel's Preakness? Is that why more people saw Rachel win the Kentucky Oaks than the total combined number of people who watched Zenyatta win her five starts?

If you go back to July or August, I guarantee you all the pretty pony people were just as fired up about Rachel Alexandra and girl power as they are about Zenyatta now.

......look, you are dead on. R/A did have the better year...so she is prob. horse of the year. is she better than ZEN? please....R.A barely beat MINE THAT BIRD and MACHO A. ZEN. would blow by both of those like they were anchored to the 16th pole. any surface, just look at the grade 1 at oaklawn.....REAL dirt. same result.

Does Zenyatta really "blow" by anyone? Her running style almost guarantees you that she'll never really win a race by open lengths.

Do you wager with the same disregard for race dynamics? If not, please start.

NT

Don't even engage, a know it all that knows absolutely nothing

you gotta let it go. i hope R.A. gets H.O.Y. i want you to be able to sleep well at night.......its not worth the stress man.

The fact of the matter is, is that if you took away all the names and laid out only the two campaigns side by side, and then asked people to vote on which campaign was better or more impressive for the year, in the end the voting wouldn't be close.

The cards revealing the horses names would be revealed and Rachel would win in a landslide. If only it were that easy.

Hey Smooth Toolshederator, I would say 3YO colts such as Summer Bird, Quality Road, and others were certainly as good as if not better than the pumpkins that Zenyatta has been beating up on. What race of any signifigance did Zenyatta win other than the Breeders Cup Turf Classic?
You just never learn do you. You say that Zenyatta would whip Rachel Alexandra on dirt at Churchill...kinda like USC would whip everyone this year? The both of them share one thing, they are both paper tigers.

i know i am thinking outside the box with this, but Gio Ponti ran 7 times this year and 6 were grade 1 races and won 4 of them. He ran at Belmont,Arlington and Santa Anita. He ran on soft,good,firm and yielding surfaces. true his main surface is turf,but does that make him any worse than both fillies who run on a different surface. havent seen either filly run on the turf, so does the surface really matter. i know i am in the minority, but i will always put my $$$ on this tallented 4year old. he just runs and gave Zenyatta, on a surface that isnt his best, a run for the money.

I don't understand why Zenyatta supporters are not understanding this....but it's the same logic as saying Zenyatta should be HOY.

Gio Ponti accomplished a lot on his surface as Zenyatta accomplished a lot on her own surface. So if people are going to hype Zenyatta for HOY, Gio Ponti arguably had the harder campaign.

Personally, I believe HOTY in America has always had first preference for whoever the dirt champion is (if there is a clear cut one). RA was the clear cut dirt champion. She deserves it.

Azeri was legit. There wasn't an alternative that year. The 3yo's that had a shot really didn't show up on the biggest days and the older horses were pretty dreadful.

The best horse who ran a total of four times:

Tom Fool
Iselin
Woodward
Breeders Cup Classic

I really hope you're not comparing those four races to the snooze-fest leading up to the Classic that Zenyatta ran this year...

You have to be realistic here. That audience was at least looking to see if Mine that Bird was for real. Not taking anything from Rachel, but the Derby winner (especially 50-1) is going to draw the viewers.

This argument is ridiculous...

Nope. It just proved that the Triple Crown races are not the barometer that the writers used.

Ask horses like Silver Charm and Afleet Alex what their exciting Triple Crown campaigns meant to HOY voters.

Sorry those races were snooze-fests for you. What was the Mother Goose?

i agree totally, RA had a better schedule and is HOY hands down. her resume for the year is better than zenyattas, especially for the fans. the thing i disagree with is this guy saying shes faster. zenyatta beats them in stride and she seems to run forever. i think she wins that woodward EASILY if they were smart enough to go to saratoga. thats the problem, lack of vision by the connections of zenyatta. she could of won any grade one in the east and that would of won it, if not the woodward the jockey gold cup was there for the taking. heck , they could of even won the pacific classic or the goodwoood. but, they played it safe. i think zenyatta can beat Rachel and at 10 furlongs, i know she can. when they finally put zenyatta in top company she laughed at them, meanwhile, like you said rachel was, after all, life and death against macho again, who is alright, but hes no where near the horses that zenyatta totally destroyed. zenyattas probably a better horse but she did not capture the fans or make the campaign that rachel did.

The way a HOY should win when beating a snoozefest field is what the Mother Goose was.

You shouldn't be in or around this game if a 19 length win is a snoozefest. I'd hate to see what Revidere would have thought about Secretariat's snoozefest in the 1973 Belmont or Spectacular Bid's Woodward walkover snoozefest in 1979.

It's not everyday you see a horse equal a track record in a handride...

I like the splits best of all, a mile in 1:33 at BEL with Borel standing up, unreal. 1:34 in the Haskell. She is amazing.

Or maidens go 108.3. I have your Sightseek photo. Will PM you.

As far as what, who had a better year? Thats the question right, not who was better per say, but who had a better year?

Let's do some poetry

..God created Dirt
..God Created Grass
..Man created Plastic
..I'm still believe in God..

Hoty In Poetry
 

Let's do some poetry

..God created Dirt
..God created Grass
..Man created Plastic
..I'm still believe in God..

Undoubtedly yes. Street Cry, Lido Palace, and Left Bank were all very good but get "incompletes". I was a big fan of Street Cry- he won the Dubai World Cup and the Stephen Foster that year, and had a chance to win HOY, but finished a mediocre 3rd in the Whitney. Left Bank beat him, and won Older Male, but he only ran 4 times with three wins (Bold Ruler, Tom Fool, and Whitney) and got buried in the Met Mile. I think that says a lot. Nobody really stepped forward and earned it. Milwaukee Brew didn't even make the ballot and I thought he deserved at least a chance, he won the SAH & Californian, and finished 3rd in the Pac Classic and BCC.

Is this some kind of trick question???

She's the only female to win HOY while never facing the boys. She was definitely the best horse in America in 2002, regardless of sex, but could have easily lost the HOY vote if one of the males had done just a little more. If you haven't noticed... it's VERY hard for fillies/mares to win HOY. Not only do they have to be outstanding, but every male category has to be mediocre. This year is an exception because bar none, the two best horses in America are both female.

Ducked coming east? You don't know the Moss' well. They had all the reservations and plans in to come to the Beldame if Rachel was going to be there. She ran her best on the oaklawn dirt. If there was a legit opportunity to duck it would have been the classic with EVERYTHING on the line. Both horses are great and will go down in history. You can make a case for each one or for splitting the trophy. I prefer the latter in view of their incredible contributions to the sport.

OH, well thanks for clearing this up!:zz:

i find that very, very hard to believe considering their comments for most of the year that the bc was in cali, and they saw no reason to leave before that race in late fall.

the fact is that neither camp made much effort to face the other. the 'blame' lies on all their shoulders.

"And oh yeah, winning this country's premiere race for three-year-old fillies by 20 lengths. Imagine if a colt won the Derby by 20. Imagine anyone winning a GI by 20. They make HBO movies about that kind of thing."

Mr. Brown needs a history lesson. The Kentucky Oaks is not our premier race for 3yo fillies and never has been. For decades, the real American Oaks (sponsored by the Coaching Club of America) has been run at a real classic distance, either 10f or 12f. And after the CCA Oaks, the Alabama has always had more prestige than the KY Oaks. You do realize that when grading was introduced, the Ky Oaks was only a G2? While the Monmouth Oaks and the Cotillion H at Liberty Bell were G1s? Just because it is run during Derby week doesn't mean that the Ky Oaks is a comparable race.

One could argue that the distance of her win at Churchill was assisted by the sloppy track; fields are always more spread out on off tracks.

Who needs a history lesson when we're talking about the present?

Are you telling me that the CCA Oaks, which has invariably drawn a 4-horse field in the last decade or so, is still the premiere race for 3yo fillies?

I think what is needed here is a NEWSFLASH...

The sad part of that convenient cover story is that Zenyatta could have won HOY by coming out for the Beldame with or without Rachel Alexandra.

Assuming she won, she would have defeated multiple Grade 1 winner Music Note on regular dirt, would have won one of the top races for older fillies in this country (which would have given her a grand total of 2 counting the Vanity--the other two being prep races), would have had a chance to validate her trainer's assertions that she's "better" on dirt, and would have been able to claim a "coast to coast" campaign.

Another interesting question, had she run against Rachel Alexandra during the season, would her connections have still run her in the Classic?

I remember the rain that day, but it stopped early and the track was listed as "fast" when bullsbay won the Alysheba two races before the Oaks was run.

This ain't 1973. The Kentucky Oaks is the #1 race for 3 year old fillies, end of story. The CCA Oaks has a much better chance of getting cancelled in the next decade than returning to prominence. And it wasn't sloppy...