[King Glorious]

Originally Posted by Danzig

well, obviously we'd all be geniuses if we could know the future, and decide based on that knowledge....

i believe if a horse is ready now, you run them now. if they seem to need a break, give them one. but to 'save' a horse for later may not work at all-skip a race now, then miss later as well, which of course could happen--there is no guarantee of anything.
can't help thinking tho that it wasn't just the rigors of racing that kept some of these latest contenders from running again post-t.c.

To an extent, I agree. I remember when Zito skipped the Juvenile with Eurosilver and Birdstone while mentioning how he wanted to save them for the Derby. I thought that was silly. I thought like u do......strike while the iron is hot. I still feel that way. But in that case and in a lot of other cases, we can't find a direct connection between races. I think that with the TC races, we can. It's just odd to me that this being such a tradition and trend driven sport, this isn't brought up more. There was never any guarantee that running three preps or not having a layoff more than four weeks would win u a Derby. There was no guarantee that having a 2yo foundation would win the race. Yet people stick with these things like they are law. Well they pretty much did until this year. These facts that I've given, they aren't made up though. They aren't beliefs. And even though I agree with u that it wasn't always racing rigors that led to those horses leaving us, they still did. I understand that some of it was economics, especially in the cases of Empire Maker and Point Given. That could happen with one of these two also. When seven of 11 haven't run past the Belmont and eight of the 11 didn't finish their 3yo seasons out, that's not giving me hope that this year's group will be any different. I don't want to be saying next year that it's 10 of 13.