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Originally Posted by parsixfarms
The issue was the level of her competition. If you want to argue that Rachel beat a "Grade I" field in the Oaks, be my guest. I think you know better than that. (To use the Acorn winner to somehow justify the quality of the Oaks field is not a strong argument, IMO. The Acorn was not a good field this year, and the winner took advantage of a rail bias to beat a very suspect bunch of fillies.)
I didn't say Rachel won because of the trip in the Mother Goose. But those two other fillies collapsing before the top of the stretch due to their duel likely exaggerated the final margin of victory.
Yes, this was a historically weak edition of the Woodward, largely due to a weak older male division. Unfortunately, that's been the case in recent times. But history did not start in 2006.
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So Rachel gets questioned for being the first filly ever to win the Woodward because of the field quality but Zenyatta is heroic because she was the first filly to win the BC Classic, quality of field be damned?
I don't really like the who did they beat argument because it takes away from the historical significance of both and the thing is they both did tremendous things historically. I think it's safe to say that history is going to treat both of them very, very well.
What seals it in my opinion is the quality of the campaign, the year, etc. That's where the scale starts to get tilted in one direction in my opinion.
NT