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Originally Posted by oracle80
Flower ran a better race last year in the BCC than Bern did. No doubt about that in my mind. The fact that he didn't go on at age four doesn't change what he did at age three. YOu can't use his four year old year as a basis to change what he did in the Classic.
Bern beat up on bad or injured horses with no traffic in small fields and more importantly what I saw as very slow pace figures, and his two biggest victories came when his main rivals broke down or were injured. I will say that perhaps if he had a gut wrencher prior to the BC that he may not have run better than he did and perhaps had he been allowed to race at age 4, he would have joined the elite.
But I really didn't like the way he reacted when Invasor came to him, and I think he had a great trip getting first run at the speed while making a turn move that is usually a successful knockout punch in many situations.
Turns are hard on some horses to truly accelerate on, and usually if someone makes a big turn move the competition is screwed because they have to straighten away in the lane before they can get a run on the leader who has already assumed an advantage with both the lead and a full head of steam.
Invasor's ears flipped forward when he came to Bern, and he was having a ball out there.
Perhaps its his humble beginnings in South America, perhaps its his non flashy pedigree, perhaps its because his trainer hadn't been considered a big race trainer prior to this year, but for whatever reason people are finding it hard to accept that he won, and much more impressively than the winning margin would indicate.
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Mike, you know as well as I do that I liked Invasor better than Bernardini in the classic (as we discussed), but I won't take it away from Bernardini that he is a much better horse than I thought originally. Is he the greatest horse of all time? Of course not, but I do think he would have had a great shot of proving to be one of the top horses next year.