Bless You George Washington...

[Danzig]

Originally Posted by johnny pinwheel

it comes down to running sound horses. any horse that doesn't start for months or retires and comes back. should be questioned. the greed factor is a problem. they made discreet cat 7/5, he has not won since 8/2006. do you think hes the same horse? well they ran him. then the ones that are good and healthy ,well most of them will be retired. street sense,hard spun,curlin will say bye ,bye. gw was impotent so back to racing he went. these rich folks used to race for pride. not the bottom line. who pays the price ?horses like GW and the fans thats who!

i bet a year ago when they retired gw, you screamed greed. you probably wanted him to run at four, i know i did. so now greed brought him back?
you know, citation missed his entire four year old season. came back like gangbusters at five. that's just one example.
there are other horses who have run well past the age of four, or have been retired and then brought back to racing for one reason or another.

had gw not been sub-fertile, he'd not have come back. but we're talking about a four year old in his prime, not a much older horse. he missed a few months, probably not much more of a layoff then what flower alley had between his bc and his first race the next season. he was multiple group one placed this year, not exactly scraping the bottom of the barrel.
should he have run the race, in hindsight we'd all say no. but there were no indications leading up to the race that he shouldn't go. no one would have done as they had, had they known then what we all know now. but no one had that benefit.

[Danzig]

i suppose bolger thinks poly would have made all the difference for george, and the 'turf tracks without the drugs' comment must be his reasoning for the euros going 0- this year.

[Cannon Shell]

Originally Posted by Danzig

i suppose bolger thinks poly would have made all the difference for george, and the 'turf tracks without the drugs' comment must be his reasoning for the euros going 0- this year.

typical bs and I hate to tell him that Churchill and Belmont which are the 2 likely choices for the next BC's are still dirt.

[Danzig]

Originally Posted by Cannon Shell

typical bs and I hate to tell him that Churchill and Belmont which are the 2 likely choices for the next BC's are still dirt.

i wonder how things will go next year on the all weather.....will more euros come do you suppose?
call me crazy, but i'd imagine they'll still be calling the vets for the evil drugs upon landing....

[Cannon Shell]

Originally Posted by Danzig

i wonder how things will go next year on the all weather.....will more euros come do you suppose?
call me crazy, but i'd imagine they'll still be calling the vets for the evil drugs upon landing....

I dont know if they will come because they dont like
1. Weather - too hot
2. Cali - too far
3. Turns too tight
4. Turf too hard (though this year it was too soft! go figure euros complaining about soft turf)
5. Money exchange is bad
6. Too many drugs
7. wrong kind of synthetic track
8. no free plane rides

[brockguy]

Originally Posted by Cannon Shell

I dont know if they will come because they dont like
1. Weather - too hot
2. Cali - too far
3. Turns too tight
4. Turf too hard (though this year it was too soft! go figure euros complaining about soft turf)
5. Money exchange is bad
6. Too many drugs
7. wrong kind of synthetic track
8. no free plane rides

i should be there though

if its marketed properly to Aussie and Asian horses, next years BC could be the best yet..

[Cannon Shell]

Originally Posted by brockguy

i should be there though

if its marketed properly to Aussie and Asian horses, next years BC could be the best yet..

You are honorary Yankee...you dont really count!

[Pedigree Ann]

Originally Posted by brockguy

i should be there though

if its marketed properly to Aussie and Asian horses, next years BC could be the best yet..

THe best Aussie and NZed horses are never going to come for the BC in late Oct/early Nov. That is when the Spring Festival is taking place in Melbourne - do you think they will choose to fly thousands of miles, put up with the time and season change to gamble on the BC when they could be running in some of the most important and remunerative races on their calendar? We're talking Melbourne Cup, Cox Plate, Epsom H, not to mention the Victoria Derby and Oaks. (Their 3yos won't come anyway because they are just barely 3 - official birthday 1 August.) Would a US owner skip the Met Mile to go run in the Doncaster H in the Sydney Autumn Carnival?

The BC is a 'World Championship" in name only. It's PR, plain and simple. It's not even a North American championship, since horses can be excluded for not being nominated or having a non-nominated sire. Real championships take everybody who qualify on equal terms.

I was paying attention when the BC idea was being kicked around and the original idea was to put up a big enough purse that top horses, especially 3yos, would have an incentive to stay in training into the fall, or come back for another year. The insane inflation of stallion values was driving earlier and earlier retirements and this was designed to be a solution. But some framers feared that stallion owners who knew their stallion's foals were never going to be 10f dirt runners wouldn't nominate, so lowering the pot. Thus, the additional races were devised, which ended up rewarding owners for buying 2yos who won't train on at 3 and horses who run out of gas after 6f.

[brockguy]

Originally Posted by Cardus

We will not see top-notch Aussies in America at the end of October because of the Spring Carnival; shipping Asian horses here at that time is tricky because of the Hong Kong races six weeks later, and with the dirt races being conducted on a synthetic surface next year, you probably eliminate the top Japanese dirt horses.

It's a great thought, though; I'd love to see more international participation here for the Breeders' Cup, as we see in Dubai and Hong Kong's international series.

as usual, youre spot on.. i suppose one problem with the Japanese is that if they do travel, they have to travel for either big purses (ie Dubai) or huge prestige (ie Europe). They see Europe and in particular, the Arc as the holy grail of racing and subsidise horses trying to achieve that goal. The Breeders Cup is not held in the same regard. Do the Breeders Cup even have a PR guy like Ascot's Nick Smith who goes around the world trying to get connections to race??

[NoChanceToDance]

Originally Posted by Cannon Shell

I dont know if they will come because they dont like
1. Weather - too hot
2. Cali - too far
3. Turns too tight
4. Turf too hard (though this year it was too soft! go figure euros complaining about soft turf)
5. Money exchange is bad
6. Too many drugs
7. wrong kind of synthetic track
8. no free plane rides

I think we will send a number of horses to Santa Anita. Some will be put off because of the heat and the distance, but overall we have had quite a good record there in recent years, i believe.

Extremes of turf conditions is always a problem. The only horses that didn't want a soft surface this year was Dylan Thomas. Unlike most european turf horses, the turf cannot be firm enough for him. As Aidan commented, he needs it like "concrete".

Exchange rate will hopefully be better than it is right now. Why is the dollar so weak at the moment???? We are getting a dollar for around 30 pence right now. I have never seen it so weak for so many months.

Our racing country is far too kind by giving free transport for overseas horses to our big meets, having said that they do it in Dubai, too.

One option i have heard for the Breeders Cup "world championships" is to split it into two. Have the turf races in europe or even asia, and the dirt races in America. I think then it really could be called a "world championship" event.

Although the surface doesn't seem to have any direct link with the George Washington injury, vets have said that it isn't impossible that it did cause some ill-effects. I didn't realise that when a dirt track gets so sloppy, the horses are basically running on the hard base, which could have led to the fracture becoming an open fracture with the added concussion going through the leg.