Big Brown - Overrated?

[freddymo]

Originally Posted by SniperSB23

Figured I'd pick the two most overhyped horses of the past several years to compare Big Brown to in hopes that the ridiculous overhyping of this horse to the superlative degree stops.

LITF
103, 109, 102, 105, 105, 110

Bernardini
68, 90, 104, 113, 114, 116 (if you exclude his first race then his next figure was 117)

Big Brown
90, 106, 106, 109, 100, ???

So he doesn't even compare favorably with the last two overhyped horses and people want to compare him to Secretariat, Seattle Slew, and Spectacular Bid?

I think this is Beyer's point which you can't argue.. What you can't argue either is that he has done everything asked of him very easily and his two derby wins Fl and KY are very very impressive. Remember at this point in Slew's career Beyer wasn't exactly popping the Champagne either..

[slotdirt]

I don't think Lost in the Fog was particularly overhyped. Bernardini was also clearly a superior animal, though with only seven career starts prior to retirement, it would be pretty hard to determine how good he really was. Not as good as Invasor at least, I suppose.

I was just perusing through the Bloodhorse list of top 100 throughbreds of the 20th century, and couldn't help but notice the huge discrepancy between the horses on that list who ran in the 90's (Silver Charm, Cigar, Skip Away, etc.) and the horses we see today. All of those horses ran at least 24 times in their careers. I would think if you put together a top 50 list of the best horses of this decade, most of the names on the list wouldn't have started many more than 10 times.

Anyway, bit of a thread hijack, I know, but it's just interesting to note that while the average number of starts for a horse probably isn't declining, I'd have to imaging the average career starts for stakes horses are declining significantly in the very recent past.

[ArlJim78]

I don't know why when you try to accurately assess a horses true level of ability, its considered dumping on the horse.

[sumitas]

One could say that the factory farms, uh, commercial breeders, have realized their potential over the last 20 + years. Horse racing has not.

Therefore, a ban on enhancement performing drugs is needed. Testing anytime, anywhere. 3 strikes and you're out for cheating trainers. Reduce the length of toe grabs. Have a nationwide off season when there is no racing whatsoever. Eliminate the dirt surfaces. These are just a few things on the table that can be done.

[King Glorious]

I don't think either Fog or Bernardini were overhyped.

Big Brown is a potential superhorse. At this point though, I haven't seen more from him than I have from those two or actually, quite a few others over the past decade. My way of evaluating them is to say that to be even considered a great horse, they have to either beat top competition or run really fast races. It's got to be one or the other, preferrably both. So far, Big Brown has done neither. Maybe there's something to this whole "geared down, not being asked" stuff and there is a lot more in the tank. Maybe not. We all saw Smarty's Preakness. We saw Bernardini's Travers. We saw Point Given's Belmont. These were similar instances where the competition was non-existent but the horse still put on a great performance speed wise. We just haven't seen that yet from Big Brown. I read somewhere that because his career ending is already set and because the Belmont may well be his last race, we may see them let loose with him in that race and then maybe we'll get to see what he's really got. I sure hope so.