Rich Strike more popular then Flightline
 

Rich Strike a flukey winner of the Derby is more popular then Flightline.
:D

The average racing fan knows aboout Rich Strike doesnt know who Flightline is.

I didn't notice any TV ads promoting Flightline headlining the Pacific Classic in San Diego. And, they don't seem to care about attendance anymore.

It would be a different story if he ran in the east??

Saratoga Live wouldve promoted Flightline??

It's always hard to figure the casual racing fan's feelings about horses and horsemen. Rich Strike, who seems pretty ordinary, got lucky winning the Derby and all of a sudden it seemed like he had millions of fans. Right after the Derby trainer Eric Reed was asked about the Preakness and said, "Of course, we're going to the Preakness, why wouldn't we?" Then he changes his mind and skips the race that is by far the easiest of the three TC races to win, especially for the Derby winner, who won the Preakness 11 times in the last 25 years. I still think that the owner might have over thought the situation and forced Reed to skip the Preakness.

The big thing is that if a horse is going to become famous to normies and DOES NOT run in the Triple Crown, the horse needs to have a long career so the publicity builds up. We saw this happen with both Zenyatta and Cigar. It's extremely difficult for a horse who runs as infrequently as Flightline to do this.

Yeah, I think the Triple Crown races are the launching pad for horses that the public gravitates to because those are the races non serious horse players pay attention to. If you don't make a name for yourself in the Triple Crown, you have to run in a LOT of other big races to slowly build a name.

It would be a different story if he raced more than three times a year.

So now we're raggin' on Flightline?

Tough crowd around here... :coffee:

Of course Rich Strike is going to be more popular than Flightline. The Kentucky Derby is the one race per year that the entire country knows about and he won as a huge underdog (and everyone loves a good underdog story). As impressive as Flightline was in the Pacific Classic the general public doesn't care.

Bingo.

I told my sister that a horse won like Secretariat Saturday night,
She asked me if that was the one who bites everyone, you know, Strike it Rich?