Quote:
Originally Posted by Spalding No!
I'm still waiting for the graded stakes committee to downgrade this to a Grade 2. There isn't really a mile division anyways. There are only 2 other Grade 1 miles the rest of the year and one is run 5 months before the BC and the other one is after the BC (when the BC is supposed to be the championship event).
The race at best serves as a springboard to up-and-coming types (Gun Runner, Accelerate, Liam's Map, City of Light), a prime opportunity for Grade 2/Grade 3 types (Dakota Phone, Tapizar, Furtherst Land), or a last ditch effort for horses on the downward slope (Dortmund, Discreet Cat, Omaha Beach).
At worse it takes away from the BC Sprint and the Classic (and even the turf Mile when it ran on synthetics).
The sad part is, horses retire partially on the strength of the win (Liam's Map, City of Light).
At any rate, in addition to this dreaded trend of training "up to the BC", what's with these Thanksgiving weekend races suddenly becoming alternatives to running in the BC (as opposed to running in both)?
I would think if Art Collector showed any form in the Dirt Mile they would run him back in the Clark, Cigar Mile, or Hollywood Derby.
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I agree with all of this except Liam's Map, whose connections notoriously ducked the Classic and American Pharoah and never ran again after.
The whole thing stinks IMO. Nobody wants to run any more, or at least few do. You'd think campaigns like that of Swiss Skydiver would open some eyes, but it won't. For some reason losses have become unacceptable. Used to love Thanksgiving weekend where many BC horses, including winners, would run again. We'll be lucky to see 10 total do it now at CD, AQU, and DMR combined.
