Quote:
Originally Posted by clicknow
I don't mind the "who did they beat" thing too much, it has a place in analysis, for me, more about how many horses of their crop they raced against and how many of those they beat. I mean, a horse can't be in *every* race.
Bolt d'Oro raced 54 horses and beat 50 of them.
Easy to do this for each horse in the field...it does yield some knowledge about how game a horse is, if they are a hard tryer, etc.
Then you have Magnum Moon and Justify....they beat everyone they raced, however, here's the problem: they raced the least amount of other horses than anyone in the entire derby field. i.e. not warriors, harder to figure them as a result.
(next in that category of "fewer horses raced against" would be hofburg, noble indy, and audible...only about 30-something other horses they raced against in their career).
It depends on if you think the "hard knockers" who have raced a lot of other horses and beat a lot of other horses are declining in form, already peaked, etc. OR you might want to look at the # they beat versus raced as a %. More horses you race the chances are your % of beating others is going to go down a tad
Look at some of the horses in the field in terms of # of horses they "battled": some have battled it out with a lot of other horses:
Flameaway raced 86, beat 72
Bravazo raced 80, beat 54
My Boy Jack raced 92, beat 74
Free Drop Billy raced 78, beat 63
Good Magic raced 52, beat 48
and so on.
It gives a different perspective to see the warriors who have raced a lot of others, IMHO
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I will give you credit for pointing out that Justify has not raced against many horses but I want to point out one thing. I don’t know if it was intentional or not but you give the impression that Justify and Magnum Moon are fairly equal in not racing many horses but while the total number of horses faced by Magnun Moon is not a lot (31) it is more than double the number of horses Justify has faced which is a meager 14 and 11 of those 14 have never won a race other than maiden .
People laughed at Gronkowski and didn’t take his 4 race winning streak seriously because of the quality of horses he was beating ( and rightfully so ) yet if you compared the horses Gronkowski was beating with the horses Justify has been beating than Gronkowski competition was by far better. Yet Gronkowski was everybody’s first toss and Justify is the heavy favorite ?
I know all the fan boys will say but Justify beat bolt but if Bolt didn’t try to win than what does it count for ?
That hype machine is a powerful thing.
Free your mind best you can and honestly compare the resumes of Mendelssohn and Justify. Mendelssohn has beaten by far better horses in better races. Mendelssohn has been through the wars and raced in big rough and tumble fields. I am not a big pedigree guy but considering Mendelssohn was purchased as a yearling for 15x what Justify was 3 million vs 200,000 I am guessing his pedigree is also superior yet Justify deserves to be the favorite ?
What do you think Mendelssohn would have done to 5 horse fields of low level maiden type horses. What do you think Mendelssohn would have done to Bolt if he let Mendelssohn get a uncontested lead like that. Justify in his big prep runs one of the slowest times ever recorded and Mendelssohn breaks the track record by almost two seconds in his final prep and Justify ends up the favorite ?
Some deep pockets are going to be getting paid big time after Justify flops !!
