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Old 11-06-2022, 01:56 PM   #391
zico20
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Originally Posted by Sheffwed View Post
This is a good thing for the game - he retires as a legend of sorts, and the owners make a fortune

Good for the game all around
Now that is funny!: He will be forgotten in 20 years except for his breeding if he turns out to be a top stallion.
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Old 11-06-2022, 01:58 PM   #392
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Agree. Horses seem to take a long time to recover from that trip.
Horses today take a long time to recover, which just goes to prove many people's point that today's horses are inferior to the ones of the past.
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Old 11-06-2022, 02:04 PM   #393
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Spectacular race! Going through fractions at the half mile and 6 furlong, just a tick or two off the sprint race ran earlier on the card. And then he just put LIG away like that horse was standing still. More impressive than the Pacific Classic win. A very tought classic field this year.

But man, I hope these mini campaigns aren't a wave of the future. There won't be any fans. Horse racing fans need horses they can follow. Thats why horses such as Cigar had such huge followings: They raced.
LIG was standing still once he hit the eighth pole. He simply can't go that far and be at his best. The field wasn't that tough, please. Epicenter didn't finish so toss him. Some decent horses yes, maybe Taiba turns into a great horse at four, but the rest are okay at best.
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Old 11-06-2022, 02:11 PM   #394
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Let me put it to you this way. If you put him in a match race with Secretariat I'd want even money on either one and might take the bait on either one at that number, however I wouldn't feel really good about it. For all time greats I like to look at the body of work over a longer career, but he is (was) scary good.
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Old 11-06-2022, 02:36 PM   #395
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Horses today take a long time to recover, which just goes to prove many people's point that today's horses are inferior to the ones of the past.
I don't think this is true, although I realize I can't prove it.

I think the economic incentives created by the explosion of profits in the breeding industry clearly effect how horses are trained. It's almost a Marxist point, but structures matter- if you create incentives for top horses to not run very much and get to the breeding shed as quickly as possible, the training methodologies will be affected by those incentives.

The easiest way to see this is to compare what happens to Flightline with what happens to claimers, where the incentives run the other way. There are no claimers like Flightline. You have a claimer, he's sound, you run him, because that's the way you pay the feed and training bills and potentially make money. Sometimes you run them every couple of weeks.

If it were really true that "horses today take a long time to recover", you'd see claimers campaigned like stakes horses, with a start every 8 weeks or so. But you don't see that, because there hasn't been any magical change in the horses, just the incentives.
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Old 11-06-2022, 02:40 PM   #396
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I'm not a big fan of using the clock or speed figures for historical comparisons.

The dirt surfaces are not the same now as they were years ago due to efforts to improve safety. The training and drug use is different and all speed figures have tended to drift faster/slower over time.

Looking at margins of victory, accomplishments of the horses behind, and their trips etc.. seems like an imperfect but better approach for this kind of comparison.

Going back to the 70s when I started, imo this one looks to be top 5-10 in "talent". He belongs in the conversation with some of the best I've ever seen. The problem is that we've seen some horses be spectacularly sharp for short periods & not sustain it. IMO part of greatness is sustaining that peak. Otherwise it's just a great "performance" or two.

So for me personally, I don't care what the clock or figures say. IMO the talent is there for elite greatness, the best was "likely" to come further down the line, but for me personally without proof, he has to be ranked just below the very best I've seen. It really would have been nice to see a few more races because assuming soundness there's no way a horse is at his peak after 6 races.
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Old 11-06-2022, 02:56 PM   #397
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Didn’t sires like Seattle Slew, Storm Cat and Mr Prospector stand for way higher fees back in their day? I seem to recall Slew syndicating for $12 million, which is worth $55 million or so today.
Doesn’t seem like a giant change in racing vs breeding.
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Old 11-06-2022, 03:04 PM   #398
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Awesome!!!!!
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Old 11-06-2022, 03:06 PM   #399
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Didn’t sires like Seattle Slew, Storm Cat and Mr Prospector stand for way higher fees back in their day? I seem to recall Slew syndicating for $12 million, which is worth $55 million or so today.
Doesn’t seem like a giant change in racing vs breeding.
It is more on less horses being bred and born each year and thus big time sires are of top level.

The sport is shrinking, as thus those that have are of bigger value.
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Old 11-06-2022, 06:16 PM   #400
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Landaluce was dominate, but consider this. Landaluce ran in one Grade one race, against 2 yo fillies. She won that by two lengths.
Flightline has run in four grade one races against the best horses currently competing. His margin of victory in those races were 6 lengths, eight and a quarter lengths, eleven and a half lengths and nineteen and a quarter lengths.

I was just looking for a horse that had a Flightline type streak at any level. I am agreeing with you, it would be hard to match. Business hasn't been good this year so I am not going to cough up $8 a piece for a horse's lifetime past performances to try to find one. I was just doing a bunch of Googling.
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Old 11-06-2022, 06:21 PM   #401
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Golden Act & Lot o'Gold were multiple stakes winners both before & after facing Spectacular Bid; both were stakes winners at age 2 & 3 and both beat older horses in major stakes when they were 3 (the Canadian International & Clark respectively).

Flying Paster was 13 for 21 away from Spectacular Bid.

General Assembly was 7 for 14 away from Spectacular Bid.

Coastal was 8 for 12 away from Spectacular Bid (and obviously beat him in the Belmont).

More importantly, Spectacular set or tied multiple track, stakes, & world records during his career over multiple distances. Sure enough, even his vanquished foes were capable of beating the clock.

Flying Paster set multiple stakes records. Coastal set 2 stakes records in the Peter Pan & Dwyer to flank his Belmont win. General Assembly set a stakes record sprinting as a 2yo and famously set the track record for 10 furlongs at Saratoga (eventually bettered by Arrogate) when romping in the Travers.
life is Good won for grade 1's in 11 races and was 9 for 11. Olympiad was 8 for 12. Epicenter won the Travers and came 2nd in the Derby and Preakness. It's hard to judge different eras but I don't think you can say Bid faced better horses. The horses Bid faced raced more times but also lost more races by percentage than the top ones Flightline raced in the classic

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Old 11-06-2022, 06:22 PM   #402
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Part of horse racing is even in overmatched fields you can get beat. Horses do.

As for what the Bid did, he ran 1 1/4 miles in 1:57 4/5, which has been an American record for 42 years, with only one horse (who is going to be in the hall of fame) coming within 1/5 of a second of it. Spectacular Bid also broke a 30 year old American record to do that. And he did it at the classic American distance.

He won most of the biggest races in the country. He set several other track records, including one in a route race at a major track as a 2 year old (unheard of). He carried 130 pounds. He sustained greatness over 3 seasons. He met the best horses of his generation several times. He took on all comers.

Spectacular Bid had a "great horse's" career. He put together a resume. Flightline hasn't, and won't.
In my opinion I think they are both great horses
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Old 11-06-2022, 06:25 PM   #403
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They are the future. Look at how they retire top 3 year olds for even minor injuries, the sorts of things that years ago would have earned the horse some rest before a 4 year old campaign. (If you compare any of these injuries to the sorts of injuries that Citation and Seabiscuit suffered mid-career, there's no comparison.)

Look at American Pharoah. 3 races after the TC, retire after the BC Classic.

Look at Justify. 6 races total, retires immediately after the TC.

And now Flightline.

We will still see long campaigns, but only in three categories of horses:

Mares, like Beholder, who don't offer guaranteed profit in the breeding shed- they have to drop a live foal that makes it at least to the sales, and they only birth one per year.

Geldings, like Game on Dude.

Colts who are less attractive to the breeding industry, like California Chrome.

But the era of a top colt having a career like Affirmed had are over. And the sport suffers for it.
It's because the breeding value of horse like this is too large to give up. If the breeding value was the same when Bid ran, I doubt he would have run as long.
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Old 11-06-2022, 06:31 PM   #404
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Originally Posted by ClockersCorner View Post
Didn’t sires like Seattle Slew, Storm Cat and Mr Prospector stand for way higher fees back in their day? I seem to recall Slew syndicating for $12 million, which is worth $55 million or so today.
Doesn’t seem like a giant change in racing vs breeding.
Mr Prospector and Storm Cat weren't great race horses but turned out to be great sires over time. Their fees were low when they started just like Tapit and Into Mischief today. Not great races horses but great sires
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Old 11-06-2022, 08:12 PM   #405
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I'm not a big fan of using the clock or speed figures for historical comparisons.

The dirt surfaces are not the same now as they were years ago due to efforts to improve safety. The training and drug use is different and all speed figures have tended to drift faster/slower over time.

Looking at margins of victory, accomplishments of the horses behind, and their trips etc.. seems like an imperfect but better approach for this kind of comparison.

Going back to the 70s when I started, imo this one looks to be top 5-10 in "talent". He belongs in the conversation with some of the best I've ever seen. The problem is that we've seen some horses be spectacularly sharp for short periods & not sustain it. IMO part of greatness is sustaining that peak. Otherwise it's just a great "performance" or two.

So for me personally, I don't care what the clock or figures say. IMO the talent is there for elite greatness, the best was "likely" to come further down the line, but for me personally without proof, he has to be ranked just below the very best I've seen. It really would have been nice to see a few more races because assuming soundness there's no way a horse is at his peak after 6 races.
Right. Remember Arrogate looked otherworldly for 4 races.
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