it's very hard to quantify ability without accomplishments. we've all seen our share of amazing performances-but without accomplishments, how well can you really judge talent?
tiz wonderful might have just been a very precocious but ultimately unsound horse. danzig was mentioned-he seems to have had ability, but three races really isn't enough to give a true measure of how good he was. there's no real record to go on. and there's plenty of others out there like that, who showed a lot of promise, who might have been the top member of their crop-but there's no way really to know for sure. and it's part of being a really good horse being able to prove it?

She was no Jaycito...but yeah she was VERY good.

I was at Saratoga the day he broke his maiden, so yeah I did watch him run before he got hurt. He was real talented.

Then he got hurt, they threw him to the wolves and he got hurt even worse and had to retire. I'm not denying he looked like he might be better than any of them. He just never proved it.

Meanwhile Curlin accomplished a lot. So did Street Sense and Hard Spun to a lesser extent.

Yup, and I acknowledged all of that.

My point was simply that TW had more natural ability than the other horses in that crop. That he accomplished next to nothing is irrelevant to that statement.