King Glorious |
11-04-2006 05:41 PM |
Just want to say one thing here. All of u that are saying it was the step up in competition that got him beat need to stop. Really. It wasn't like half of the field beat him. He got beaten by ONE horse. And the one horse that beat him was an older horse that had won the Pimlico Special, Suburban, and Whitney. It wasn't like this was a fluke win. This was a horse that figured to have a big chance, even though I personally discounted him. So, again, to say that facing better HORSES is what was his downfall is just wrong. At best, it was facing a better HORSE. One horse.
It's incredibly narrow minded to me that Bernardini could lose a race to this caliber of horse and all the naysayers feel justified in saying that they knew all along that he wasn't worthy of all the hype and that they knew he wasn't an all time great. But then those same people that are so quick to dismiss Bernardini from the all-time great horse list will include Secretariat and Spectacular Bid even though they lost some races to some pretty ordinary and non-descript horses themselves. Why does losing to Invasor knock Bernardini out of the conversation but Secretariat is forgiven for losing to Angle Light, Onion, and Prove Out? Why is losing to Invasor seen as proof that Bernardini is not a superhorse but when Bid loses to Coastal, it's ok? Now don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying any of this to say that Bernardini is in the class of those two horses. What I am saying is that losing a race like this, to a horse like Invasor shouldn't be looked at as proof that he's not. This reminds me of the late 1970's. In 1978, superhorse 3yo Affirmed was beaten in the Marlboro Cup buy the champion older male Seattle Slew. In 1979, superhorse 3yo Spectacular Bid was beaten by the champion older male Affirmed. No disgrace in either situation. None here for Bernardini either. When really good horses face other really good horses, they both can't win. Who's to say that next time they were to face each other Bernardini wouldn't win? Sometimes horses don't care for a particular surface (Easy Goer and Skip Away at Churchill for instance) and it's actually a show of even more courage than thought just to run as well as they did. Bernardini looked to be in deep trouble going into the turn but still found enough to finish second. In the best dirt race in the world. I think that if he was anything but a superhorse, he wouldn't have been anywhere around at the finish. What I am saying is that whether u thought he was a superhorse or not going into the race, this one result shouldn't be used as justification either way.
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