Suit yourself, I thought it was a heck of a race.

Sheba ran a sub 2:00 1 1/4 in the 87 Woodward WITHOUT lasix. Regarding race records, it is hard to comapre Invasor's 11 for 12 with Sheba's 11 for 26.

I also think that Invasor would be hard pressed to win 11 against the horses that Alysheba ran against.

I guess because I was never a big Alysheba fan, I'm biased...still, you can't take anything away from him. It would be interesting to see how he would have done versus Alysheba & those horses from the late 80's. It was different then.

It is unbelievable how much different it was. I was never a huge fan of Alysheba back then but in hindsight I wish there were more like him now. I also wish there were more guys like Van Berg that believed in his horse and would pretty much seek out the other good horses to prove what he had. Now all anybody wants to do it knock off a couple of Grade 1's and get to the shed before they get beat. I guess Invasor is the closest thing we get these days. Like I said before I would love to see him go west to run against Lava Man in California. But I bet he runs in the Surbuban, Whitney, Gold Cup and Classic which is a great year if he wins them all. But who the hell is there to even give him a scare? I mean Premium Tap is a pretty good horse but he has one or 2 graded stakes wins. And I suppose he wont be coming back.

Exactly. This nag couldn't run without lasix. His Belmont proved that. Forget the fact that he won the 1988 Woodward at Belmont while setting a TRACK RECORD of 1:59 2/5. That means nothing at all. The Belmont proved it all.

Invasor is a very nice horse. I admit that I had him extremely underrated all along. But he's no Alysheba. What a lot of people do when they look at Alysheba is look at the overall record. They see that he was 26-11-8-2 and say that's not a great record for an all-time great. I believe that starting after the Blue Grass Stakes (which he was clearly the best while winning only to be disqualified), he ran 16 times. I believe he won 10 of those races with three thirds. This came while running all over the country (Churchill, Pimlico, Belmont, Monmouth, Saratoga, Louisiana Downs, Hollywood, Santa Anita, Meadowlands), setting at least two track records at 10f (Meadowlands and Belmont), and running at least three sub-2:00 10f races. In those last 16 races, the following are the only horses to finish in front of Alysheba:

Derby-won
Preakness-won
Belmont-Bet Twice, Cryptoclearance, Gulch
Haskell-Bet Twice
Travers-Java Gold, Cryptoclearance, Polish Navy (maybe a couple more)
Super Derby-won
BC Classic-Ferdinand
Strub-won
SA Hcp-won
San Bernardino-won
Pimlico Special-Bet Twice, Lost Code, Cryptoclearance
Hollywood Gold Cup-Cutlass Reality
Iselin-won
Woodward-won
Meadowlands Cup-won
BC Classic-won

When he was losing, it was in the best of company that was out there. He was losing to multiple grade one winners when he was getting beaten. Invasor has the better record. Many horses have better records. But how many of them faced race in and race out the kind of competition that Alysheba faced in those two years?

I saw that, wasnt that great. So interesting to see who he would ride (great choice by the way), who would ride the others and how the race would set up. God if only we could see that one!!!!