I guess if it added intrigue to the race for you then I can't argue with you...but for me he was a total toss and I never even thought about him at any point.

Sort of like Lava Man.

Well I sure wish they would battle it out more frequently on the track than at the auctions!

That would be nice though I imagine they must in Europe. Neither one of them sent their best horses here in the past and Godolphin has only recently started to seriously focus on the US.

I didn't like him to win, but in single-race exotics I thought he was worth a look in the bottom spots.

In retrospect I don't think he ran a terrible race at all -- 3 lengths from hitting the board in America's richest race. Even with no dirt experience, I think he deserved to be there more than half the field did. Their experiment had a better chance of winning than Flower Alley, Lava Man, Perfect Drift, Lawyer Ron, Sun King, Suave, etc.

There are different discussions here, and I would not say he had no right to be in the race, but to me all that matters is relative chances of winning versus betting odds and regardless of outcome George Washington was a horse who's odds were significantly lower than his actual chances of winning.

I don't think he had a better chance in relation to odds of winning the race than a number of horses you mentioned. To me that is what really matters.

1.) I agree completely.

2.) I disagree completely because I think that all of the horses I listed had zero chance of winning, and zero chance of making a case for them winning -- so they could have been 100-1 and they still would have been overbet as far as the win pool goes. That's just how I see it...I could not, before the race, envision any of those listed horses coming home first. There were some longshots that I had on my tickets that I believed had a miniscule outside chance, but none of the horses I listed.

I think it's mostly off-topic in the thread anyway, which is my fault -- but I guess I'm just legitimately interested in which horses on the list you felt had a better chance to win in relation to their odds, because I couldn't see any of them winning.

Brian
 

The " zero chance " arguments are not only indefensible but they are in direct contrast to the discussion at hand.

Sorry, but just because George Washington fits into the unknown category that doesn't mean that reasonable arguments that could have been made for at least a few of the horses you mentioned ( whether you, me, or anyone " liked " them ).

ok, so 'zero chance' was a bad way to put it because of course no horse ever had 'zero chance' but i guess i'm trying to say that i don't think that the odds of any of those horses were good in relation to their chance of winning.

so if i can take the discussion a bit off course, maybe i'm not getting what you're saying -- because in handicapping, if i don't like a horse and don't give a horse any chance to win, then their odds are necessarily going to be lower in relation to what i believe is their chance of winning -- so doesn't it always matter when you wager and assess odds in any given race, whether or not you "like" a horse?

Horses need to be evaluated in a number of ways and their importance in the win slot is only part of the equation. Also, while theoretically we are only supposed to be " liking " or using horses who's betting odds reflect positively on their actual chances, I don't think we either actually do this or are anywhere near as good as we would like to think we are at evaluating this.

It's a big discussion....but it's also post time at Gulfstream.

fair enough -- thanks.

Blackthroat, your point about the Geo Washington decision is correct. "Sporting" was the wrong word. My follow-up then is this.

If the Euros/Coolmore see greater riches in a 1 turn mile BC Dirt win than in a 10f Classic win, the Classic loses more. Let's face it, everyone looks to milers for stallion prospects. If, in a year or so (especially once there have been a few BC Dirt Miles at 1 turn) if it begins to look like the hot young stallion prospects are coming out of the Dirt Mile the Classic becomes anachronistic.

That is my only fear regarding the addition of the new BC races, that breeders start putting more emphasis on the Dirt Mile and the Classic just becomes a joke race for "slow plodders" too slow for the Dirt Mile. I hope they keep the purse structure the way it is to prevent that from ever happening.

This, at least IMO, is an excellent point.

Yes!

--Dunbar (charter member of the "No Such Thing As Zero Chance" club!)

I figured you would enjoy that.....a lot.

100% agreed. Each year, we have less and less horses that are legitimate grade one level horses at the 10f distance. Look at the Derby. It's become less of an attempt at determining who is the best 10f horse but more a guess at which 8-9f will last the longest.