BEYER: Defining Zenyatta's historical role
 

Andy Beyer with a pretty definitive fleshing out of Zenyatta's context.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...092903591.html

I just read that not 5 minutes ago... Hope he has body guards :)

This is exhausting. I hope she retires after this weekend.

Yawn.....does this have anything to with his inability to properly produce speed figures for synthetic surfaces that mean anything? Also, isn't her Oaklawn number on dirt one of the best of her career? Whatever Andy.

No need. I'm sure the people most likely to go after him just had their head implode. Is there anybody left standing in California?

beyer
 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...110703043.html

Well, I'm still upright :D

I admit I'm a Zenyatta fan, but I'm a fan of any horse that can impress and entertain me, and Zenyatta does both. It does her a disservice to try to pin the label of "one of the all time greats" on her. She's very good at what she does, she entertains the spectators and makes it exciting by closing like she does but she should have had a more challenging career if her handlers truly wanted to have her labeled "all time great". She's no Secretariat but it's not fair to say she's the California equivalent of Peppers Pride.

I'm looking forward to seeing her this weekend, she puts on a great show... But I'm also looking forward to seeing Richard's Kid :o

Very good article as usual. Citing the poor record of dirt horses running on synthetic in the BC has nothing to do with the ability of synthetic horses to run on dirt.
His opinion is that in the one race where she faced decent horses the competition was compromised by the surface. What nobody really knows is she could be the one who is being compromised. The million dollar question.

DC...have a great time :tro:

I laughed.

He had a year to think about it, and he retracted his article. So now when Zenyatta wins this years classic, he can refer to the 2009 article in which he said she was great. Politics in the future Andy?

No.

pathetic

Pathetic is the most recent Hovdey blog.

Ateam - her first race at Oaklawn on the dirt is not one of her best beyers? Where does it rank? I don't have all of her races in front of me but for some reason I am thinking that was one of her best.

so did i. didn't you know horses win 18 races straight all the time? including the breeders cup classic. wait a minute alot of these horses don't even run that many times anymore. boy, she stinks....lol. thanks for the article its a real eye opener. theres two or three really good horses racing in the whole country.....i guess shes not one of them andy. your supposed to be so good with your crappy numbers....do something useful and tell me who is going to beat her. i took history in school and history never cashed me a ticket.....lol. in fact, i think that involves looking ahead......i don't need your stupid "history" lesson.

Here are some amusing quotes from the wonderful world of facebook about this column ...

NY Times Molly Jo Rosen:


Bruno De Julio:

The guy's strategy for the BC was to throw out all the dirt horses, yet he still couldn't come up with Zenyatta as the winner. I guess he's consistant.

How many dirt horses even ran in last years Classic?

Like 3?

& the best PR machine since the 70's??? LOL thats why so many non racing fans are following Z's career :zz:

No horse in the past decade holds a candle to Smarty Jones as far as PR goes.

Actually, if you count QR and Z, about eleven of the entries had wins on the dirt. I guess many of them had success on synth as well. But hey, we know it's impossible to be good on both. Essentially, AB dismissed Z for RVW and TO.

I thought he was dismissing all horses going from dirt to synthetic last year .. I don't know though, I don't follow other peoples angles that closely.

I also thought Beyer had a decent Breeders Cup with picks he made in his column last year - I remember a bunch of threads being started about it on other boards.

I hate handicapping races on boards because you always have to listen to somebody's crap. He dismissed a 5/2 favorite for two Euro's - big deal.

I didn't dismiss Zenyatta in the race - though off her form.. with no bias shown to her trainers tendency of getting horses to peak on the big day when he's kid gloving them along ... she absolutely should have been dismissed.. even against that vomitious field of horses relative to past Classic fields, in her back yard, on her surface.

I'm not so sure Smarty Jones garnered any more non racing fans than Big Brown. Both horses had all of three weeks in the spotlight. I'm not saying Zenyatta is the PR machine this woman says she is but if you polled a thousand people at random to name a racehorse who ran in the last ten years I'd be surprised if Smarty jones would be holding the candle at the very top of the list.

What you said..

Go back and read her post about her "stats" for the Saratoga meet that she provided her "clients." She boasted about having a 58% win rate but then back-pedaled when questioned about it saying that 58% was the rate with which she had the winner among her top four selections.

Yeah, she has a lot of credibility.

NT

Smarty Jones was connected to likeable people, was on the cover of Sports Illustrated and got tons of coverage in mainstream media (even before the Derby). There was a story there...the horse who had a terrible accident, the dying owner, the blue collar family man trainer. Nothing was likeable about Big Brown but the horse. I know plently of people (myself included and a few other regulars on this board) who became attracted to the sport because of the media (overhyped or not) over Smarty, I've never heard anyone say they became a fan because of Big Brown.

I remember noticing once that she claimed she was picking winners at like 60% at Saratoga. I assumed it was probably a top 3 thing like the tip sheet people there claim when you walk into the track.

Decrepit car dealer for an owner, a trainer who wastes his time hunting, and Stew Elliot as a jockey?

That's a trifecta of likability if I've ever seen one.

Obviously the media did not portray them as this. :rolleyes:

This factor alone should define Smarty's greatness.

I wasn't going to use Zenyatta until I saw the Distaff. Might have been for the wrong reason, but it worked for me. Guess my point was that AB dismissed the dirt runners and the male synth horses she had been dodging. I think he went with Euros by default since he wasn't impressed with Zenyatta either.

Renowned author and longtime Washington Post columnist Andy Beyer will be Kurt Hoover’s guest on the first Inside Scoop of the Oak Tree meet at Hollywood Park on Saturday, Oct. 2.

It will be interesting to see what kind of a reception Mr. Beyer gets now......................

This guy is going to crush Beyer.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-A1ps_m7Jk

Your "likable connections" comment seemed to be a veiled shot at Big Brown's connections.

If you ask me - a slippery wop owner, a cheating trainer, and a drunk cajun jockey with a hot old lady are connections I can dig.

This doesn't come as a surprise considering you romantically write about raping and pillaging people.

Big Brown was a huge flop in the Belmont so I suppose no one wanted to embrace a loser.

As far as the "feel good" story I'm not so sure that captured the imagination of fans as much as SJs' courageous effort in defeat.

One thing Big Brown had over Smarty Jones PR wise was UPS.

besides californians & horse racing fans, who dont count anyway, there is NO zenyatta hype!!!