Inspirational and depressing at the same time
 

I found this over at DRF.com. I think this horse got robbed of Horse of the Year in 1997. He faced Skip Away six times, and beat him in four of those races.

112 debut Beyer? Will we ever see that again? And he raced nine times in 1997, racing at least once a month from February through September.

One of my favorites of all time.

http://community.drf.com/formblog/files/formal_gold.pdf

Son of one of my all-time favorites. Trivia question - how many Breeders Cup race winners are currently standing in West Virginia?

Black Tie Affair stands there, as does Prized... so I'd guess 2.

Formal Gold's record in races at distances under 1 1/4 miles was 12-8-4-0. His worst defeat was 3/4 length.

I always liked the way Black Tie Affair won route races. Get the lead, guns blazing, and dare someone to catch you. He was Commentator with moxie.

A personal favorite of mine. I'm hijacking justin's thread, and proudly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiMml...eature=related

I don't care about eclipse awards.....very simply Formal Gold was one of the best horses I have ever seen.

Nevertheless, it's a crime that he didn't get Horse of the Year in '97.

6-1 in the Donn was also a crime.

And if Louis Quatorze hadn't gotten hurt after winning the Ben Ali in the spring.....

The handicap division of 1997 was probably the best we've had in the last 15 years.

Editor's Note was in that field.

I agree that he should have won Horse of the Year in 1997. I was at the Woodward that year, and he smoked Skip Away.

On the debut Beyer question, the only horse that I can think of off the top of my head is Rodeo. He broke his maiden at Belmont by something like 14 lengths, getting 6F in 1:08 and change.

Add in the fact that the 3YO's were excellent too, probably best 1-2-3-4 Derby finishers of the past 25 years (and the Belmont winner, another good one, didn't even run.)

Wow. Fifteen posts in this thread talking about the handicap division of 1997 and not one mention of Gentlemen. I guess people forget that he won the Hollywood Gold Cup, the Pacific Classic, the San Antonio (beating the previous year's BC Classic winner Alphabet Soup), and the Pimlico Special (beating some horse named Skip Away). In my opinion, at his best, he was the best of the group that year but at the very least, a thread shouldn't go 15 deep on the subject and he not be mentioned.

Fair point... think that says a lot about the year, though.

Rodeo didn't get that kind of number.

Meadowlake ran one of the highest debut numbers of all time ( somewhere between 109 and 113 I believe ). Chilluki ran around a 108 at 4 1/2 furlongs at CD.

Gentlemen was terrific as well. It was unfortunate that when he came to NY in the Fall of 1998 he wasn't the same horse.