Brilliant miler Canford Cliffs retired to stud
 

From the Racing Post - CANFORD CLIFFS has been retired to stud after suffering a leg injury when chasing home Frankel in last week's Sussex Stakes at Glorious Goodwood.

The star miler suffered a near-fore pastern injury at Goodwood and was retired on veterinary advice. He'll stand at Coolmore.

Not surprised.. Very unfortunate though.

Sad news...makes the original Frankel thread worth a re-read though

Not that anyone was speculating that something was very wrong toward the end of that race...

No way.

I'm shocked.

Where in the race did that injury happen?

This means that with an injured leg, Canford Cliffs ran a huge second in one of the all time greatest miles ever run, which possibly makes him more impressive than the greatest miler of all time.

Personally, I thought when he lugged out it was just a matter of CC spitting the bit because he had his heart ripped out by the all mighty Frankel.

Too bad....was hoping he would cross the pond in November

Oh, that's terrible news. You could see the change in gait, I was hoping it was just that he was all in. What a good horse.

Must have been the Lasix

Watching Frankel beat him in the last start was like watching Reavis chase Moss on that play where Reavis pulled up with a messed up Hamstring last year.

Sure - Frankel looked absolutely fantastic - and took full advantage of his dream trip. He might even be a great one ... but that was a smoke and mirrors performance over a horse who was having issues ... it was not anything like Harbinger's performance of last year. Harbinger killed the world in his big win last year.

Mr. Calzone, I have a few questions for you. They run a 10f race at Churchill and one horse wins by a nose in 1:58 3/5 with the third horse 20 lengths back. Both horses ran great races right? Well, let's say that one of them would have broken down at the eighth pole and the other went off to win by himself in that same 1:58 3/5. Is his effort somehow less because the other horse got hurt? Or did he do exactly the same thing? This was my argument with the Frankel/Canford Cliffs race. On the other thread, in the immediate aftermath of the race, I mentioned that I thought CC was injured and that tempered my excitement a little about how good Frankel was. This gets me back to something I've always gotten into debates with racing fans about. There is a real difference between perception and reality but I don't think that perception CHANGES reality.

I use two examples in my debate. The first is Sunday Silence/Easy Goer. Some people say that each was unlucky to be born in the same year as the other because it stopped them both from achieving immortality. Some argue that they were lucky to have been born in the same year because it gave us another great horse to measure them against instead of having to just rely on numbers and records. My feeling has always been that had Sunday Silence not been around, Easy Goer would be regarded as one of the five greatest horses of all-time, maybe top three. He'd have had an undefeated season as a 3yo with a sweep of the TC and the BC Classic. In addition, he'd have won the Gotham, Wood, Whitney, Woodward, Travers, and JCGC with the fastest mile ever by a 3yo and the second fastest Belmont ever. Plus, he'd be a NY horse so the media would have not had to temper any of their enthusiasm for him. But Sunday Silence was around so Easy Goer wasn't able to do all of those things. What stopped him wasn't anything that had anything to do with his ability or how fast he was but that there was another great horse running against him. So the reality of how good he actually was doesn't change because SS was there but what he was able to accomplish (and therefore, the perception of how good he was) does.

The other example is Affirmed/Alydar. For many of the same reasons as the above argument, I think that Affirmed gets shortchanged when it comes to debates about the greatest ever. With no Alydar around, Affirmed not only wins the TC but wins in dominating fashion and is probably ranked higher than he is now.

Getting back to Frankel, sure him beating Canford Cliffs in a runaway caused more immediate excitement than it would have had the winning margin been a neck and having this injury confirmed and lessens the excitement even more. But does it really have anything to do with how good Frankel is or how well he ran in the race?

No. It's not.

However, in this hypothetical example - you have no mention of a lot of different factors that impact how you view a performance.


The rest of your question has me dizzy and confused.

I can rattle off a dozen or more horses from Europe - only going back to Giant's Causeway and Dubai Millenium's time - who have beastly forms like Frankel.

Frankel and CC are not our equivlant of an Easy Goer/Sunday Silence or Affirmed/Alydar.

The rest of the post was just rambling in trying to give examples of how people use perceptions to try and change realities. Affirmed was what he was whether or not Alydar was there. Same with Easy Goer. Same with Frankel. Some on here are trying to use the injury to Canford Cliffs to say that was the reason that Frankel won as clear as he did (which is true) and that if he hadn't been injured and the finish had been closer, people wouldn't be making proclamations that Frankel is one of the best ever (also true). My belief is that whatever Canford Cliffs did or didn't do is irrelevant. My opinion of Frankel is based only on what he does.

I thought the same thing

Too bad for the horse,however nice to see thatEurope is just like over here "If u don't win,then you must be injured"

Of all the babbling nonsense he wrote ... that line actually made some sense.

Look at Easy Goer's 3-year-old season without Sunday Silence. He'd have been retired after the BC Classic as a sensation.