Quote:
Originally Posted by DaHoss9698
Again last year Gilchrist told EVERYONE where he was going.
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Yes, he was going in races where his most likely divisional rivals couldn't run. So what's the point?
Do people simply fail to understand that he was not elected - nor widely trumpeted as - "Champion 3YO Sprinter," in which it would be perfectly acceptable to run all year against 3YOs, but as "Champion Sprinter," an all-age division in which he failed to win a race against any reasonable divisional rival after spending his whole season in races where they couldn't run against him? Oh, sure, he won one open-age race - a race in Northern California written for him about three weeks in advance, for the same day as the Vosburgh and within a week of the Ancient Title (races to which legitimate divisional rivals had already been targeted). If "Champion 3YO Sprinter" existed as a category, I suspect that very few would've had an issue with LITF being elected for it, given his otherwise perfect record on the year. Since there is no reason to believe that he was anywhere near being the best all-ages sprinter - for the reason that he, and the horses he built his reputation running against, did not have success in the all-age races that rightly define the championship of this division - that, IMHO, is the key reason for so much discord on this topic.
On an unrelated topic, I saw in the other LITF thread the "sprinter giving 8+ pounds" excuse as if that's a big deal. It's not. You see it all the time. I could print out a list of dozens of examples from my database of graded stakes races, which is far from complete but still presents plenty of cases. One particular example that's worth giving is a real 3YO sprinter from not all that terribly long ago. Consider Groovy, who, as a 3YO, not only beat older horses in the Tom Fool, Forego and Ancient Title, but gave that much weight or more to some older, stakes-winning rivals in the latter two. I don't remember seeing LITF doing anything like that - and that still wasn't good enough to get Groovy a sprint championship after less of a BC Sprint debacle than LITF had.