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Originally Posted by King Glorious
But that's relative too. For 2008, those were fine numbers for a top flight grade one horse. They got him the wins they did.
I won't ever profess to know which horses were chemically altered or how much the chemicals had to do with performance. I'm not doctor or a physicist so I'll stay out of that area. All I'll deal with are facts. Facts are that he didn't go up in his numbers this year. There could be a number of factors for that. It could be the absence of chemicals he was using last year. It's just as likely that it's the fact that he's been in constant training since he started racing without any prolonged break and he's just worn down. Before the emergence of the Dubai races and the huge increase in popularity of the races in Japan and Hong Kong at the end of the year, horses used to get the winter off and have a chance to regroup and re-energize. That's almost a thing of the past. European horses used to end their season in early October and wouldn't be racing again until April or May. Horses here would run through the BC and then for the most part, would have 2-3 months off. No longer. If I had to put my money on anything, it would be that as the reason why horses in general and Curlin in particular don't progress the way they used to from year to year. The natural mental and physical improvement is cancelled out by the continuous training and wear and tear.
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Some good points
In response to the sentences in bold ... no question those numbers were good enough when he was facing horses like Wanderin Boy and Past the Point, but we all saw what happened to Curlin when he finally ran into a couple legit G1 animals last weekend ... and they were both younger than him, no less.
Like I said, I don't buy the Pro-Ride excuse for a second. The colt looked fine when he made his move on the turn. He also had a very nice 5f workout over the surface. He simply got outrun in the lane by a couple superior animals, imo.
Also not convinced that he would've handled RP on a traditional dirt surface either. Isn't RP by Elusive Quality? Last time I checked, that sire has thrown a decent dirt runner or two.