[King Glorious]

Originally Posted by Cannon Shell

You said that they didnt draw fans. What races were they supposed to draw fans to since they never raced beyond the TC? Wasnt there a record crowd at Smarties Belmont?

How else do you raise the awareness level of your product if you dont participate in the most widely available race? How else can thoroughbred racing be taken serious when it cant get its biggest star to run in its biggest events? Since when is a series of races that matches up the best horses and horses from across the world all on one weekend a bad thing? The Fall meet at Belmont is never going to be the same simply because horses arent campaigned the same way. A coordinated stakes program leading up to a year end finale would better than what we have now but to think that we can simply just purge the BC from the schedule and pick up again from 1983 is silly. Before the BC there was fragmnted voting on the year end awards. The fact that the system of electing eclipse awards is broken doesnt mean we should scrap the BC. Just as we can't expect new fans to storm the sport because we have a super horse to market. But to say that the additional attention that a horse like RA would attract wouldn't be a positive is baseless.

I didn't say that they didn't draw new fans. I said that they didn't bring many new fans to the sport. They brought a few fans that wanted to see THEM race. Specifically. Not other horses but them. A lot of those fans didn't stick around because the horses didn't stick around. I think it would be the same with Rachel. Of course Rachel would attract a few more fans to watch her particular race. But would it be a significant amount of people? I don't think so. How many of those few would stick around to watch other races where she's not participating? What I'm saying is that the few extra people that are going to tune in to watch her will tune in whether she's racing at Suffolk or in the BC. Her participation in the BC will not help the sport.