The perception that igonrant folks carry that he is a hanger is ridiculous.
I mean Invasor was being heralded as the only horse who could beat bernadini, and he beat him a nose. So basically you are talking about inches being the difference in the total perception of both horses. Since Invasor has only one loss on his dancecard, I'd say that qulaifies him as a super game animal.
In his Met Mile loss he was beaten a head by a horse whose won photo after photo at the highest level of competition and has shown to be an incredibly game animal.
Those two narrow losses to top notch horses do not make him a hanger in my book. What they make him is a horse capable of fantastic efforts when the race unfolds as preferable to his running style.
Hangers are horses who get beat time and time again regardless of trip and the figure the race comes up with. And I know i will be castrated by his fans, but Perfect Drift would come to mind these days as a textbook example. Hes consistently 2nd or 3rd regardless of what the pace is, and what the final figure of the race is.
If you think that had Invasor or Silver Train not been in those races, that Sun King would have pulled himself up and not won, I have a bridge to sell you.
What he is an unlucky horse. I've seen quiet a few of those in my life and like to think I know the difference. Medaglia was probably the most unlucky horse I ever saw. His 2nd place finishes were almost always to horses who freaked out and ran crazy figures that they never ran close to before or after, or in Perfectly Pleasant's case, a horse who was scary good for 4-6 months in his life.
Candy Ride(Pac Classic), Sarava(Belmont), Buddha(wood), Volponi(Classic) all ran races that they had never run before and never after by huge margins. medag was just an unlucky horse and the notion that he was a hanger was adsurd as evidenced by his many great wins.
Some horses are just unlucky and part of Sun King's poor luck is his running style which inhibits him in many races. But his Commonwealth race(in addition to his other wins) shoud really be watched again by anyone who thinks hes a hanger. Racing against a HUGE speed bias(its the day sinister minister won, and people tried to use Sun King's win as proof their wasn't a bias because they were too dumb to look at all the other races and see that Sun King's performance was just incredible kinda like Watchmaker tried to use Anees closing win on a ridiculous speed biased BC day at Gulf as proof their wasn't a bias that day ) he powered past the leaders like a runaway train on a track that heavily favored speed at a distance that wasn't optimal to him.