[Betsy]

Originally Posted by King Glorious

I've always said that if you don't go into the Derby with the intention of winning it, you shouldn't go at all. If you do go planning on winning it, the next step is obviously the Preakness. The point is, if you aren't preparing your horse for the entire series, you are asking for trouble. How can you expect a horse that's conditioned to run once every 6-8 weeks to be ready to run three times in six weeks? You can't.

As for the hype of the horses, I think it's really a case of people are looking for hope where maybe it's not really there. But this is what the sport has left us with. Horses don't run enough anymore for us to properly evaluate actual talent and ability against other top horses so all we can do is watch a good horse beat mediocres and pin our hopes on them as future stars. I think back to my first year as a fan, 1986. We had Java Gold, Polish Navy, Gulch, Capote, Bet Twice, Talinum, Temperate Sil, Demons Begone, Qualify, Alysheba...the list goes on.....and they were competing against each other regularly as 2yos and on the TC trail as 3yos. We KNEW who the top horses were. Yearly, that was the case. It wasn't like now where it's mostly speculating and guessing.

I understand hope and I don't mean to imply that the horses we've seen recently are not talented or are not capable of being among the best in their crop.......We'll see them run against their more proven counterparts soon enough. The fact is, though, after the TC, you're right they don't run enough anymore - against each other especially. 1986- what a fantastic crop of horses. Gulch was the first horse I followed from beginning to end and I was lucky, I think - he was a pretty special horse