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Originally Posted by King Glorious
By less, I wasn't referring at all to number of starts. I was talking about taking the paths of least resistence. I wouldn't care if a horse ran twice. If they took on the toughest competition out there, I'd value that more than one that starts 10 times and doesn't face anything other than allowance competition. You mention that Medaglia lost both of his starts at 10f. While that's true, just saying that doesn't even begin to tell the story. In the Pacific Classic, if I'm not mistaken, he also broke the track record while losing. In the BC, he ran his eyeballs out while losing to a pretty good 10f horse while dueling throughout the race with another one in Congaree. This whole thing about him and 10f is pretty stupid. It wasn't the distance that found him out in either of those races. If that were the case, he wouldn't have won the Travers and lost the Belmont by just a 1/2 length, I don't care who he was facing in those races. Personally, I think too much is made of wins and losses and the actual performance is lost. A horse like Rachel Alexandra is made into some kind of superhero for dueling with Big Drama and holding off Mine that Bird or for dueling in the Woodward and holding off Macho Again yet MDO is downgraded because he couldn't hold off Pleasantly Perfect after dueling with Congaree and Winning Colors is downgraded because she couldn't hold off Risen Star after dueling with Forty Niner (and running him into submission) in the Preakness.
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I didn't say Medaglia D'Oro couldn't stay 10f. All I said was that he lost both his starts that year at 10f in 2003. I presume some Eclipse voters might have scored Mineshaft a little higher since he won 3 races at a classic distance in 2003, whereas MDO had none.
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You talk about how Congaree and MDO and Perfect Drift were beaten in the Classic but you miss the point I was making in the first place. That they were all there to face each other meant that all of them except for one would have to lose. Congaree faced Perfect Drift in Kentucky. They both couldn't win. MDO and Candy Ride both couldn't win the Pacific Classic. Congaree, Milwaukee Brew, and Pleasantly Perfect were all in the San Antonio. This is what I'm talking about. Their records were all going to suffer because they were consistently facing each other while Mineshaft was getting a steady diet of lower level horses.
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Consistently facing each other? Congaree and Pleasantly Perfect faced each other 3 times. Congaree and Milwaukee Brew faced each other twice. Congaree faced Perfect Drift twice. See a pattern developing? Only Congaree took on all comers (he even when toe-to-toe with the year's best sprinter, too).
Pleasantly Perfect made all of 4 starts, all at Santa Anita. His record "suffered" because he didn't run between March and October and he couldn't get close to Congaree without a tailor-made setup.
Instead of trying to pad your argument with nonsense, just say what your main gripe is...that Mineshaft didn't run in the BC Classic. Who cares? The race was won by the worst of your top 7 older horses that year when the beneficiary of one of the greatest setups of all time. Mineshaft had the more illustrious campaign of the bunch. The only other horse that didn't have a cherry-picked season was Congaree, but he had too many high-profile losses (Big Cap, Met Mile, etc.) to overtake Mineshaft.
I find your argument pretty ironic coming from a guy who thinks Java Gold should have been HOY in 1987.