Steve Davidowitz new site

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by Indian Charlie

It's not the difference of opinion which causes people to ridicule the diehard Zenyatta fans.

It's the depths of insanity to which they'll sink to defend their position and their absolute refusal to even think that there might be merit in the idea that Zenyatta has been coddled and is not an all time great.

In fact, it's stuff like saying you must hate Zenyatta if you don't think she's an all time great that leads to the most ridicule that they so deservedly have earned.

I've also seen some extreme pro Zenyatta things that made me dizzy . I disagree with most of it.

I have no problem with people that think there are major questions about her ability on dirt or even the quality of horses in CA on synthetic. Obviously the mare division has been atrocious this year.

On occasion though, people say silly things like "she's slow".

In response to that it's possible to supply an endless amount of objective data on average paces, average winning times, the thoughts of multiple figure makers, the paces of her races, and a little common sense to more or less demonstrate that synthetic speed figures don't translate well to dirt. That means you have to go beyond speed figures to discuss her and the quality of performances across surfaces (even though IMO pace and final time figures are still a useful tool).

Some people do an admirable job of that even when I disagree with some of what they have to say.

Some people insist on saying "she's slow" even after presenting all that data etc.... IMHO that is an almost preposterous point of view because we don't know how fast she could run with a legitimate pace. What we know is that if she can run a 104-108 Beyer on synthetic (pre the adjustments Beyer made) with the typical slower synthetic paces, she can probably run a little faster than that with a more legitimate pace (as her entire record hints). Therefore, if she likes dirt as much as synthetic she might be 5 or more points faster on dirt. That's damn fast for a mare.

Beyond that, figure makers like "The Sheets" have her extremely fast.