Ruffian - maybe the greatest debut of all-time

[randallscott35]

Can you post Blushing KD's career

[The Indomitable DrugS]

Monmouth Oaks was the last race before she died.

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by The Indomitable DrugS

That was one thing Zenyatta always had going for her, her performances were so mediocre and relatively slow that they were easy to come back from. Look at her after those California wins - she comes prancing back looking like she wasn't even in a horse race. After the BC Classic - she came back hot and dirty - looking so tired that if you sprayed her with a hose you might knock her over. Those are the type of efforts horses don't always come back from - especially females.

We will have to agree to disagree on the details of this while agreeing on the major point being made.

I don't think her performances were mediocre. They were also great, but they were different because of the nature of the surface and the details of her races.

I think the quality of horses in front of her were sometimes vastly inferior (partly because she was so great) and also hell bent on slowing down the pace relative to their own norms because they knew that was the only chance they had to beat her.

As a result of those race developments, it would often be somewhere between difficult and impossible for any horse that ever lived to run fast in totality (especially for her given her deep closing style). As a result she only ran really really fast for the last 2-4 furlongs while making her typical wide sweep and then went out extremely well after the wire with plenty of stamina in reserve.

That is partly the nature of both turf and synthetic racing and probably why turf horses also seem to hold their form better.

Plus, they specifically designed a well spaced campaign with a limited number of taxing races so she'd hold her form until the end of the year and peak around BC time instead of the spring/summer.

[Linny]

The horses Z faced were not very good. They were not just "inferior beside the awesomeness that was Zenyatta." They were nearly universally slow. Especially in 2010. If they were so good, why were none in the Distaff? Clearly if you have a very good mare who just keeps being beaten by a sensation, don't you take the chance to run for $2m against just mares where the "sensation" is not going to be there?
I know St Trinians was sidelined but clearly the conections of Rinterval, Taptam, Dance to My Tune etc would have gone to the BC if they thought they had a decent horse. Last year, Anabaa's Creation, Briecat, Dawn After Dawn all passed on a Zenyatta-free Distaff as well. Why? Because they were not very good.

[santana]

Originally Posted by Linny

I think the favorite was Woody's Stephens' filly Suzest. Woody really thought he had a nice filly and she was a bit of a talking horse 'til Ruffian shut that all up.

More than likeky that was the horse...I loved everything about Ruffian except her rider.....what a ahole towards the fans.

[MISTERGEE]

speaking of great debuts, one of the best I remember being from S Fla is the debut of Pulpit. I dont know the beyer # but I know it seemed like a very special performance

[Thunder Gulch]

It's hard to imaging any 2yo that ever ran beating Ruffian at a sprint distance.