How do you.....

[Bravado2112]

To me true greatness is best defined as the intersection of talent and accomplishment. Many horses have great talent without enough of a resume to qualify for greatness (Ghostzapper), while many others have special accomplishments but not necessary historical talent (Lava Man)...but few have both when measured against history.

As pointed out above, the nature of racing today essentially prevents any horse from reaching greatness - at least in a historical sense. The DRF Champions book makes for great reading in seeing what the careers of some of the older superstars looked like. Horses today just don't do what those horses did. Most of them don't have the ability to (which is why greatness is an exclusive club), but the remainder never get the chance to (due to limited racing schedules or injuries). It's pretty sobering looking at the records of some of today's stars to remind yourself that a horse like Spectacular Bid was 24 for 24 at distances between 7f and 1 1/4 (14 Grade 1's) or that Buckpasser managed to put together a run of 24 wins and 2 seconds in 26 starts after his debut, or that Bold 'n Determined (hardly a household name) managed to win 7 Grade 1's in 1981 without even winning the 3 yo filly title. The examples are countless.

[blackthroatedwind]

Originally Posted by Bravado2112

Bold 'n Determined (hardly a household name) managed to win 7 Grade 1's in 1981 without even winning the 3 yo filly title. The examples are countless.

She was a 3YO in 1980.....when Genuine Risk won the Derby.

[SniperSB23]

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

Tough to extrapolate off the top of my head but it certainly feels like the track was faster last year than the prior year. Of course, Invasor and Premium Tap were a lot better than Brass Hat ( who also got a lousy ride that day ). Plus, it's hard to believe Discreet Cat wasn't more than 1 1/2 lengths faster than Asiatic Boy ( another brilliantly handled horse by the way....very clever not bringing him here after that race ).

I think Asiatic Boy was that good that day, he was just very poorly handled afterwards as you mentioned.

[SniperSB23]

Originally Posted by the_fat_man

Better horses don't need better setups to win. That's what makes them unique. I suggest you take a closer look at the race. The premature move is obvious.

Then Bernardini should have been able to win despite the premature move if he was so good. I've watched the race plenty of times. Castellano made an early move out of a foolish fear that Lava Man would make his typical mid-turn move before him and get the jump. If Bernardini was good enough he would have won despite the premature move like Invasor did in the Whitney or at the very least put up a fight. Instead he let Invasor blow by him like he was standing still. Bernardini was no faster than Invasor coming into the Classic and lost to him head to head.

[TheSpyder]

I was going to point out the same thing. You look at the horses of the past and are amazed and them winning grade ones year after year after year. The string of races that makes their career is far and away better than any horse you see today. Eeven if the breeding shed doesn't take them, it seems horses today would just not hold up.

Spyder

Originally Posted by Bravado2112

To me true greatness is best defined as the intersection of talent and accomplishment. Many horses have great talent without enough of a resume to qualify for greatness (Ghostzapper), while many others have special accomplishments but not necessary historical talent (Lava Man)...but few have both when measured against history.

As pointed out above, the nature of racing today essentially prevents any horse from reaching greatness - at least in a historical sense. The DRF Champions book makes for great reading in seeing what the careers of some of the older superstars looked like. Horses today just don't do what those horses did. Most of them don't have the ability to (which is why greatness is an exclusive club), but the remainder never get the chance to (due to limited racing schedules or injuries). It's pretty sobering looking at the records of some of today's stars to remind yourself that a horse like Spectacular Bid was 24 for 24 at distances between 7f and 1 1/4 (14 Grade 1's) or that Buckpasser managed to put together a run of 24 wins and 2 seconds in 26 starts after his debut, or that Bold 'n Determined (hardly a household name) managed to win 7 Grade 1's in 1981 without even winning the 3 yo filly title. The examples are countless.

[Sightseek]

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

Here's the problem as I see it, to many people who haven't followed the game for that long, and don't know the history, these horses are special....because relative to what they've seen they are, in fact, special. Now, in the short term there's nothing specifically wrong with that, but in relation to the true greats these horses are also rans. That doesn't mean they aren't very good horses, but it also doesn't put them in the rarified air of the true greats, and if you are going to attach the word " great " to a horse it is competing with history....and not just the personal history of the judger.

"Most people have difficulty in defining what was truly great, and what they simply have heard of." - Memoirs of a Geisha

[my miss storm cat]

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

Here's the problem as I see it, to many people who haven't followed the game for that long, and don't know the history, these horses are special....because relative to what they've seen they are, in fact, special. Now, in the short term there's nothing specifically wrong with that, but in relation to the true greats these horses are also rans. That doesn't mean they aren't very good horses, but it also doesn't put them in the rarified air of the true greats, and if you are going to attach the word " great " to a horse it is competing with history....and not just the personal history of the judger.

This is a really good point but I want to ask something and I'll use king's Silent Witness thought as an example....

He and I have had that discussion quite a few times... horses like Silent Witness and Makybe Diva and whether or not they were greats.

I realize I'm a newer fan and so my frame of reference is a lot different, but don't the older fans also do this... consider the horses who first excited them as great?

I mean on King's tagline for example.....I'm assuming he's saying King Glorious and Java Gold were great (?). I'm not saying they were or weren't... I have no idea.

Silent Witness won 18 races... 18 - 3 - 2 out of 29. Went to Japan a couple of times, won the Sprinters Stakes over there, in his career repeatedly beat G1 winners.

So for someone who came into the game when he was undefeated and just phenomenal, for someone who didn't know any of the history of the sport, he defined greatness and that's why.

I can understand the other side though, the people who say he beat the same horses over and over.

My problem with that is that not everyone realizes just how good these other horses were. Cape of Good Hope for example.

Do the older fans do this? I'm not trying to be cute, I really want to know.

Does history make a great horse greater?

The great horses of the past..... if one were to look at who they beat, whether or not they remained in one area, etc. would they still measure up in general or have they become part of folklore?

It seems like no present day horse ever measures up to the past and I'm trying to figure out if this is valid or not.

I realize it probably is, but.....

[blackthroatedwind]

Of course people are influenced by personal favorites of their's but hopefully that doesn't cloud their judgement. If you're a serious horseplayer it certainly better not and most likely doesn't. You shouldn't bet horses just because you have some sort of affinity for them and you shouldn't overrate them for the same reason. Hopefully KG realizes that King Glorious and Java Gold weren't great horses.....because they weren't ( and I loved Java Gold as much as any horse I ever saw race ).

I think in the past people had a much better field of comparison than they do these days as horses raced more often and for longer and thus their warts got exposed more readily. For that reason, the few that showed exceptional talent proved it on the racetrack. Horses like Buckpasser ( who was mentioned earlier ) and Dr. Fager left indisputable proof on the racetrack of their massive talents. I think the proponents of some of the paper tigers of recent years should take a good look at the lifetime pps of Foolish Pleasure, a horse hardly considered great, and thus get a good dose of what it must have taken to be placed on that pedestal even 30 short years ago.

Silent Witness was probably at least a very substantial racehorse to have accomplished what he did but I just don't know nearly enough about him to measure his real talent.

[my miss storm cat]

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

Of course people are influenced by personal favorites of their's but hopefully that doesn't cloud their judgement. If you're a serious horseplayer it certainly better not and most likely doesn't. You shouldn't bet horses just because you have some sort of affinity for them and you shouldn't overrate them for the same reason. Hopefully KG realizes that King Glorious and Java Gold weren't great horses.....because they weren't ( and I loved Java Gold as much as any horse I ever saw race ).

I think in the past people had a much better field of comparison than they do these days as horses raced more often and for longer and thus their warts got exposed more readily. For that reason, the few that showed exceptional talent proved it on the racetrack. Horses like Buckpasser ( who was mentioned earlier ) and Dr. Fager left indisputable proof on the racetrack of their massive talents. I think the proponents of some of the paper tigers of recent years should take a good look at the lifetime pps of Foolish Pleasure, a horse hardly considered great, and thus get a good dose of what it must have taken to be placed on that pedestal even 30 short years ago.

Silent Witness was probably at least a very substantial racehorse to have accomplished what he did but I just don't know nearly enough about him to measure his real talent.

Again, that's a good point.

[SentToStud]

Originally Posted by my miss storm cat

This is a really good point but I want to ask something and I'll use king's Silent Witness thought as an example....

He and I have had that discussion quite a few times... horses like Silent Witness and Makybe Diva and whether or not they were greats.

I realize I'm a newer fan and so my frame of reference is a lot different, but don't the older fans also do this... consider the horses who first excited them as great?

I mean on King's tagline for example.....I'm assuming he's saying King Glorious and Java Gold were great (?). I'm not saying they were or weren't... I have no idea.

Silent Witness won 18 races... 18 - 3 - 2 out of 29. Went to Japan a couple of times, won the Sprinters Stakes over there, in his career repeatedly beat G1 winners.

So for someone who came into the game when he was undefeated and just phenomenal, for someone who didn't know any of the history of the sport, he defined greatness and that's why.

I can understand the other side though, the people who say he beat the same horses over and over.

My problem with that is that not everyone realizes just how good these other horses were. Cape of Good Hope for example.

Do the older fans do this? I'm not trying to be cute, I really want to know.

Does history make a great horse greater?

The great horses of the past..... if one were to look at who they beat, whether or not they remained in one area, etc. would they still measure up in general or have they become part of folklore?

It seems like no present day horse ever measures up to the past and I'm trying to figure out if this is valid or not.

I realize it probably is, but.....

I don't know anything about Silent Witness, other than very casually. But I do think that who a horse beat during his races is very important as well as overall record, track records, overcoming adversity and Eclipse Awards.

I just recently had a conversation about a horse with a good friend. It was about Cigar. Despite winning four Elcipse Awards, my friend argued that Cigar was just a "marginally great" horse. He rattled off name of several horses that finished 2nd to Cigar during the streak; Dramatic Gold, Personal Merit, Wekeva Springs, Soul of the Matter, Devil His Due and Silver Goblin, among others.

I said these were all nice horses and he said yes, they were nice but they were not champions (I could be wrong but I beieve the only Eclipse winners Cigar beat were Holy Bull and Heavenly Prize).

Finally he asked me who was the best horse Cigar ran against. It was Skip Away who Cigar lost narrowly to in the JCGC (great race). So, his argument was that Cigar was just marginally great since he didn't beat champons and lost at weight-for-age vs the best horse he competed against.

Finally what seems to subordinate the best contemporary horses compared to the past is weight. Horses just don't carry and give major weight any more. It used to be the summer races for 4 yo's+ were meaningful handicaps and the fall series brought 3 yo's and older together to see who was the best of the season. It just does not happen any longer.

Cigar is ranked 18th on that Bloodhorse top 100 list that came out in 1999. Cigar, John Henry(23rd) and Spectacular Bid(10th) are the only horses in the top 25 of that list to have raced since 1980.

[blackthroatedwind]

If you talk to people who have been around the racetrack a very long time the one horse who's name gets mentioned with reverance more than any other is Dr. Fager.

[the_fat_man]

Originally Posted by SniperSB23

Then Bernardini should have been able to win despite the premature move if he was so good. I've watched the race plenty of times. Castellano made an early move out of a foolish fear that Lava Man would make his typical mid-turn move before him and get the jump. If Bernardini was good enough he would have won despite the premature move like Invasor did in the Whitney or at the very least put up a fight. Instead he let Invasor blow by him like he was standing still. Bernardini was no faster than Invasor coming into the Classic and lost to him head to head.

You're kidding right? I had my fill of this discussion last year on the other forum.
It's a pleasure knowing that astute race watchers like yourself are the competition.

[SentToStud]

Dr. Fager was way better than any of those mentioned in this thread. Way better. He finished first in every race except the two when Hedevar rabbited for Damascus. He also got DQ'd in a race when he took a bite out of In Reality as he was passing him by.

Champion sprinter and co-champ turf horse in the same year.

[The Indomitable DrugS]

It's a hell of a lot easier to rate great individual performances than it is to rate great horses.

Circumstances dictates outcomes in horse racing - inferior horses favored by the wide variety of circumstances beat superior horses every day - and it happens at every level.

Also - horses develop and go in and out of form at different times - they obviously have preferences to a wide variety of things starting with surface and distance.

Rating a performance is much easier and can be done with a much higher degree of accuracy than it is to rate how good a horse is overall.

[The Indomitable DrugS]

Originally Posted by SentToStud

He finished first in every race except the two when Hedevar rabbited for Damascus.

Damascus looked like an invincible horse when he had the aid of a rabbit to kill off all the speed horses and set his run up.

I think he jogged in the Travers by about 15 in track record time with an insane duel well infront of him.

[Danzig]

dr fager was an amazing, supremely talented horse. he ran his guts out every time, and no horse that tried to go with him early was still gutting it out with him in the end.
his one race on turf was enough to get him top honors in that group, and he hated the surface--but hated getting headed even worse.

altho others have been listed as better than him, it's hard to say really that he was worse than any one.

as to the true test of greatness....

man o war still gets props. as does citation, secretariat, etc. i'd imagine they still will years from now--matter of fact, there aren't many left, if any, who saw the original big red race-but he's still one that is mentioned to this day as defining greatness.

if you see a horse now and think he's great, ask yourself if his name will still even be known 20 years from now, let alone 80? if not, then he isn't great.

[Danzig]

Originally Posted by Cardus

I do not have his record in front of me, but wasn't it the 1967 Woodward in which Dr. Fager, Buckpasser, and Damascus competed?

Three eventual Hall-of-Famers in one race!

not for nothing that race is called the race of the century.

[SentToStud]

Huh?

Dr. Fager never went out of form. Cigar, once he got good, never went out of form.

The pretenders of today can't overcome any kind of a bad trip or carry weight, at least compared to horses of 25+ years ago.

[The Indomitable DrugS]

Originally Posted by Cardus

Deservedly so.

Any race that featured a rabbit impacting the result doesn't deserve to be called the race of the century.

It ought to be a fairly run race - regardless of who is in it - to earn that title I would think.

[Danzig]

Originally Posted by The Indomitable DrugS

Any race that featured a rabbit impacting the result doesn't deserve to be called the race of the century.

It ought to be a fairly run race - regardless of who is in it - to earn that title I would think.

i think it's called that due to who ran, not how it was run.