THOUGHTS ABOUT AMERICAN PHAROAH

[Stillriledup]

Originally Posted by thaskalos

No offense, but if I need a "friend"...I'll get a dog.

Gordon Gekko is that you??

[thaskalos]

Originally Posted by Stillriledup

Gordon Gekko is that you??

The only difference between him and me is that he only bets on "sure things".

[EMD4ME]

Originally Posted by luisbe

Why do you think they duck the BCC? The truth, not for the cameras.

Money makes the world go round.

[Stillriledup]

Originally Posted by thaskalos

The only difference between him and me is that he only bets on "sure things".

Wow, that's great. He's not tossing darts at a board.

Sport.

[keithw84]

Originally Posted by luisbe

He seems to know where the stretch is so he'd change to lead foot, as we can appreciate here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=Uk6z_vqxU_I

Can someone tell me at what point in the video he switched leads? I'm trying to get better at spotting this sort of thing.

[davew]

most agree AP is a great horse, and Zayat stables is now flush with money...

does anyone know if their bankruptcy from a few years ago got settled? I thought Baffert was one of many owed and was wondering to myself if I would even want to train a great horse of theirs.

[Stillriledup]

Originally Posted by keithw84

Can someone tell me at what point in the video he switched leads? I'm trying to get better at spotting this sort of thing.

He switches leads just as the video is changing from 0:09 to 0:10

[elysiantraveller]

Originally Posted by classhandicapper

He got the highest rating for a US horse since 1988. They rated him above Ghostzapper. That should stir the pot.

Why I find these across history discussions so meaningless. Both horses are ridiculously fast. Big Red was ridiculously fast. In a race among the "greats" who really cares?... I know who I would bet, and its the least popular of the 3, but I could spit further than my confidence on the wager.

[keithw84]

Originally Posted by Stillriledup

He switches leads just as the video is changing from 0:09 to 0:10

Thanks. I totally see it now!

[Stillriledup]

Originally Posted by keithw84

Thanks. I totally see it now!

You're welcome, any time!

[NY BRED]

Closing time(always loved that song)

I started this thread, hopefully we can move on to other interesting/heated
debates.

I can easily compare the incredible tally of grade I victories of
AP to the 2015 World series champions, the Kansas City Royals.

Best team, ever? not really, one of the most exciting teams in
many years? Definitely, and that victory came after 30 years!


Comparing the great superstars of yesterday is great chatter,
but, that was then and this is now. The fact is we now have
witnessed a new dimension in racing with the win in the BC.

Sure, the BC was a walkover, not the fault of AP who could
have lost the race were there was true competition.

Anyone who owns ,trains or closely follows this game should be
aware of the difficulty of getting a horse to the race(s) and
keeping the horse sound ,especially in this type of campaign.

Bob Baffert was instrumental in getting AP to the races despite
an injury early in AP's career another incredible fact.


Hopefully we will all be here to argue who was superior
to AP when this accomplishment is repeated.

[clocker7]

Originally Posted by dilanesp

I think the Liam's Map thing isn't so much that he would have won (he probably wouldn't have) but he would have given American Pharoah a real pace test.

And this gets back to what I really think about the Pharoah. I said in another thread that he is a lesser version of Affirmed. Affirmed was not the best horse ever by any means. But he won a lot of races by making his own racing luck-- he could go wire to wire or sit behind a pacesetter. He almost always got himself a perfect trip.

When he didn't, though, such as in the Jockey Club Gold Cup, he lost.

Because tactical speed is a legitimate part of racing, there's nothing wrong with that. Affirmed is a legitimate all-time great horse.

American Pharoah did the same thing. He dominated his races by controlling the pace scenario. He had speed but was also tractable.

On the other hand, when he faced adversity, you saw what happened in the Travers.

He's nowhere near an all-time great-- he never carried weight, didn't run often enough, wasn't fast enough (except in his last start), and didn't beat much. I wouldn't even put him in the top 50 American racehorses. (To pick an example of a horse that nobody rates (i.e., staying away from the obvious ones like Citation and Spectacular Bid), Stymie was 15 times the racehorse that American Pharoah was.)

But the TC-Breeders' Cup Classic parlay is impressive and unlikely to be done again for a long time, and I admire this horse a lot for much the same reasons I admire Affirmed-- that ability to dictate pace scenarios in a race, and generally not be at the mercy of getting a good trip, is a really great thing to have. And the other thing I love about the Pharoah is he always fired-- a tribute to Baffert's training.

I think that this is pretty fair except for the top-50 rank. Way too low.

If I had to compare AP to an all-time great, then Affirmed would be a pretty good match.

Really, what AP is up against is 1. what he beat; 2. his body of work when it comes to adjusted clockings.

Affirmed has some serious scalps. AP? You be the judge. When it comes to clockings, people on PA should approach it clinically.

[chadk66]

Baffert did an amazing job with that horse. To get a horse to win at 1-1/4 miles against that kind of competition with that much time between races is masterful.

[Stillriledup]

Originally Posted by chadk66

Baffert did an amazing job with that horse. To get a horse to win at 1-1/4 miles against that kind of competition with that much time between races is masterful.

No doubt.

[PaceAdvantage]

Originally Posted by dilanesp

FWIW, the reality is the following:

1. We all have our own criteria for what constitutes a "great horse".

2. There's no way to settle the arguments.

I mean, personally, I felt very strongly about Zenyatta because I thought she was being dinged for things that had nothing to do with her ability but rather with frustrations that eastern racing people had about the changes in the sport. In other words, here was a horse from California who was running on Polytrack and demanded recognition for things she did in the Breeders' Cup, which a lot of New Yorkers hate because it diminished the importance of their stakes calendar.

So elevating Rachel Alexandra-- a very good horse, I admit, but one who catered to the prejudices of New York fans by running in eastern stakes races and ducking California, Zenyatta, Polytrack (which she could run on), and the Breeders' Cup entirely-- was, in my opinion, a sort of primal scream of "HEY, THIS WAS A FILLY WHO WON THE WOODWARD! DON'T YOU REMEMBER, THAT RACE IS IMPORTANT! AND IT WAS RUN OVER A REAL TRACK, NOT PLASTIC!". And I didn't like it because a 1st and a photo finish second in two Breeders' Cup Classics is obviously one of the greatest accomplishments ever by a female racehorse in the US, whereas winning the Woodward over Macho Again was not.

The reason I say all that is because in the end, all these debates are about my prejudices. My prejudices tend towards the handicap division. To pick a modern horse, I like a career like Cigar had. Or Alysheba. Or, on a lesser level, Game on Dude. These horses gave away weight, ran against open competition, sustained their form over a long period of time, ran a lot of races, etc.

So when I see a horse like American Pharoah, I'm quite willing to say that's an enormous accomplishment, but I'm not going to call him a great horse because he doesn't really fit in with my prejudices, the same way that Zenyatta, with all of her wins on artificial surfaces in California, didn't fit into the New York fans' prejudices.

I mean, your mileage may vary. If you think 3 year old racing is most important, you should say that Secretariat and Man O' War and Citation are by far the greatest horses of all time and American Pharoah is way up on the list. His 3 year old season is an amazing accomplishment.

But it depends on what you like and what you think makes a horse great.

A lot of "New York, east-coast biased sonofaguns" don't agree with you when it comes to AP. How does that fit into your "New York, east-coast biased" paradigm vis-a-vis Zenyatta?

Answer? It doesn't.