Re: 6 Minutes prior to post in the Preakness... (697 Views)
Posted by:
Dana666 (IP Logged)
Date: May 25, 2006 10:23PM
That is by far the most intelligent observation I've read so far.
Sometimes the simplest explanation is the most likely.
When I think back to Smarty Jones' Triple Crown Bid,Barbaro reminds me a little of his
in a sense that people tried to reason all the ways he got beat in the Belmont, etc. All the riders went after Elliot, all that BS. Elliot rode him exactly the way he had in every race, and he rode him perfectly in the Belmont.
He was so sore he couldn't go on and finish like he had -- all the drugs keep them going for a while, but the tracks are too hard,and the triple crown toll is too high -- they can't last.
Whether horses were stronger years ago is debateable, but what's not is all the drugs that are around now. We push these animals to unnatural expectations and then we wonder why they fall apart. A horse like Barbaro, who raced so infrequently, gee, why would they give him so much rest between starts when they could have been running him at the highest level of the sport for all that cash?
It's such a tough question to answer.
Someone should seriously rethink the whole Triple Crown Mystique. Why do we care so much about it? It's rediculous and so damaging to the horses -- we all get so caught up in the spectacle and tradition. It's a brutal event and it takes no prisoners. The braver the animal the harder he/she goes down.