Re: Invasor? (377 Views)
Posted by:
fkach (IP Logged)
Date: July 01, 2007 04:13PM
"Fkach, I do not understand why you would put that much emphasis
on "precocity", brilliance as a 2YO. I guess as careers get shorter it will
become ever more important though."
Not a lot of emphasis, but I like to see greatness stretched over multiple years and you rarely get a multi-year older horse career except with geldings. So the 2YO and 3YO record counts for me.
When a horse starts out great and continues to develop through their 3YO and 4YO season, that consistent level of greatness often says something about their ability that getting razor sharp for a few races or a single season does not.
Look at all the legendary horses. Almost all of them came out running and kept getting better. There are some exceptions that were either handled improperly early or that were geldings with long careers, but for the most part they came out running.
Best Pal and Formal Gold ran some astonishing races in their careers when they were going extremely well, but their overall careers were not great.
Cigar is one of those "exception" horses I talked about above where you just have to discount his early career on turf because they didn't know what they had. I do consider him a great horse, but I think he was overrated (that's another story. ;-)