True handicap races are pretty much long gone. The days when really good horses might routinely be expected to concede 20 or 30 pounds to stakes horses are rocking-chair memories. (It's hard enough to get top-class horses to run against current, in-form, stakes-class horses, let alone concede major amounts of weight to them.) Forego carrying 130+ in most of his races, Ta Wee winning the Fall Highweight under 140 pounds and picking up weight for the Interborough Handicap in her next start - these things were well on their way to the waste bin of history when Delp thought he had the best horse ever but whined about him having to carry 130 pounds.

It's part of a trainer's job to complain about weights - that's nothing new. One important thing that's changed in the landscape of racing over the last few decades is the trend of horses racing only a handful of times, with every loss a serious liability. If you're campaigning a modern potential champion, the last thing you want to do is unnecessarily risk running your horse in a race where he might lose. Back when horses might run 10 or 20 times a season, a few losses along the way were more forgivable.