What fabulous people they are.
http://www.thepilot.com/news/2010/nov/14/dont-blame-sentiment-zenyatta-should-be-horse-year/
Donât mean to rain on the parade, but I donât think she really has proven all that much. In the other 5 races this year she never faced another horse that had won a grade one. Anyone can stay undefeated if they donâ t run against top competition.
Goldikova is by far the superior mare IMHO, (which it truly is). She ran against top males all year, and beat them 5 times.
The Mosses really only âriskedâ Zenyattaâs record twice in 20 races, and she is 1 for 2.
[QUOTE=equinedriver;5222174]
Donât mean to rain on the parade, but I donât think she really has proven all that much. In the other 5 races this year she never faced another horse that had won a grade one. Anyone can stay undefeated if they donâ t run against top competition.
Goldikova is by far the superior mare IMHO, (which it truly is). She ran against top males all year, and beat them 5 times.
The Mosses really only âriskedâ Zenyattaâs record twice in 20 races, and she is 1 for 2.[/QUOTE]
Give me a break; if itâs so easy to go 19 for 19, why has only one other horse done it?
She faced some nice mares this year, carried a significant amount of weight early in the season (especially when looking at the weight spread). Her season wasnât the most challenging, but it also wasnât a season filled with no challenges.
I agree with you that Goldikova is a wonderful mare; one of the best.
Nice story. Whether or not Z is the official HOY, she is HOY already in many fansâ opinions. And she has been a wonderful ambassadoress for racing.
Really not meaning to pick a fight. I agree she has been GREAT for racing, but again, itâs not that hard to win them all if you never really risk losing. They kept her undefeated by racing her VERY carefully. The others that didnât make it, by and large were asked bigger questions.
Again, not taking away from her contributions, and I do think she is one of the better mares to ever race. Just not convinced she is one for the legends. I donât think we will ever know how good she really was because IMHO she was never really given the chance to prove it.
If you never ask the question, you never know the answer. Actually makes me sad. I would love to have seen her really tested and given the chance to answer the big questions. I think they really only asked the question twice, in the two classics.
Great horse for sure! Love the story.
Fact isâŠthat mare is a starâŠand she not only got into the hearts of all of us that love the thoroughbred, but she sparked fire into people who had never even watched a horse race before.
I was sitting in Applebees during one of her racesâŠand the entire bar switched from watching ânormalâ sports, to all Tvâs on her.
It was amazing as a horse personâŠknowing that our business of horses, whether itâs race horses OR show horses, has taken a hit in the ecomonyâŠand to see this roomful of peopleâŠNOT horse peopleâŠget excited and cheer her alongâŠsounded like yells and cheers from the super bowlâŠnot a horse race⊠âZenyatta!â
I thank ZenyattaâŠher owners and her trainer and all her âpeopleâ for sharing her with the world. 
And PS⊠whether she was made great by talent, good choices on her trainers parts, or sheer luck⊠it accomplished what EVERY one of us wanted.
[QUOTE=luckyduck;5222795]
I thank ZenyattaâŠher owners and her trainer and all her âpeopleâ for sharing her with the world.
And PS⊠whether she was made great by talent, good choices on her trainers parts, or sheer luck⊠it accomplished what EVERY one of us wanted.[/QUOTE]
WHOEVER PRESENTS THE HORSE OF THE YEAR TROPHY TO HER SHOULD READ THIS!
[QUOTE=equinedriver;5222352]
Really not meaning to pick a fight. I agree she has been GREAT for racing, but again, itâs not that hard to win them all if you never really risk losing. They kept her undefeated by racing her VERY carefully. The others that didnât make it, by and large were asked bigger questions.
Again, not taking away from her contributions, and I do think she is one of the better mares to ever race. Just not convinced she is one for the legends. I donât think we will ever know how good she really was because IMHO she was never really given the chance to prove it.
If you never ask the question, you never know the answer. Actually makes me sad. I would love to have seen her really tested and given the chance to answer the big questions. I think they really only asked the question twice, in the two classics.[/QUOTE]
It is hard enough to get a horse to win one race, at any level. To get a big mare like that to win first time out SPRINTING and then everything else? And most of them are Grade 1 stakes? Impossible.
[QUOTE=equinedriver;5222352]
Really not meaning to pick a fight. I agree she has been GREAT for racing, but again, itâs not that hard to win them all if you never really risk losing. They kept her undefeated by racing her VERY carefully. The others that didnât make it, by and large were asked bigger questions.
Again, not taking away from her contributions, and I do think she is one of the better mares to ever race. Just not convinced she is one for the legends. I donât think we will ever know how good she really was because IMHO she was never really given the chance to prove it.
If you never ask the question, you never know the answer. Actually makes me sad. I would love to have seen her really tested and given the chance to answer the big questions. I think they really only asked the question twice, in the two classics.[/QUOTE]
She has proved everything that has been asked of her. She raced on both dirt and synthetic successfully, she won the Breeders Cup Classic, the Breeders Cup Ladies Classic, And almost won the 2010 Breeders Cup. And those races that you think were too easy for her were almost all Grade 1 races. Those are the same races the Blame and most of the other horses in the 2010 Breeders Cup Classic had been racing in. So what because her Grade 1 races were only for mares they werenât as hard as the Grade 1 races for colts? Thatâs ridiculous. Ruffian mainly only raced against fillies. Is she not a great racehorse?
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So nice to see breeders looking after their horses long after they are sold on. Nice story to read.
Whole thing is great for racing.
HoweverâŠthe HOTY is based on specific accomplishments and Goldikova better meets them for this years record and she has, overall, sought the bigger challenges in her races beating higher quality colts in more crowded fields on 2 continents (unless she has raced in Dubai which would make it 3).
Sports Illustrated is free to make her Sportsman/woman of the year though and she probably deserves that one.
I donât agree with the argument that her road has been an easy one. To hold together a winning streak over the course of 3-4 seasons isnât a simple feat, even if she wasnât facing the stiffest of competition. Look at Rachel Alexandra; a superstar last year, but this year her winning streak ended at 9 races while not even running in a stakes race.
10 years from now, Blame will be remembered as a good racehorse. Zenyattaâs career will still be on the history books as the longest winning streak. Thatâs really something special.
More to the point, ten years from now, Blame will be remembered by professional horsepeople and diehard racing fans (and much of that reputation will be largely based on how he does in the shed.) Zenyatta will be remembered by people who never cared about a racehorse before in their lives, whether she has spectacular foals, or ends up like Genuine Risk.
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Take a horse, any horse and try to win 19 $2500 claimers in a row. Then tell me how she only risked her record twice.
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She answered my question at the 2010 BC. Awesome Runner.
With a little luck re: health, I can take a lot of horses and make them win 20 in a row (BTW, I love that weâre giving her credit for winning a race she didnât win). All you have to do is start them late (so you donât have to run a lot before theyâve fully developed at too short distances against speedsters) and race them well below their appropriate level of competition most of the time. In 3 years of racing, Zenyatta raced in 4 races she had any chance of losing, and lost 1 of them.
A lot of great male race horses would be undefeated if they ran against allowance horses or even low level graded stakes mares. Heck Peppers Pride was undefeated. You know why? Because her owners took a talented, determined and healthy Grade 3 mare and ran her in restricted stakes races. Pepperâs Pride wouldnât have been undefeated if she had been running in Graded Stakes all the time. She probably would have won some though. But the streak mattered more to her owners than testing her at a higher level. Which was their perogative and kept her sound and happy throughout her career and gave them the ride of their lives. But Pepperâs Prideâs connections and fans never asked or demanded that the rest of us judge her on what she might have/ could have/definitely would have/ done if she had been racing in graded stakes all the time. They were content to let her legacy be what she proved on the track-which was pretty awesome in and of itself.
Where Zenyattaâs connections and superfans rub me the wrong way is that they want me to say that sheâs up there with Secretariat, Man OâWar, Forego, Busher, etc. without ever having proven it on the track. I think sheâs a very talented horse who has been very carefully managed to avoid losing. The overly emotional overstatement of her place in history offends me. It offends my sense of racing history and the apreciation I have of the incredible things that have been accomplished by top horses over time. What sheâs proven to me is that sheâs as good as Tiznow on the track and sheâs as popular as Funny Cide or Smarty Jones in the press.
If Zenyattaâs connections wanted her to belong in the ranks of the All-Time greats, they should have run her like one. Otherwise, donât get offended when some of us are unwilling to take their word that âfor realâ sheâd beat Secretariat, Citation and Man oâWar. You donât get to leave the ranks of Personal Ensign, Azeri, etc, leap frog over Affirmed, Alydar, Sunday Silence, Alysheba, Easy Goer, Spectacular Bid, etc. and join the ranks of Secretariat, MOW, etc. with a campaign like sheâs had. Not even if Mike Smith swears it is so with his hand over his heart and tears in his eyes.
Thank you NC Rider. You said what I was trying to say, but better.
And Findeight, you win the award. I have never seen anyone else posting on these boards with 20,000 postsâŠ
With a little luck re: health, I can take a lot of horses and make them win 20 in a row.
I have to respectfully disagree.
Forget about the graded races and look at the cheap (and wrongly assumed easy) races- there have been some lovely, hard knockers in the claiming game who have given their all each time but at some point they just lose.
Nobody is mentioning the also-rans in the quest for an 19-0 record who barely garnered any attention. Example: Monashee in Hastings Park (British Columbia, Canada) a 5-year-old mare back in 2007 by Wolf Power and had won 11 straight, all of them stakes races. Who? Exactly. In the QH arena at the same time was âGot Country Gripâ who ran his record up to 16-0 before finally hitting defeat.
Anyhow Pepperâs Pride is sadly derided by far too many as an example of âeasily running up the tallyâ. The assumption that up against her were nobody horses in the bushleague that is NM.
I followed her run rather closely and what people forget that it wasnât a cake walk for her. She toted weights in the upper 120âs while running against at least one horse invariably in each race assigned just 113-lbs. Weight is the great equalizer. Worth noting Curlin only carried 1-lb more then Pepper in all his US races. (Only in Dubai did he tote over 130)
Iâll re-post what I did back Oct 2008 on the Pepper thread:
Some have compared Peppers Prideâs run to a minor league baseball record because she has never raced outside New Mexico, all of her starts have been against fillies and mares and sheâs never run on a sloppy track.
âDoesnât matter,â Bob Baffert said. âItâs significant. Itâs very difficult to win, no matter what. Itâs tougher in open company but it still takes a great horse to go out and win every time.â
âI donât have the money to play with a lot of the big people,â [Owner Joe Allen] said. âFrom a financial standpoint, this just makes more sense. We can get her beat. We know that. Our objective is to retire her sound.â
Should she win this weekend, Marr said heâd view it as a team victory. He credits his owner, jockey, farrier, groom and veterinarian â âYou consult your cabinet,â he said, before adding, âIt would be hers more than ours.â
What did a big trainer like Steve Asmussen say about her at the time? This was his remark in the Texas papers
Steve Asmussen described it as âincredible.â Thatâs a word the nationâs leading trainer usually reserves for Curlin, but in this case Asmussen used it to describe a winning streak of 16 races, specifically the one put together by Peppers Pride.
âI donât care what the competition might be,â Asmussen said. âI wouldnât care if it was 16 straight maiden races â if theyâd let you do that â itâs an incredible accomplishment. Itâs hard to win a race, and so many things can happen to beat you. Theyâve done a great job with her.â
[QUOTE=NCRider;5225513]
With a little luck re: health, I can take a lot of horses and make them win 20 in a row (BTW, I love that weâre giving her credit for winning a race she didnât win). All you have to do is start them late (so you donât have to run a lot before theyâve fully developed at too short distances against speedsters) and race them well below their appropriate level of competition most of the time. In 3 years of racing, Zenyatta raced in 4 races she had any chance of losing, and lost 1 of them.
A lot of great male race horses would be undefeated if they ran against allowance horses or even low level graded stakes mares. Heck Peppers Pride was undefeated. You know why? Because her owners took a talented, determined and healthy Grade 3 mare and ran her in restricted stakes races. Pepperâs Pride wouldnât have been undefeated if she had been running in Graded Stakes all the time. She probably would have won some though. But the streak mattered more to her owners than testing her at a higher level. Which was their perogative and kept her sound and happy throughout her career and gave them the ride of their lives. But Pepperâs Prideâs connections and fans never asked or demanded that the rest of us judge her on what she might have/ could have/definitely would have/ done if she had been racing in graded stakes all the time. They were content to let her legacy be what she proved on the track-which was pretty awesome in and of itself.
Where Zenyattaâs connections and superfans rub me the wrong way is that they want me to say that sheâs up there with Secretariat, Man OâWar, Forego, Busher, etc. without ever having proven it on the track. I think sheâs a very talented horse who has been very carefully managed to avoid losing. The overly emotional overstatement of her place in history offends me. It offends my sense of racing history and the apreciation I have of the incredible things that have been accomplished by top horses over time. What sheâs proven to me is that sheâs as good as Tiznow on the track and sheâs as popular as Funny Cide or Smarty Jones in the press.
If Zenyattaâs connections wanted her to belong in the ranks of the All-Time greats, they should have run her like one. Otherwise, donât get offended when some of us are unwilling to take their word that âfor realâ sheâd beat Secretariat, Citation and Man oâWar. You donât get to leave the ranks of Personal Ensign, Azeri, etc, leap frog over Affirmed, Alydar, Sunday Silence, Alysheba, Easy Goer, Spectacular Bid, etc. and join the ranks of Secretariat, MOW, etc. with a campaign like sheâs had. Not even if Mike Smith swears it is so with his hand over his heart and tears in his eyes.[/QUOTE]
She was in Grade 1 races which were at her level. Just because they were mare only Grade 1 races doesnât make them any eaiser. She had every chance of losing in every race she ran. And no one is saying she won the BC they are saying she ran a harder race then Blame which is true.
