Only because it\'s not currently fashionable to race classically intended 2YOs in shorter races or earlier in the season.

Prior to this trend, lots of horses ran early and went on to win classics.

The Ashland offered very little convincing evidence that ME could beat a full field of decent fillies in a truly run 9f race, let alone win even a marginal Derby at 10f. I saw nothing whatsoever to jump around and get excited about.

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.

Sorry, my mistake re Gulch .. that\'s what I get for writing posts on memory at the office on stressful days.

I agree that this was a particularly good Derby field - it drew several horses (Bet Twice, Gulch and Capote for starters) which had been major 2YOs; and from it came many horses that went on to prolific and major success after the classic season, starting with champions Alysheba and Gulch and certainly including Cryptoclearance, On the Line and Bet Twice. It would be a refreshing change of pace to see Derby starters going on in such numbers to win important post-classic races, not just later in the season but at age 4 and beyond.

Avies Copy, a longshot third in the 1987 Derby, was also coming out of the Blue Grass; On the Line took the field as far as he could, which was just about the quarter pole, before dropping back. If I recall, No More Flowers also came out of the Derby Trial that year.

1987 may be the last year that a horse ran in all three classics and the Met Mile in between. Gulch failed to hit the board in the classics, but did win the Met.

The backing up of major Derby preps went on in the 1980s and 1990s. Without my classic PPs on hand (I have them all back to the late 1940s, but not at the office), I recall that it was about 1990, give or take a few years, that the Blue Grass, Wood Memorial and Arkansas Derby retreated to their present place on the calendar.

Since the early 1970s, there has been a reduction in the number of pre-Derby 3YO starts, a significant increase in the elapsed time between the final Derby prep and the Derby, and a decrease in the likelihood that higher-repute 3YOs take part in races at a mile or less. As late as the 1970s, a horse won the Derby with a 7f prep a week before the race, a strategy that had produced a fair share of Derby winners in years before but which would seem unthinkable now.

It\'s all about what was said earlier on this list - Frankel gets some of the best-bred horses in the world and he spots them where they can win. He\'s not afraid to duck out when the going looks tough (eg, MDO in the SA Handicap). But on BC day, he doesn\'t have the luxury of five-horse fields filled with out-of-form has-beens, optimistically placed allowance types and assorted other unprovens and never-weres. Predictably, his win percentage goes out the window.

He might have done better under other circumstances. He was bringing a late-running East Coast 7f specialist to a Sprint in California; and he was bringing a filly who had failed to win in three starts at SA back to the only place she had ever lost races on the dirt. He was wasting a decent horse in Peace Rules running him in the Mile, rather than run in the Classic and risk the higher agendas of securing championships for MDO and Empire Maker. (One pretty much needed to win the Classic in order to claim a championship, the other needed a 3YO not to run well. Peace Rules figured to conflict with rather than complement MDO\'s running style and the chance that Peace Rules might run well would hurt EM\'s chances.)

If it were a trivial morphine positive I\'m sure they would try to make that case.

I have repeatedly brought the point up that in decades past, when it was routine for top-class 2YOS to grow up to be classic horses at 3 and still be around at 4, the richest races in the country were for 2YOs.
Although the trend toward big money for 2YO races began in the late 1800s, it\'s very apparent by the 1950s; consider that Tom Fool, best remembered now for winning the Handicap Triple Crown and going undefeated in 10 starts at 4 in 1953 (including the Met Mile, Suburban, Brooklyn, Whitney, Pim Special, Carter and assorted other races) en route to HOY honors over Native Dancer that year, was a champion at 2 and never again took home a purse more than half of what he won in the Futurity. By the mid-1960s, six or seven of the most valuable races of the year were for 2YOs. This persisted into the 1970s - the richest payday of Secretariat\'s life came not in the Derby, Preakness, Belmont or Marlboro Cup, but as a 2YO in the final running of the Garden State Stakes.

Actually, purses for top-level 2YO stakes races in the US have not been as low(compared to similarly prestigious stakes for older horses) as they are now in an enormously long time - most probably since the 1800s.

The problem lies elsewhere.

Viewing at home where - like SJU5 noted - there were plentiful replays of both head-on and pan shots, it is clear that the incident occurred before the finish line. Paolini and Kaieteur did not appear likely to pass Storming Home, but there is a very good chance that either or both were going to pass Sulamani in the final strides. Since there\'s a reasonable likelihood that the order of finish was affected, the winner had to come down.

The irritating thing is that the horse which benefited most from the inevitable DQ was the one least affected by the incident which led to it, and a horse I believe was possibly on his way to finishing fourth if Storming Home maintains a straight course.

As a nonbettor, I most definitely had no money riding on any outcome of this race.

Because Sham finished in front of Secretariat in the Wood and within two and a half lengths in the Derby and Preakness, there seems to be a sizable population that wants to promote Sham to demigod status. The rest of his career doesn\'t really support it.

Sham: Took several attempts to break his maiden. Won one non-restricted stakes race in his life. Never ran again after the Belmont.

Alydar: After debuting in a stakes race (won by Affirmed) in which he finished fifth, went through the remainder of his 2YO and 3YO campaigns (19 more races) finishing behind a horse other than Affirmed only one time. He was the Derby favorite on the basis of winning the Flamingo, Florida Derby and Blue Grass by open lengths (the latter by 13) and after the Belmont, won the Arlington Classic by 13 and the Whitney by 10 before the Travers that he was awarded by DQ of Affirmed. He was injured thereafter and though he returned for several races at 4, he wasn\'t the same.

This was truly a horse denied a Triple Crown by a horse he simply couldn\'t beat. Affirmed and Alydar met 10 times and Affirmed finished in front on eight of those occasions. Nine times they finished one-two.

Human EPO is bad for horses in a way that isn\'t bad for humans because it is a foreign substance to which they build antibodies, which can in turn attack their natural production of red blood cells. It can cause anemia and worse.

In horses or people, excess levels of red blood cells can inhibit, not improve, performance because all the oxygen-carrying capacity in the world won\'t do you any good if it can\'t circulate effectively. A too-high percentage of red blood cells causes blood to be sludgy and not circulate well. It can cause sudden death due to blood clots in the brain and heart. There have been many sudden deaths in athletes thought to have been caused by EPO use.

Horses are very different than people in that they store massive amounts of red blood cells in their spleens and dump varying amounts into circulation to meet the needs of exercise. A horse can go from 40 to 60 percent red blood cells in its blood in moments due to this factor. Giving a healthy horse EPO is thought by many equine specialists to be pretty stupid, since it has documented, potentially deadly, side effects and horses already have what is considered to be an excess of red blood cells on hand naturally.

If someone does this, humor me and note the distance at which this figure was accomplished.

I had the thought a few years ago that it might be an interesting experiment to restrict the premier meets to only running on holidays, Saturdays and Sundays (excepting Del Mar and Saratoga). This would necessarily result in the following:

1) Fewer races at bigger, better tracks, which theoretically would result in bigger, better fields on the days they do run. Since there are so many fewer races, the distribution of the same purse money results in much higher purses. If more people are willing to bet more on the these bigger, more competitive fields, then there would be even more money for future purses.

2) Opportunity for lesser tracks to run on the weekdays unopposed. If they have anything resembling a worthwhile product that simulcast bettors are willing to bet on and work their contracts right, this could get extra simulcast bucks coming in, thereby leading to better purses for them, too.

Unfortunately, the \"more is more\" concept is firmly entrenched among horsemen, legislators, et al.

OK, let\'s take this offline and discuss specifics. You can find me at nzphalaris@yahoo.com.