They're Kidding!!

[moosepalm]

I don\'t think any horse captured Marshall\'s race calling fancy so much as Bodacious Tatas.  It took him half the Belmont stretch to bellow her entire name.

[plasticman]

Who says its supposed to be based on what a horse does on the racetrack? Is there some HOY voting rules that i\'m not aware of?

Blame is a forgettable horse who got lucky in one race, got embarrassed in one of his 5 starts on the year and retired on the spot after his win. If that horse \'loses\' horse of the year to a legendary horse who\'s 19 for 20 lifetime, its anything BUT a \'travesty\'. I can see your point that you think Blame is deserving. That\'s fair, its your opinion and you\'re entitled, but to call it a travesty is coming a little too strong.

[P-Dub]

TGJB Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> And by the way, I\'m thinking the EG Belmont call
> was Marshall Cassidy, no?


Yeah JB, Marshall Cassidy did the Belmont call. \"Its New York\'s Eaaassssyyy Goer in front\". Or something like that.

Local horse, home track. He was a very popular horse and damn talented, Marshall and the fans certainly enjoyed that race. I didn\'t have a problem with the call, just the outcome.

[alm]

Whoops...wrong race...I wasn\'t referring to the recent BC Classic...it was the mare\'s last or next to last race in SoCal, where Denman made the call to which I was referring.

She was circling the field at the head of the stretch and he started chanting her name....he wasn\'t calling the race and he wasn\'t just rooting for her.  He was screaming like some 16 year old out of control.  

I don\'t care whether some people here think the race announcer is important or not, but I do care.  Denman, as I said, is very personal and idiosyncratic...and often announces the race in reverse...listen to him closely...it sounds sophisticated, but it\'s stupid.  Very often the race develops and he\'s catching up to it, not leading the commentary.

Durkin has decided it\'s more important to be cute, at this stage in his career...and it doesn\'t work much anymore.  I prefer the guys who call what they see happening or what they anticipate from the back of the pack...some dork said I need a new hobby?  I\'d hate to tell the IRS this is a hobby...they\'d want some money back.

Think about it.  You watch a race...you tend to focus on your bet...the race announcer informs you about other aspects of the action.  It\'s important.

[Footlick]

Didn\'t know that

[Footlick]

If you really feel that a horse that talented can run such a bad race and say it is just because of a dead rail, then you do.  I didn\'t say that it could not be a factor.  I just don\'t believe it is the only reason.  I know that other horses have run well and won after the dead rail, but there could also be other contributing factors, i.e. the class of horse they are running against as compared to the ones they ran against on BC day.  That is all I meant.  I wasn\'t refuting anything you have said about the dead rail.

[richiebee]

Alm:

I was about to get upset that you called me a \"dork\", but then noted that you
posted this early in the AM, probably long before you had your prune juice, your
Metamusical, your sponge bath.

A few of the posters on this board are old enough to have heard Cappy, but he
retired in what? 1970?

A point to make is that simulcasting changed the whole race calling business.
You had people watching races on TV and this was before big screen TVs. If one
was watching a large strung out field it was likely that not all betting interests
could be seen on the screen at all times. Racecallers were forced to try
to adopt a non traditional narrative style. I think Tom and Trevor were 2 of the
pioneers here, though each would admit they are past their prime.

OTB Memory: In the mid 70s, OTBs did not have unfettered access to the NYRA
signal. Live call, audio only, that was that for Marshall Cassidy, who made no
attempt to alter his laconic style and minimalist calls.

Simulcasting also meant the end of silent racing at Keeneland (early 80s) which
was rather surreal.

The racecaller never meant much to me unless he was awful, like the carnival
barker at Tampa or Mike Battaglia. The voice I am hearing at the crucial points
of races I bet is the voice in my head -- the voice that frequently is saying
\"You f-----g Idiot!\" or thankfully now and then \"You\'re a f-----g Genius!\"

Enough already with the racecallers. I\'ve been looking through Saturday\'s entries
and can find very little compelling racing. Any ideas?

Dork?  Moi?

[miff]

Rationally speaking, Blame is Horse of the Year
By Andrew Beyer

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Zenyatta has stirred passions and arguments this year that evoke memories of 1989, when Easy Goer and Sunday Silence polarized the racing community. The two colts\' partisans hotly debated their respective merits throughout the year until their final showdown in the Breeders\' Cup Classic.

When Sunday Silence held off Easy Goer\'s late charge and beat his archrival by a neck, the debate ended. Despite the closeness of the finish, almost nobody questioned the fact that Sunday Silence had earned the Horse of the Year title and secured his place in history.

Racing seasons don\'t regularly come to such a decisive climax, but 2010 did. Zenyatta brought her 19-race winning streak into the Classic against a field that included every colt with potential championship credentials. The Daily Racing Form wrote: \"Should any of the accomplished . . . horses - like Blame, Haynesfield or Quality Road - win the Classic, his 2010 r sum would make him a worthy choice as the best horse of this calendar year.\"

After Blame beat Zenyatta by a head, the performance did indeed make him worthy of the sport\'s top honor. His owner, Seth Hancock, assumed the title had been decided.

\"Blame won it,\" he said at the postrace news conference. \"I don\'t know who else you could vote for.\"

But Hancock underestimated the passion of Zenyatta\'s fans. Unfazed by her defeat, they have filled the blogosphere with arguments that she deserves the Horse of the Year title instead of Blame. With voting set to begin next week, the outcome is very much in doubt.

Zenyatta\'s admirers cite her outstanding performances that spanned three racing seasons. They believe she deserves redress after losing the vote to Rachel Alexandra last year despite her perfect record and her victory in the Classic. And they maintain she deserves recognition because she was the sport\'s brightest star. Referring to the 72,000 people at Churchill Downs who cheered Zenyatta after her defeat, Joe Drape of The New York Times wrote, \"My vote is with the people. Zenyatta is not only Horse of the Year. She\'s the Horse of a Lifetime.\" Drape cited the \"60 Minutes\" segment about Zenyatta and other media coverage and asked, \"Other than everyday horseplayers, had anybody heard of Blame?\"

There are no official criteria for the Eclipse Awards, but voters have always been guided by historical precedents and tacit standards. For example: Horses must excel at distances of a mile or more. Good form on dirt takes precedence over grass.

However, the aforementioned arguments for Zenyatta have no precedent. In 40 years of voting I cannot recall ever hearing horses\' popularity or lifetime achievements mentioned as qualifications for year-end honors.

The Horse of the Year title is bestowed for performance in a given calendar year. Data sent to voters makes no reference to what any candidate did in previous years. The sport recognizes horses\' exemplary careers through election to the Racing Hall of Fame.

Horses\' starpower has not been a factor in the voting. In 2004 Smarty Jones was the nation\'s most recognized and popular horse as a result of his near-miss in the Triple Crown series. Ghostzapper was mostly known to racing aficionados, yet he was the superior racehorse, and he swamped Smarty Jones in the year-end balloting. Last year Rachel Alexandra was a star of the first magnitude; she performed before bigger live crowds and TV audiences than Zenyatta did this year. Yet nobody argued that she should be Horse of the Year because she \"did so much for the sport\" - a common refrain during the last month. Rachel Alexandra earned the title on her merits, and Zenyatta should have to do the same.

However, Zenyatta\'s fans cannot make an honest case that she had a better 2010 season than Blame, who raced against the country\'s best males, recording four wins and a second-place finish in five starts. Zenyatta scored all of her five victories against relatively weak filly-and-mare rivals - if Blame or the other leading males had run against such competition, the outcomes would have been routs. No female racehorse in history would have been considered a potential Horse of the Year on the basis of such a flimsy r sum . The Classic was Zenyatta\'s make-or-break test.

She made a gallant effort as she rallied from last place and barely failed to catch Blame. She won over many skeptics, myself included, who doubted her ability because she had never before raced against top competition on dirt. Nevertheless, she lost - a fact that eludes her admirers who believe an honorable defeat counts as a win. Ed Fountaine of the New York Post concluded his Horse of the Year argument for Zenyatta by writing, \"She was hopelessly outdistanced in the race, yet lost by inches.\"

Zenyatta\'s fans imagine that their heroine overcame terrible adversity in the Classic and that the fact she was \"hopelessly outdistanced . . . yet lost by inches\" underscores her greatness. This is nonsense. She trailed the field because that is the way she always runs. For a horse rallying from last place in a 12-horse field, she enjoyed a relatively easy trip. She saved ground on the turn and avoided serious traffic trouble. She was abetted by the fast early pace that enervated the leaders. Blame got the jump on Zenyatta because he is a quicker, more versatile runner, and he was resolute enough to withstand her late charge. He earned the Horse of the Year title by beating his main rival in a head-to-head championship showdown, and the outpouring of specious arguments on Zenyatta\'s behalf cannot alter that fact.

[MonmouthGuy]

The last paragraph is brilliantly written.


miff Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Rationally speaking, Blame is Horse of the Year
> By Andrew Beyer
>
> Zenyatta\'s fans imagine that their heroine
> overcame terrible adversity in the Classic and
> that the fact she was \"hopelessly outdistanced . .
> . yet lost by inches\" underscores her greatness.
> This is nonsense. She trailed the field because
> that is the way she always runs. For a horse
> rallying from last place in a 12-horse field, she
> enjoyed a relatively easy trip. She saved ground
> on the turn and avoided serious traffic trouble.
> She was abetted by the fast early pace that
> enervated the leaders. Blame got the jump on
> Zenyatta because he is a quicker, more versatile
> runner, and he was resolute enough to withstand
> her late charge. He earned the Horse of the Year
> title by beating his main rival in a head-to-head
> championship showdown, and the outpouring of
> specious arguments on Zenyatta\'s behalf cannot
> alter that fact.

[TGJB]

What gets me about this whole thing-- this year and last-- is that if you don\'t think Z should get HOTY you are some kind of Z hater. If anything, as has been pointed out here many times, the bad feelings are directed at those who picked her spots (and this year, those of RA as well).

[Rich Curtis]

TGJB: You know this how?

[TGJB]

Because as it used to say in a great ad (based on characters from a great script that never got made) that ran on TVG, because I can read.

[Rich Curtis]

I certainly agree that there is terrific writing in that script, but your ability to read is not the question here. The question is what you have actually been reading. So let me ask you: Which racing websites do you read?

  As for Beyer, he openly admitted to detesting Seattle Slew because he thought him overrated, and then it blew up in his face and made him look like a complete ass. He is a bit more subtle now. But I think his Zenyatta writing is a complete disgrace.

[TGJB]

First of all, I was commenting more about what has appeared on this site. But it appears to me that Beyer was talking about who she has faced and beaten this year outside the BC, which is a function of who she was asked to run against. Can\'t beat them if you don\'t run against them. Like last year, the only case that can be seriously made for Z for HOTY is based on one race-- and in this case it\'s a race she lost.

[miff]

\"He is a bit more subtle now. But I think his Zenyatta writing is a complete disgrace\"


Rich,

Why is calling a spade a spade \"a disgrace\"? Clarify Beyers factual racing inaccuracies concerning Z, no opinions please, just facts.How did so many who follow the game very closely not see Zenyatta\'s brilliance(no argument re her unparalleled consistency)


Mike