quote:
The matachup I want to see is AP vs. a healthy shared belief. Shared Belief doesn't get as much pub becuase he didn't run in the TC but he's every bit as good, if not better than AP. He's 10 for 12 lifetime and most in blowout fashion. He's made short work of California Chrome every time they raced.

They faced each other twice, California Chrome finished ahead of Shared Belief by about 3 lengths in one and Shared Belief finished about 2 lengths in front of CC in the other.

Honestly, while I think Shared Belief is a very good horse, I really wouldn't even put him at the level of say a once in a generation type horse.

I too am a little ticked off at the article. I absolutely do believe that it is only right that the humans that control racing should be dedicated to providing the safest racing surfaces, pushing out the cheaters that shoot up the horses with every drug known and unknown, and forcing those that are called trainers to actually have to pass some apprenticeship programs and tests like they do in Japan to prove they have put in the time and effort to learn their job well before having horses placed under their care.

However, since when are any of us guaranteed a life without pain? This idea of nothing bad should ever happen to anyone or anything is such a first world, and really an American, issue. The "pretty pony" brigade that is bound and determined to anthropomorphize ever creature would be shocked to see what these stallions would do to one another if they were allowed to "just be a horse" out in the pasture. Hell, they have obviously never seen a mare break a stallion's leg with one well-aimed kick. Racing in this country has a ton of serious problems that need to be addressed, but make no bones about it, it has also made these horses worth enough money that many medical and surgical advances have been accomplished because of it. There are a quite a few horses running round pastures and tracks now that would have died at birth even 5-10 years ago. Barbaro died from complications of laminitis because his shattered bones were no longer an automatic death sentence.