CaNDY Ride was better then both of them.

For all 6 of his starts?

Speaking of Formal Gold, Skip Away and Will's Way... I just uploaded this one to YouTube..

1997 Whitney Handicap: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zVjltILP_A

Lets debate this, I am sure people will agree. Candy Ride was BRILLIANT.

In all honesty I dont really remember Formal Gold... I do REMEMBER Candy Ride and Ghostzapper and Candy Ride was much better.

You're severely under-estimating the quality of the field that Ghostzapper toyed with in the 2004 Classic. It was pretty good.

NT

Im not under-estimating it... I never said anything about it. I will say the best horse Candy Ride ever beat was WAY BETTER then anything Ghostzapper beat.

You guys are nuts with the Candy Rides and Ghostzapper comparisons.
If Formal Gold and Skip Away were treated like glass figurines like them and given 3 months in between races, they would have run even better.

I certainly won't debate that Candy Ride was brilliant. "Brilliant" and "better horse" are 2 different things IMO.

Ghostzapper did trounce Pleasantly Perfect. Now weather that was the same version that owned Medaglia d'Oro is a different debate.

I just never bought into the hype machine that raged after his Pacific Classic win. Don't get me wrong, he ran great but I think the fact that we saw so little of him has added to the esteem he's held in, especially by people on message boards.

NT

I was a huge fan of his, but he was a cut below the really good ones of this decade. he showed up and ran like 3 really good races, but apart from that he was just pretty good.

I agree 100%. I just threw him in there because of the ties to MDO and Candy Ride.

PP had fell way off that year. Azeri was overmatched... The best horse Ghostzapper ever beat IMO was Roses in May. How good was he? Im not sure... Perfect Drift almost beat him, and he seemed to always get easy trips. I think Saint Liam beat him and I think RHT was WAY BETTER THEN SAINT LIAM.

Oh it was.

I thought PP ran a spectacular 3rd in the BC Classic behind Ghostzapper and Roses in May.

GZ and RIM basically had it very soft up front .. RIM especially ... but both made good of the sweet trips and ran wicked fast.

PP got crushed margin wise ... but he had to make his wide closing move into the teeth of a race shape that was not so fast early on and extremely fast late.

I was more impressed with PP's 3rd place finish - than his BC Classic win when he and Dynever got a great pace setup. IMO, MDO ran the best race in that Classic ... and Congaree finishing 4th was arguably as good as PP that day.

Bailey had his head up his rear that entire day. That 10 wide move for PP on the turn was just icing on the cake.

Formal Gold was very feast or famine ... though the famine version of FG was still good enough to wipe the floor with horses like Macho Again and Bullsbay.

The feast version of FG could thump Cigar or Skip Away on an avg day.

DAM

So in your opinion, who was better Formal Gold or Candy Ride?

Yeah, he had really fallen apart in 2004 having only won the Dubai World Cup and Pacific Classic.

Rock Hard Ten would have been butt-hurt by Saint Liam in the 2005 BC Classic. I only wish he had run so that the hysteria with him could stop. By far and away one of the most overrated horses in the last ten years.

NT

I don't know.

That horse was pretty real.

Had he and Medaglia D' Oro switched trips in the Pacific Classic - and he was the one allowed to make his own pace real nice - I think you could call Candy Ride into question a little bit... as kind of a decorated South American turf horse - who got his one giant number with a candy trip. That's not what happened though.

But yeah - a case can be made that the equally fragile Mazel Trick was a better dirt horse because he had two supreme dirt races instead of one. And who, other than me, ever talks about Mazel Trick?

O god... He beat him head to head--- Actually crushed him... Saint Liam ran 1 really good race in his career IMO and HE LOST IT. Lets not forget getting popped by Commentator.

Uhm?????

You mean besides me? I don't think most people here ever even saw that horse run.

One had a single giant race on dirt ... the other had four or five.

One had stretches where he wasn't a monster scattered in between sheer brilliance... the other never was beaten.

It's a tough question to answer because it really boils down to what you value in a horse.

Some people probably don't know that Formal Gold won his debut by 19 lengths with a record debut Beyer of 112.

Some people probably don't know that FG was only a pace factor in that Dubai World Cup race won by the globetrotting turf horse Singspeil off of a layoff.

There was a great FG and an ordinary FG.

It was only '99... but yeah, he came and went.


Candy Ride worked a mile in 1:35 2/5ths ten days before the Pac Classic. He might have the most freaky work of the decade to go along with arguably the best performance of the decade.

Who was better RocK Hard Ten or Saint Liam? I feel Saint Liam was TERRIBLY OVERATED. Whats your opinion?

Awesome race.

I still remember Jerry Bailey cracking a smartass joke about Kent Desormeaux's ride on FG in the post race interview.

Will's Way was about as good in his Saratoga races as Congaree was in his AQU races.

Rock Hard Ten had the Lava Man syndrome of sucking outside of California. Saint Liam sucked inside of California ... and was pretty damn good everywhere else Dutrow trained him.

That's another tough question - and another one that boils down to how one wants to define "better"

I view horses like Saint Liam and Silver Train the same way some people view Jose Canseco and his brother Ozzie.

I was only 12 and never saw this race. DAM CLASSIC.

GZ was better IMO, though if we are looking at one race scenario's CR's Pacific Classic would rate with GZ's better performances.

Longevity, singular races, short spanning careers...To each is own to decide. If we are going by singular performances then why not Holy Bull's Woodward Stks win?

I get what your saying and if we asked 10 DTer's we could get a 5-5 split. Its just opinions. I think Candy Ride was better, but Ghostzapper did do more, but dont forget Candy Rides turf races. I think Rock Hard Ten was better and more talented then Saint Liam.

So who was better, Point Given or Bernardini? This is a hard one for me, because they are 2 of the top 10 I have ever watched race. If I had to pick I would say Bernardini.

I would rate Holy Bull's Travers as his clear-cut best performance.

I'd also say his Travers win was his most memorable performance and the upset of Dehere in the slop as a 2yo his 2nd most memorable performance.

To me - The Woodward was merely just the race where he conclusively answered the question about his ability to rate.

He already had proved he could massacre excellent older horses when he destroyed a super field in the Met with easily the best Beyer he ever ran. But, he got away with an unpressured almost 23 flat first quarter that day ... while under just 112lbs ... that one really wasn't fair.

Another one with no right or wrong answer... and probably unanswerable.

I'm trying to find the famine in Formal Gold's post-Dubai World Cup 1997 season.

http://community.drf.com/formblog/files/formal_gold.pdf

If you look at it from the standpoint as when Seattle Slew dueled with Affirmed only to lose late to Exceller, The Travers did show Holy Bull's intestinal fortitude holding off Concern, I rarely say this or even like admitting to it here, but even with the knowledge that Holy Bull would have almost been impossible to run down around Belmont's 1 turn routes, that race still gives me chills when watching it. Sometimes you can still just sit back and enjoy a performance even when the challenge was less and still recognize you witnessed something special.

Post World Cup was the feast part... especially the end.

Sire of the great Bob's Bean!

I didnt realize he was a Canadian bred

One of Europe's all time greatest horses Nijinsky II was a Canadian bred also, Formal Gold? That one was new to me also.

How about the group Singspiel beat in the '97 World Cup overall?

* 2nd place finisher Siphon won the Big Cap by 3 lengths with a 120 Beyer his prior start. Returned to America with Beyers of 115 and 117 in his next two starts after the defeat.

* 3rd place finisher Sandpit was a champion 3-year-old in Brazil with 4 South American Grade 1 wins and 5 United States Grade 1 wins. He won or placed in major stakes from ages 2 to 8 and he ran a 116 Beyer on dirt in his start before the World Cup loss to Singspeil.


* 4th place finisher Key Of Luck helped introduce the world to Kiaran McLaughlin juice.



On March 27th 1996 he won the Dubai Duty Free in a 14 horse field by a mere 20 lengths. His final time of 2:03 3/5ths was a tick faster than Cigar's 2:03 4/5ths on the same day at the same distance ... meaning he would have got a higher Beyer than Cigar got that day. Those pesky detention barns at Pimlico probably cost him the Pimlico Special.

Here's Cigar's PP's again if you want to see the final time comparison for that day ...





* 5th place finisher Formal Gold returned to America and set the world on fire.


Singspiel beat that group making his first start off of a long layoff and running on dirt for the only time in his career.