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?