Bless You George Washington...

[Pedigree Ann]

Originally Posted by brockguy

i should be there though

if its marketed properly to Aussie and Asian horses, next years BC could be the best yet..

THe best Aussie and NZed horses are never going to come for the BC in late Oct/early Nov. That is when the Spring Festival is taking place in Melbourne - do you think they will choose to fly thousands of miles, put up with the time and season change to gamble on the BC when they could be running in some of the most important and remunerative races on their calendar? We're talking Melbourne Cup, Cox Plate, Epsom H, not to mention the Victoria Derby and Oaks. (Their 3yos won't come anyway because they are just barely 3 - official birthday 1 August.) Would a US owner skip the Met Mile to go run in the Doncaster H in the Sydney Autumn Carnival?

The BC is a 'World Championship" in name only. It's PR, plain and simple. It's not even a North American championship, since horses can be excluded for not being nominated or having a non-nominated sire. Real championships take everybody who qualify on equal terms.

I was paying attention when the BC idea was being kicked around and the original idea was to put up a big enough purse that top horses, especially 3yos, would have an incentive to stay in training into the fall, or come back for another year. The insane inflation of stallion values was driving earlier and earlier retirements and this was designed to be a solution. But some framers feared that stallion owners who knew their stallion's foals were never going to be 10f dirt runners wouldn't nominate, so lowering the pot. Thus, the additional races were devised, which ended up rewarding owners for buying 2yos who won't train on at 3 and horses who run out of gas after 6f.