Easy Goer Was Better than Sunday Silence

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Was Easy Goer better than Sunday Silence?

Hey guys I need some help. First let me say, I’m new to the game. I’ve been engrossed in it for only a year now. So I don’t know everything. Also I have to say that I was 3 years old when Sunday Silence and Easy Goer were racing. So I have no memory of their rivalry at all. All that I know about Easy Goer and Sunday Silence I learned from researching them. That said: I’m perplexed by something and need help. Can anyone tell me why so many people regard Sunday Silence as a better horse than Easy Goer?

I’ve read a lot of lists and it seems to me a lot of people rank Sunday Silence as the superior horse. I don't know why? Is it because he won 3 of the 4 times that Easy Goer raced against him? Maybe for some people that’s the reason. But I can’t figure out why experts on the sport rank Sunday Silence ahead of Easy Goer. It seems ridiculous.

The most prestigious list on great horses that I know of is the blood horse list: The Top 100 U.S. Racehorses of the 20th Century. On this esteemed list Sunday Silence (#31) is ranked higher than Easy Goer (#34).

This list wasn’t made by some college teen in a dorm room or some casual race fan who only watches the triple crown. This is a list ranked by a highly regarded group of horsemen. This panel of experts must have had good reason to rank Sunday Silence higher on their list than Easy Goer.

At first I assumed that Easy Goer was ranked lower on the list because he only could beat Sunday Silence one time in their four meetings. But this cannot be right can it?

If the reason a horse ranks higher than another on a list is based on the amount of times they beat another horse than every list would rank Alsab above Whirlaway and Noor would rank above Citation. Alsab beat Whirlaway 2 of the three times they met on the track; And Noor beat Citation 4 of the 5 times they met. They seemed to agree with me because on their list Alsab (#65) ranks lower than Whirlaway (#26) and Noor (#69) ranks lower than Citation (#3). So I assume that the blood horse list didn't rank Sunday Silence above Easy Goer simply because he won 3 of the 4 times they met.

So if the number of times a horse beats another horse doesn’t determine which horse was better – what does? To the casual fan I think that the fact Easy Goer only won one jewel of the triple crown made him lesser than in their opinion. But to me the Triple Crown and how many jewels a horse wins is not the way to estimate a horse’s greatness. But most of the public only watches the triple crown (and breeders cup) and if that is all they watched than all they saw was Easy Goer losing to Sunday Silence. And that would lead one to assume Sunday Silence’s superiority. But me, I want to use the Triple Crown races to demonstrate Easy Goers superiority over Sunday Silence. I may be wrong but it seems Easy Goer has legitimate reasons for each of his Triple Crown race losses.

It's widely known Easy Goer didn't like sloppy tracks. The Derby was run over a sloppy track in 1989. But still Easy Goer battled hard to finish 2nd. Does this show Sunday Silence was the better horse of the two? To me it shows that Sunday Silence was the better of the two on an off track. It seems to me that if Easy Goer, who hated the slop, could finish 2nd in the slop to Sunday Silence he should have finished ahead of him on a track he liked.
I think this race showed a lot about Easy Goer. Easy Goer could have finished 3rd or below and would have had a very good excuse to have finished this far back with the track not to his liking. But instead he finished 2nd! Not bad for a horse who disliked slop. Easy Goer couldn’t show his mettle on an off track – plain and simple. Everyone knew it. And the race cannot be used as any sort of indicator of which horse was superior.

On to Pimlico and the Preakness and more problems for Easy Goer. This time Easy Goer was at a disadvantage because of his rider, Pat Day. Pat Day is only human and like all humans, Pat Day makes mistakes. Sadly for Easy Goer Pat Day made many of them in the Preakness and again Sunday Silence would benefit from Easy Goers vulnerability.

To me it seems Easy had a terrible ride in the Preakness and it was a bad ride that cost him a win. But even with a terrible ride Easy Goer still managed to only get beaten by a nose. If not for Pat Day he possible could have won by a nose – but that’s a different story. After the race Pat Day admitted to giving Easy Goer a bad ride. And if this is to believed – which I do – than you have to believe Easy Goer was again not allowed to give his best effort against Sunday Silence. And so I throw this loss out – as far as judging a horse’s greatness. Why should a jockey error make Sunday Silence better than Easy Goer? It is not Easy Goers fault Pat Day gave him a terrible ride. A bad rider on a great horse shows nothing about a horse’s talent. A bad ride only speaks volumes about the horses jockey in my opinion.

In the 1989 Belmont, on a fast track and with a great ride, Easy Goer demonstrated his superiority over Sunday Silence once and for all. I don't know much about there breeders cup meeting so I can't comment, but it seems to me, the 1989 Belmont Stakes is the race between Sunday Silence and Easy Goer that really proved to be the judge of which horse was superior. This time Sunday Silence could not be the horse that benefited from Easy Goers vulnerabilities. This time the champions were finally allowed to show their skills and under fair conditions (no slop or bad ride) Easy Goer showed his brilliance and superiority.

And so, if his Belmont win is not enough to ensure his superiority of Sunday Silence, it seems sad to me that Easy Goers place in history is diminished. Just because Easy Goer lost two of three Triple Crown races to Sunday Silence it does not make him the lesser horse. As I demonstrated Easy Goer really seems to have legit reasons for losing both the Derby and Preakness.

It just seems to me that Easy Goer had vulnerabilities and sadly Sunday Silence was better than Easy Goer was on the days when it counted. But being better than another horse only when he’s vulnerable does not make you a better horse.

To me it seems that the Triple Crown only showed that Easy Goer was not as good on a sloppy track and that Pat Day made some bad calls in the Preakness. That's what their triple crown meetings seem to say to me - not Easy Goer is less of a horse than Sunday Silence. When Easy Goer got a fast track in the Belmont he showed he was the superior horse on a fast track. And this doesn't show he's better than Sunday Silence either. It just shows he was better on a good track than Sunday Silence.

So to me, the reason that I think Easy Goer was superior to Sunday Silence, is not based on their number of wins over one another. I judge their superiority by simply comparing Easy Goer and Sunday Silence’s accomplishments on the track – accomplishments they made on the track when not facing each other. On those days Easy Goer showed he was perhaps as good, or even better, than previous Triple Crown winning horses. Sunday Silence was a great horse too, don't get me wrong, but Easy Goer, to me, was much more accomplished. And again, it's his accomplishments to me that outweigh Sunday Silence and his greatness.

Here's Easy Goer's some of Easy Goer’s non-triple crown accomplishments according to wikipedia:

• Grade I Champagne Stakes, with his 1:34 4/5 final time for the mile tied fourth fastest in Champagne Stakes history, behind Vitriolic, Seattle Slew and Devil's Bag.
  
• At three he took the Swale Stakes in the fastest 7 furlongs of the
  
• Gulfstream Park meeting in a time of 1:22 1/5
  
• The Grade II Gotham Stakes, (winning time of 1:32 2/5 for the mile set a new track record, was the fastest mile ever run on dirt surface by any three year old thoroughbred in history to this day, and was 1/5 of a second off of Dr. Fager's world record).
  
• The Grade I Whitney Stakes, (missed the stakes and track record in the Whitney by 2/5 of a second [established by Fred W. Hooper's Tri Jet])
  
• The Grade I Travers Stakes, (missed the stakes and track record Travers by 4/5 of a second [held by General Assembly])
  
• The Grade I Woodward Stakes,
  
• Grade I Jockey Club Gold Cup
  
• In 3 of these races (Whitney, Woodward, and Jockey Club Gold Cup), Easy Goer defeated older horses, becoming one of the few 3-year-olds in modern American racing history to accomplish such a feat.
  
• Easy Goer is the only horse in history to win the Whitney, Travers, Woodward and Jockey Club Gold Cup.

Also:

• He is one of only two horses to win the Champagne, Belmont Stakes and Travers.
  
• He was one of the last American-trained horses to win two Grade I races at a mile and a half on dirt (Belmont Stakes and Jockey Club Gold Cup).
  
• At four, Easy Goer won the Gold Stage Stakes and the Grade I Suburban Handicap (3/5 of a second off Alysheba's existing track record).
  
• He was also third in the Grade I Metropolitan Mile, marking the only time Easy Goer did not finish either first or second.
  
• Easy Goer was beaten by a little more than a length, behind eventual Horse of the Year Criminal Type and two-time sprint champion Housebuster, while carrying considerably more weight than those two.
  
• In Easy Goer's 20 race career, he was never defeated by more than 2 1/2 lengths!

Wow! To me these accomplishments outweigh Sunday Silence's - his being:

Well if you look on wikipedia it's actually not full with accomplishments that I can see just a list of his wins. Not a mention of him setting a track record or winning by an incredible margin.

Sunday Silence did win the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, Jockey Club Gold Cup, Santa Anita Derby, and a slew of other races and he never finished worse than second in 14 starts. Sunday Silence is no doubt a truly great horse. He would have to be if he were going to beat Easy Goer. But better than Easy Goer – I don’t think so.


Easy Goer's 1989 3-year-old campaign was most likely the greatest in American racing history, without yielding any year end championship awards, wikipedia says. And it sounds like this is a fair assumption to me.

But perhaps I'm wrong. Help me learn why Sunday Silence is better than Easy Goer. Like I said I'm new but to me it seems very hard to believe Sunday Silence (a great horse no doubt) was better than Easy Goer.

So if you know a reason why Sunday Silence is ranked higher than Easy Goer on so many lists or why he was the better horse please tell me because I just don’t get it.