Weight A Minute: This Smells

[RolloTomasi]

Unfortunately, TDN does not allow one to copy the text of articles so that they can be picked apart here, so I will have to just write this out myself. This disingenuous filth I'm about to relay snowballs dramatically to the extent that one realizes that the very hill the snowball is rolling down is indeed a mountain of utter bulls!t.

Former trainer John Fulton, who now purchases Group 1 winners in South America for wealthy clients and then takes credit for those horses winning graded stakes in North America, is crying about the result of the Hollywood Gold Cup, and it's not because of Mike Smith's ride.

No, Fulton is crying about the weight assignments for the Gold Cup. Never mind that he wasn't crying publicly before the race, Fulton is nonplussed that his "find"--Brazilian Group 1 winner Royal Ship--had to give all of 2 lbs to Country Grammer.

He goes on a rant about how graded stakes should not be run at anything aside from equal weights or weight-for-age (conveniently overlooking the important Hemisphere differential). As an example, he cries about some horse decades ago that beat one of his own horses while enjoying a weight break and how that horse did not deserve to be listed as a Grade 1 winner.

Well, here are the rest of the facts that Fulton left out:

Royal Ship himself enjoyed a 2 lb break in the weights last out in the Californian, with--you guessed it--Country Grammer carrying top weight; we probably don't need to mention that Country Grammer was making his first start off an 8-month layoff or that he was making his first start against older horses. Like in the Gold Cup, the 2 horses finished in a photo.

Since I don't have access to the Keeneland Library, I did some back-breaking Google searches and maxed out my allotted NY Times articles for this month looking into that decades old race mentioned earlier. Quite the interesting find...

The horse in question that Fulton trained, George Steinbrenner's Big Whippendeal, had won the Hialeah Turf Cup and the Century Handicap in 1974, which apparently gave him status as a true graded stakes horse in Fulton's mind. Meanwhile, the horse that upset him in the 1974 Sunset Handicap, Greco II, had received 18 lbs in the race and so in Fulton-land should not have been a graded stakes winner.

Yet as it turns out, when Big Whippendeal won the Century Handicap, he was himself the in receipt of 8 lbs from the highweight. Even better, when the horse won the Hialeah Turf Cup, he got 12 lbs.

Oh and one last thing, despite Big Whippendeal being a deserved and valuable Grade 1 winner in Fulton's eyes, he had no qualms running that horse in claiming races in subsequent campaigns.

If you think you are having to carry too much weight, John, you might want to think about unloading some of your bulls!t first...

[Kasept]

Just caught up to this..