Sea Bird V Sea The Stars

Sea Bird V STS as 3yos at level weights

  • Sea Bird

    Votes: 15 62.5%

  • Sea The Stars

    Votes: 7 29.2%

  • Too close to call

    Votes: 2 8.3%
  • Total voters
    24
clivex said:
Sorry Micheal O...im no kid myself.....its just the picture of the bath chair and occasional shouts of SEA BIRD! as the soup dribbles down the chin whilst a rather awful smell fills the room....
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Ah, we'll all be there one day Clive.
 
clivex said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoFquax2F-k

Uncanny Trackside. I was just about to post this when i saw your comment

Quite frankly its an almost ridiculous performance. Astonishing

Its hard not to believe that taht is the most astounding grp/grade one performance of the lot. Watched some of his other races too and whilst they werent 30 lengths (30!!), he cruised so easily....


Sorry Micheal O...im no kid myself.....its just the picture of the bath chair and occasional shouts of SEA BIRD! as the soup dribbles down the chin whilst a rather awful smell fills the room....
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The most amazing part of the Secretariat performance for me (aside from his destruction of Swale) is that he broke the 13f world record whilst pulling up!!!

Good to meet up the other week too Clive :)
 
Yes it was IS. A really good afternoon. See you at a track again sometime soon. Kempton Sunday next for me probably

I just wonder what the other jockeys must have felt in that Belmont. U can almost see the eyes popping out their heads
 
To think that he put up that performance 5 weeks (I think) after winning the Kentucky Derby and then the Preakness (both track records) is just mind boggling. He also had three prep runs for the Derby, and had a busy 2yo campaign stretching from Saratoga (actually won his maiden before Saratoga) in July until Laurel in November.

Absolutely remarkable.
 
clivex said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoFquax2F-k

Uncanny Trackside. I was just about to post this when i saw your comment

Quite frankly its an almost ridiculous performance. Astonishing
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Truly astonishing but with American racing you just never know about what 'medication' they were on. Still, I reckon it's less than 25 lengths at the wire so he couldn't have been that great :p

Arazi's Juvenile run was also astonishing.
 
Modern training methods, modern diet, modern jockey fitnesss. I'm surprised this is even a question. I'd back Youmzain over Sea bird.
 
betsmate said:
I know what you are saying, but 2004 featured an exceptionally weak GC winner.
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That just happened to be able to win it three times:rolleyes:

I suggest the idea that " modern jockey fitness " would make say a jockey of 2009 a better jockey than Lester Piggott of 1965 is utterly absurd .
 
Dubai Millennium is surely the most overrated horse in history ! Montjeu at his summer pomp of 2000 would have stuffed him.

Sendawar did not get a yard over a mile .
 
Not too bad thanks Trackside. The point is that we cannot compare horses across generations, we can only compare a horse relative to it's peer group at the time. Forget about the freaks like Sea Bird or Lester Piggot and look at what they are beating. The general population. It is here that I cannot believe improvement hasn't been made in 40 years. If it hasn't, what have the trainers, nutritionists and physicians been playing at?

I guess what I'm saying is that if the general standard of the sport has increased (in exactly the same way as not only do more world records get set in other sports consistently, but the group as a whole improves - i.e. a greater percent of the population of sprinters can run sub-ten seconds) then that should make the achievements of modern day greats all the more special.

Despite this I'm continually asked to believe that equine performance is not only behind where it was in the sixties, but streets behind. Why is horse racing so different from all other sports in that respect?
 
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Ardross said:
Dubai Millennium is surely the most overrated horse in history ! Montjeu at his summer pomp of 2000 would have stuffed him.

Sendawar did not get a yard over a mile .
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He beat a 126/7 animal (5L clear of the 3rd) by 6L in Dubai. That is where he got his rating.
 
betsmate said:
Despite this I'm continually asked to believe that equine performance is not only behind where it was in the sixties, but streets behind. Why is horse racing so different from all other sports in that respect?
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I think the likes of Moscow Flyer, Kauto Star and Sea the Stars has kind of disproved this. The stars of yesteryear did have an advantage in that the racing population wasn't as crowded so they didn't have as many good class rivals.
 
I agree. Others will tell you that Arkle would give Kauto Star 32lbs and a beating.
 
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betsmate said:
Despite this I'm continually asked to believe that equine performance is not only behind where it was in the sixties, but streets behind. Why is horse racing so different from all other sports in that respect?
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In the first place, you're not being asked to believe equine performance is behind where it was in the sixties. We're talking individual horses. We're talking about exceptional performers. 40 years in equine contest is less than a nano-second in the evolution of horses and a minute fraction of the time horses have been raced for sport. Training methods will have improved but so has dope testing and I've no doubt some of the big names on both sides of the Pond and/or the Channel in the past would have been running on something undetectable. François Boutin was notorious for it, remember, and who can say what Ryan Price was up to over here.

Human beings have only been racing seriously for a hundred years and only very seriously for about half that. Sports science, food science and psychology are very recent factors hence the disproportionate recent improvement in human racing performance.

Secondly, the advent of ratings allows us to compare across generations. The 'standard times' I use are themselves over ten years old. Most of them are probably unchanged in over twenty years. It doesn't take much imagination to believe they can't be that different from forty years back.

I can accept ground management has improved a lot but I'd conclude the stars of yesteryear would run better on better looked after turf than what they ran on.

There is a greater population of horses. It should mean there is more chance of good horses emerging but it will also mean there is a larger population of average horses, so most of the horses running nowadays will be, by the laws of nature, average, and that average cannot be significantly better than just forty years ago.
 
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How many French horses did Arkle compete againsts?

I am in complete agreement with Betsmate. Whatever about flat racing, the training of National Hunt horses nowadays by many yards is at a completely different level/grade to what was done decades ago.
 
Desert Orchid said:
There is a greater population of horses. It should mean there is more chance of good horses emerging but it will also mean there is a larger population of average horses, so most of the horses running nowadays will be, by the laws of nature, average, and that average cannot be significantly better than just forty years ago.
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But the top 20 horses that run in an Arc today represent the top 0.05%* of the horses in training. Whereas in the dim and distant the top 20 horses may have been the top 5%* of horses in training. Thus the average in the races that we are debating is much higher no?

*Ignore the figures I made them up, go with the sentiment.
 
Your assertion that "Sea Bird could arguably give STS 7lbs and a beating", seems more commonly held than you imagined.;)
 
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