“Hard-Hitting Throwback”
Steven Crist writes a nice column about Afleet Alex, praising him for being competitive as a two-year-old and a three-year-old, something that doesn’t happen often anymore:
More recently, it has become practically a given that it’s just too much to ask the modern racehorse to be competitive at the highest levels of both 2-year-old and 3-year-old racing. Exceptions such as Point Given seem more exceptional with each passing year. Before this year, we had three consecutive Derby-Preakness winners in War Emblem, Funny Cide, and Smarty Jones who among them did not even compete in a graded stakes as 2-year-olds. You had to go back to Summer Squall in 1989 to find a Hopeful winner who returned to win a Triple Crown race — until Afleet Alex.
The list of Grade 1 races that Afleet Alex has competed in is remarkable in and of itself: the Hopeful, Champagne, Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, Kentucky Derby, and Preakness. He has won or been right there in all of them, and is a combined 2 1/4 lengths from having won all five, having lost the Champagne by a half-length, the Juvenile by three-quarters, and the Derby by a length. In an era when horses’ campaigns are craftily managed to find the likeliest venues to showcase them in narrow fields of specialization, Afleet Alex has run time after time in the biggest races against the best horses over different tracks and distances. (Daily Racing Form — sub. req.)
For a good example of how widespread this expectation is that a horse who’s racing at the highest level as a two-year-old won’t be as a three-year-old, check out this Bill Finley ESPN column from last August after Afleet Alex won the Hopeful Stakes. “Come the first Saturday in May, 2005,” wrote Finley,
You can rest assured that Afleet Alex will not duplicate Smarty Jones’ Kentucky Derby victory. That’s not necessarily a knock on the horse. It’s just that he’ll be attempting to do something that horses just can’t seem to do anymore. You can’t be at your best in mid-August and still at your best in early May.
He was half right …
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Crist also makes an excellent point in his column about the love for flash over substance in racing:
Consistency, durability, and versatility have come to be regarded as quaint virtues from grandfather’s era, less important than a few dazzling weeks in the spotlight ending with a lucrative financial transaction involving commercial breeders.
And Gary West makes a similar complaint about a different horse, writing that Ghostzapper may be redefining greatness:
The new definition will emphasize flashes of brilliance rather than prolonged accomplishment. Under the new standard of greatness, a horse won’t be expected to defeat rivals while carrying significantly more weight, won’t have to overcome unfavorable circumstances and certainly won’t have to sustain a superlative level of performance over a few seasons. (Star-Telegram)
