Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Tall Order

Los Angeles, November 4, 2008--Sam Spear, on his San Francisco radio show, asked how Zenyatta ranked in the pantheon of female racehorses. "She's way up there," I said boldly, vaguely. When people complained about what they read in the newspaper, I used to say, "What do you expect for 50 cents--the truth?" Radio, which costs next to nothing, isn't much better, sometimes.

The first mistake in ranking the undefeated Zenyatta is that her career probably isn't over, and the Horse of the Year ballots haven't been sent out, much less counted. To give Zenyatta a finite number before the books have been closed is folly. But even if I had her final record in front of me, it would be foolhardy to say that she's just beneath Ruffian, and better than Fashion.


Fashion? She was a mare who won 32 of 36 starts in the late '30s and early '40s, including 20 in a row at one stretch. That's late '30s and early '40s as in 1830s and 1840s, just so you understand this ranking problem. Fashion's best distance was four miles. In a hypothetical match race over a route of ground, who do you take, Fashion or Shuvee?

To attempt the impossible, I started off with a working list of 28 fillies. Fashion, unfortunately, did not make the first cut. I couldn't find any of her old races on YouTube, and what was the foal crop when she ran? Fifty?

I also quickly threw out Pan Zaretta, a more contemporary filly. She was a foal of 1910, and won 76 races, but the trouble was, it took her 151 starts to do so. You look at Pan Zaretta's PPs and take a deep breath. At the end of her career, as a 7-year-old, she ran seven times in 38 days. She might still be running, if she hadn't been felled by a fatal strand of pneumonia in New Orleans.

When the smoke on my desk had cleared, I still had room for Miss Woodford, a foal of 1880, who beat males, won 37 of 48 starts and was the first horse to go over the $100,000 mark in purses. Money is a poor way to assess horses of any era, but there was something about a hundred grand in 19th-century dollars that moved me. Another 19th-century filly who was around at the end of the exercise was Firenze, once ranked by the late Whitney Tower, the Sports Illustrated pundit, as one of the 10 best horses--fillies and colts--of all time. Good friend Tower was a tough sell. Writing in Classic magazine in the late 1970s, he left both Ruffian and Secretariat off his list. He didn't like the idea that Secretariat didn't run at four, and didn't beat anybody carrying 137 pounds, as Forego did. He favored Shuvee, twice the winner over colts at two miles in the Jockey Club Gold Cup, instead of Ruffian.

Since this study is restricted to fillies, I've got room for both Ruffian and Shuvee. Two of the three fillies that have won the Kentucky Derby, Regret and Genuine Risk, are also on my list. Winning Colors is not. But include Twilight Tear, Busher and All Along, all Horse of the Year champions. Personal Ensign, like Zenyatta so far, never lost, so she obviously belongs. The two double Breeders' Cup winners from overseas, Miesque and Ouija Board, are tough to evaluate. They were grass horses, and ran sparingly in the U.S., but two wins on the big stage, combined with their phenomenal achievements back home, are good enough for me.

Sorry to say, but I've left off Bayakoa, despite her two Breeders' Cup wins. Go for Wand, who broke down when she appeared to be beating Bayakoa in one of those races, is on the list. Some say she was the equal of Ruffian. My also-eligible list is formidable: Besides Bayakoa, there are Azeri and Lady's Secret, who ran some salty races against colts, and even beat them once.

You may ask, why Twilight Tear and Busher, but not Lady's Secret. Busher, off the board only once, beat the boys four times at distances up to a mile and a quarter. Twilight Tear beat males seven times, one of them a win in the Pimlico Special against Devil Diver, who was the country's best older horse in 1944.

Get back to me later about Zenyatta. Brad Free, of the Daily Racing Form, took exception when his colleague, Mike Watchmaker, called the huge filly "one for the ages." Free says that any coronation of Zenyatta is premature. "The letter 's' should be dropped from ages," he wrote. "Zenyatta currently is one for the age--the age of synthetic." I reckon Zenyatta will face colts sooner or later in 2009. What she does then will be the litmus test, no matter the surface.

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