HOLD YOUR HORSES!

Hold your horses on Zenyatta as best ever

By Nick Canepa, UNION-TRIBUNE

At the risk of being labeled a closet misogynist (which I definitely am not) or old (getting there rapidly), pardon me if I refuse to join those making up the Short Memory Millennium by jumping onto Zenyatta’s saddle.
Zenyatta is the racehorse du jour, and that’s not a bad thing. Racing needs help. It needs all the good pub it can get. It needs a genuine star, and she fits. She beats the girls, she beats the boys. She’s wonderful. She’s marvelous. She’s big, pretty and game. Hates to lose. Unbeaten in 18 starts. Love Zenyatta. We all should love Zenyatta.
But she’s an example of what happens during a time when anyone or anything, be it a he or she, reaches rock star status. He or she automatically becomes “the best.” Pure bunk. History did not begin at the turn of the century.
Following Zenyatta’s Saturday stroll past a decent group of females in Del Mar’s Clement L. Hirsch Stakes, her jockey, Mike Smith, proclaimed that, if she wins her final two races (including a repeat in this year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic), “she’ll be the best horse of all time.”
She will not.
Smith’s a helluva jock, a Hall of Famer, but he’s too old an athlete to be gushing such hosannas. Here’s hoping he just got his silks caught in the hype, because he has to know better.
To me, horse racing is like golf. I can’t play it but I know something about it, especially the greats, the stars. I wasn’t around for Man o’ War or Gallant Fox or Sir Barton or Phar Lap or Whirlaway or War Admiral or Seabiscuit or Count Fleet or Armed or Omaha or Citation or Tom Fool. But I can take you back to the mid-1950s, to the Swaps and Nashua days, to Tim Tam and Carry Back, and tell you I’ve certainly seen every heralded American racehorse run.
And, while Zenyatta is terrific, I’m not so sure she’s even the best filly or mare. Can we honestly say she’s better than Ruffian? Until she broke down and had to be euthanized in that terribly ill-conceived 1975 match race with the male Foolish Pleasure — she gamely ran 100 yards with a broken sesamoid bone in her leg — Ruffian had run in 10 races and was 10 for 10.
Not only that, she led at each pole in every race she ran, setting records in all eight stakes starts. I refuse to say Zenyatta is better than Ruffian. I can’t. I won’t.
I realize there are some people who can’t remember the Jonas Brothers, let alone the Beatles, but are you telling me Zenyatta’s better than Secretariat? YouTube Secretariat in the Belmont, the most dominating performance in the history of sports, and tell me Zenyatta could beat that freak.
Better than Buckpasser? Dr. Fager? Damascus? Seattle Slew? Affirmed? Spectacular Bid? Forego? Kelso? Native Dancer? Northern Dancer? Sunday Silence? Easy Goer? John Henry? Best Pal? Mongo? Cigar? Ghostzapper? Better than foreign horses such as Nijinsky and Ribot, the unbeaten Italian (have to love unbeaten Italians)?
I’m telling you, no she isn’t. Greats such as Forego, Kelso and John Henry won major events carrying more than 130 pounds. Horses don’t lug that weight around anymore (although Zenyatta twice carried 129).
Look, it isn’t as bad as someone telling me Lady Gaga is a better singer than Ella Fitzgerald, but there comes a time when we have to step away from the moment and clear our heads. If Zenyatta had a steady diet of any of the aforementioned, she would have gotten smoked.
“She’s the best female horse I’ve seen,” says former jockey Don Pierce, soon to be inducted into the Racing Hall of Fame. “She beat some good horses at Santa Anita (in last year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic), but I’ve got to see her do it again before I start thinking of her as the great horse.”
For me, she’ll have to do much, much more than that, and she’s not going to, because after the Classic she’s headed for retirement.
We all have our favorites. Mine was Buckpasser, who ran in the 1960s, a great decade for horse racing, won 26 of 31 starts, 15 straight, finishing out of the money (fourth in his maiden) but once. It’s not even fair to compare. He would have trounced Zenyatta.
But it’s hard not to say Secretariat was the greatest horse of my lifetime, perhaps any time, although many buffs will tell you it’s Dr. Fager, who could win at a half-mile or mile-and-a-quarter. Our late handicapper, Phil Norman, always told me he thought Affirmed was the best horse, and yet Seattle Slew twice beat him at Santa Anita, and Affirmed was a monster.
That Zenyatta is exceptional is beyond dispute. She’s unbeaten, and that’s hard to do in this game, no matter the competition. She comes to run every time out.
“I’ve seen some real good horses that didn’t try,” Pierce says. “I wish I knew why. Some horses are competitors.”
Zenyatta is all of that, and more. But the best ever? You’ll have to go Googling to find someone else to say that.