Horse of the Year

Z. ;D

She is a cool mare. :slight_smile: It’ll be interesting to see what her babies do.

I’ll admit, I was pulling for Blame since I think he had the better campaign for Horse of the YEAR but Z is still one heck of a mare.

He had a strong campaign, just not the strongest and in my opinion not as strong as Zenyatta’s this year though both their campaigns were weak in my eyes. In the Classic he was running on a surface he LOVES. It is well known that Churhill is a very quirky track that Zenyatta obviously had a hard time getting a hold of. And she came a head short, she ran her heart out to get there. Then look at Blame, beaten double digit lengths in the Jockey Club Gold Cup by a horse that I do not consider to be G1 caliber, he didn’t get the set-up he needed and he was trounced, she didn’t get the set-up she needed in the Classic and she was beaten a desperate head.

Zenyatta won 5 G1’s to Blame’s 3 and in some she was giving away a TON of weight. In my eyes she had the less weak campaign, you can say that she was running against weak horses but so was Blame, the best horses he beat was only really Quality Road.

It feels incredibly vindicating that after two near-misses she finally gets the HOY. But what can I say? I’m personally invested, being from SoCal and all that :stuck_out_tongue:

Not taking anything away from Blame and Goldikova, obviously. They’re both tremendous racehorses (especially Goldikova, holy balls).

Welp. The 21st Century’s got its Man O’War.