Getting in the Mood
By Dana Byerly, Hello Race Fans Co-founder
In the era of such Breeder’s Cup luminaries as Zenyatta and Goldikova it’s sometime easy to forget that in the 27 years since its inception, there have been many astoundingly good performances. And, if you’re a new or casual fan, you may not even know about some of these performances!
Not too long ago I was randomly watching replays on YouTube, the 2003 Breeders’ Cup Turf where High Chaparral and Johar dueled to a dead heat was one of them. Out of this great performance came the idea of our new series: Three Great Moments. The goal of the series is to highlight three notable performances that might be overlooked, or unfamiliar to the casual fan. The Breeders’ Cup is an ideal way to kick off the series as they make all of their races available on YouTube, which means we can easily share them with you to help you get in the mood for the upcoming Breeders’ Cup!
How did we arrive at each of the Three Great Moments? Discussion! Through a lengthy email chain the HRF Crew discussed each of the races and where we couldn’t find consensus I was the tie-breaker. We’ve included a “Also Considered†section to note performances that also were discussed or generated discussion. It’s important to note that this is series is NOT a “best of” or “top three moments”, its focused is potentially overlooked races. Obviously we couldn’t include all of the great, potentially overlooked races so please feel free to include your thoughts in the comments of each post!
We decided to stick to the original Breeders’ Cup races this year, which neatly works out to be one a week! We’ll add a few Breeders’ Cup races next year and hope to bring you other races throughout the year (where replays are available).
Each post will have a synopsis of the race, replay, results chart where available and lifetime past performance for the winner, and occasionally the second place finisher. A special thanks to our sponsors Brisnet.com for supplying the charts and lifetime pps and the Breeders’ Cup for making replays freely available on YouTube. And, an extra note of thanks to the Breeders’ Cup for updating many of their older replays, you’ll notice a vastly improved quality!
The Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies is our inaugural post, stay tuned as we publish a new one each day this week through Sunday! Enjoy.