Being Humbled By The BC

Our horse running with his tongue hanging. The Europeans? Did anyone see a tongue? Does Albarado look pissed? Did he ever breeze the horse?

Competing with the Asmussen, Lukas, Pletcher, Zitos of the world seems somehow do-able even as I'm looking at the Jeff Lukas Bloodhorse videos starring Hennig, McGlaughlin, Pletcher et. al., the band of Lukas assistants out there, listening to the them talk, and understanding those fellows have more on the ball personally than I'm seeing from them on the track.

But then we have the Europeans and those TB Times videos of John Ferguson, Detori, Freddy Head, Ralp Beckett, Richard Pegram, and I'm thinking, is John Gosden an Ivy League professor? No. Just a horse trainer. And, never mind Magnier, Tabor, Adain O'Brien will roast in hell for what he did to GW, and Sheik Mohammed. Does it seem to anyone else that the Europeans are on a different level suddenly? Those images of Goldikova and Ravens Pass sprinting by our best like they were tied to a post will stay with me for a while. Suddenly things seem a lot tougher if you're aspiring to make it to the Cup.

It's all ok though. We prefer things other than easy. It's good for me personally to see that somewhere in the world some very able people are running things in horse racing, and, voila, with the advent of the pro-ride it's filtering back this way.

Training:
Thurs. 10/30: resisting the tempation after last night's hard stuff to go again tonight. Off.