Making the Grade

re: Making the Grade

Pedigree Ann — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 00:35:59 GMT

The Travers will attract not only runners from the Jim Dandy but also from the Haskell and the Curlin (a race for nonwinners of a graded race). The Jim Dandy and the Curlin (and to some extent the G1 Haskell) are PREPS for the Travers, where the trainers find out if their animals are fit and talented enough to go on to the better, longer test.

In the original formulation to create graded races, the 'graders' found that some prep races came out too high in the rankings - those races had good horses in who were getting ready for the big races. So they made the deliberate decision to lower the grades of many preps. For instance, the Seminole H, the 9f prep for the Widener H. might frequently have had a very good field (Citation, Forego, Intentionally, and Kelso were Seminole winners), but it was assigned a G2 ranking, because it was a prep. Would that the current 'graders' had continued this philosphy; we would have been spared the absurdity of prep races graded higher than the race being prepped for!(The Malibu vis-a-vis the Strub)

re: Making the Grade

Arts and Letters — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 00:21:51 GMT

In comparison to other countries, the US has way too many graded races. If the number was cut in half, then maybe it would become something special again to have a grade 1 winner.

re: Making the Grade

Turf Writer Warren — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 13:47:20 GMT

Thanks Vic. I have been grumbling about these ridiculous graded races for some time now. They have been a joke for some time. Part of the problem is you cannot have a director of racing at a a venue as part of the grading process. Take this year's Eddie Read as an example. Grade 1? Insulting to say the least. Not even worthy of grading period! You have director of Del Mar racing Tom Robbins sitting on this committee. Enough said. Just forget about it. Nobody wants to keep these so-called graded races up to date in the first place, even if they had an independent source doing the grading. It's like having a student grade his own paper. Same thing. It doesn't work. And it hasn't meant a thing for quite some time.