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| | Author: MasterBets
| Smarty Jones - One Of The Greatest Horses Of All Time?
Smarty Jones is well on his way to being considered one of the great racehorses of the modern era. His win in the Preakness, where Smarty Jones destroyed a high-class field by a dozen lengths immediately drew comparisons to the almost supernatural performance of Secretariat in the 1973 Belmont Stakes. That day Secretariat won by over 30 lengths, in the single greatest feat by a racehorse. But if and when Smarty Jones wins the triple crown on Saturday, as he seems destined to do, and in doing so remains undefeated, the horse racing world will have a new superstar. We at MasterBets are sold. This is the greatest racehorse to run in the USA in the last decade, and could possibly be one of the all-time greats, if luck and good health remain on his side.
Smarty Jones is by the decent if unspectacular sire, Elusive Quality, a miler who set a world record at Belmont Park (on turf). His dam, I'll Get Along, was a sprinter by the champion sprinter of his generation, Smile. But Smarty Jones is one of those rare athletes that comes along once or twice in a lifetime - he is a horse that can rate at any distance, on any surface, and at any track. The truly great horses can "switch off" during a race, ruinning comfortably within themselves, and then can be turned on to deliver an explosive turn of speed.
Smarty Jones is a racehorse that fits this description, and America has not had a horse of this quality since Affirmed and Alydar thundered down the track as one in their epic confrontations. Smarty Jones is equally comfortable at a mile, a mile and an 1/8, and a mile and a 1/4. There is no reason to expect anything different at a mile and 1/2. This has been the undoing of nearly all the horses who came into the Belmont Stakes with the first two legs of the Triple Crown to their name. They ran out of gas. Or in the case of Charismatic, and to a lesser extent War Emblem, they were the victims of bad luck.
Bad luck is all that will prevent Smarty Jones from winning the Triple Crown, and should he do so his story will become well known to the entire world. He nearly killed himself as a 2-year old when he reared up in the starting stalls and fractured his skull. His orbital bones were also shattered and he nearly went blind in one eye. His owner is "Chappy" Chapman, wheelchair-bound, weakened by Emphysema, and owner of just two horses, having sold nearly all his horses, except for Smarty Jones. He kept him because he had a feeling that the horse would turn out to be something special. Time will tell just how special Smarty Jones really is.
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| Last Updated
Tuesday, April 22, 2008 | | |
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