Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Cohen Chimes in on Hambo Poll

This was in this weeks Horseman and Fair World. It was actually penned a week before Dewey lost another race.

This skewed view manifests itself most clearly in the sport’s latest Top 10 poll, with balloting conducted weekly by Harness Racing Communications. Although three voters moved from Dewey to Somebeachsomewhere from the previous week, the collective group still places the pacer a distant second. Dewey received 24 first-place votes, SBSW has 10. Why is there still so much separation?

Maybe the reason is because there are some people who just haven’t seen enough of the Canadian-owned SBSW in this country, considering that just three of his 17 starts have been in the States. I’d love to hear from this week’s 24 Dewey backers why they still picked the trotter over the pacer. What more do they believe SBSW needs to do?


And echoing what some have said here on the blog. Geography. Wow, I thought we lived in an Internet world.

One Canadian horseman said if Somebeachsomewhere were a U.S.-based horse he’d be the runaway poll leader and a surefire Horse of the Year in both countries. Again, with all due respect to Dewey and his connections, the Beach has a pretty strong case, right?

Surely our love of harness racing and great champions transcends borders. Surely we are a strong enough family within the sport to give credit where it is due. Surely, a horse who generates a cheering mass of harness fans the way Somebeachsomewhere did here in Lexington on Saturday deserves any hype or glory he gets.


It is nice to see people speaking out about this.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is Cohen playing the race card or the where you race card ? Lets get something straight many Canadian owned ,trained ,driven horses have won US awards so forget that idea it,s stupid.The horse has showed up for couple US events lost one missed the rest to busy racing at Mohawk and Flamboro setting world records.Has this happened before you bet and you were a big part of the discussion.This is a quote from the trainer" We thought about going to the Kentucky Futurity but we decided to stay home and race less travel" Who ?Majestic Son the horse that wouldn,t leave Canada and beat Glidemaster 3 times won Canada,s horse of the year while Glidemaster won all the big US races took horse of the year in the States while Majestic Son didn,t get a sniff.Now if Majestic Son went to the Red Mile ran 49 kicked Glidemasters butt he might have took both awards but he didn,t which ain,t the horses fault but the owners choice as here also . It,s all about the race card the where you race card.By the way SBSW is deserving of #1 it ain,t his fault it,s the owners choices and big mouth that caused this.Let the horse stay in the States for the next 7 weeks win everything then let them cast their votes.

Anonymous said...

One more thing while I,m on a roll who won the Dan Patch for top 2 year old? SBSW and how many starts in the States did he have? Zero I thought so.So to win this great award you don,t have to race in the States lets check the O'Brien Awards.For horses to be eligible for consideration for an O'Brien Award, it must have made a minimum of three (3) starts in Canada between January 1st and November 30th. The type of race (stakes, overnight) is irrelevant and schooling and qualifying races do not represent a start.So who,s protecting who ?Is WEG the place that voted Invitro over Rainbow Blue you bet pal and Admirals Express over how many ? You think the American awards are tainted check our own backyard.

Anonymous said...

Just for the record . . . again.
Where does the "big mouth" comment come from ?
When asked about going to the Jug, the answer was always as simple as "no we're not going". When asked why, the answer was always " we want Beach as sharp as possible for Lexington". Give or take a word or two those are the only legitimate public comments you will ever find. Never a negative word has ever been said by any of the SBSW camp in regards to any paticular race. You can google all you want, there's not a quote out there. When asked, they we're honest "we're not going", when asked why "we want to be ready for lexington, want to take a shot at the world record", thats it, nothing else was ever added.
So easy on the "big mouth" accusations, cause there is nothing to back that up.
As for Beach being penalized for where he didn't go, all I can say is 9 RACES UNDER 1:50 THIS YEAR ! Who cares where he raced, or who he raced, no horse has ever done that.

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