Hall of Fame

The finalists for the Hall of Fame were just announced. You can read a more in depth write up about it at the Bloodhorse or many other fine racing publications.

I'm going to focus mainly on the equine nominees and give and few thoughts and ideas.

It seems to me that Hall of Fame inductions would be another way to put a point system like the TCR to good use. We've already seen how it can work for year end long standings, year end awards for a variety of nations not just America and Derby eligibility.

Now a point system can never fully encapsulate a horses career because points are awarded blindly with no eye towards brilliance. However as with the year end awards I'd suggest that a statistical summary of a horses career and a voters view on the other circumstances surrounding the horses career would be the perfect marriage in determining its Hall of Fame viability.

One pitfall with the TCR specifically is that it has multiple components. It awards points for race results as well as earnings and weight carried. Because the horses in question competed in different era's their earnings cannot be evaluated on the same scale, they would have to be inflation adjusted. Also I lack the necessary data to compute how much weight they gave to their opponents. But the latter two factors are just bonuses that make up a small percentage of the total. So the figures given here are just based on the points earned by finishing in the money in races. So lets look at the horses who are nominated this year and how a point system might quantify their careers.

Contemporary Males
Best Pal - 775.88 (16.51)
Silver Charm - 614.93 (25.62)
Manila - 484.84 (26.94)

Contemporary Females
Sky Beauty - 497.72 (23.70)
Inside Information - 410.26 (24.13)
Silverbulletday - 332.60 (18.48)
Mom's Command - 241.68 (15.11)

Another factor you have to remember when assessing the horses entire career is that there can be a great disparity between the number of career starts and that can account for much of the point differential. For instance in the males category one might be led to believe that Best Pal was vastly superior to Manila however he made 47 starts to Manila's 18. If you look at their point averages per start which is listed in brackets you'll see that Manila was actually the most accomplished of the group. He had a fantastic career and I think is a little undervalued these days because he didn't have the same type of cult following that Best Pal or even Silver Charm did. Manila would be my personal selection in the males category, both from an accomplishments perspective and a brilliance perspective. He ran 14 races on the grass and was 11-3-0 in those races. He lost just 3 times on the grass and captured 5 G-1's including 3 G-1's as a 3yo against older horses.

In the fillies category I think its a two horse race. Inside Information and Sky Beauty are well ahead of the other two both in terms of brilliance and accomplishments I think it would be a travesty if one of them were not selected. Between the two of them though its hard to say. I think both of them should be in the Hall of Fame. I think I might shade slightly for Inside Information just because they are basically even in terms of career accomplishments but Inside Information's career best race came against the best field she ever faced while Sky Beauty seemed to thrive more at home in New York and she failed when taking on the Breeders Cup. In that way Inside Information just strikes me as more of a true champion. But I do think that both should get in to the Hall of Fame.