So You Think is overrated

We have already established he was hanging a bit and cheekily poking his tongue out at all the doubters.............yet he still won.

Need we say more, if he actually gets his $h1t together look out![;)]

Racing Post ratings has Decided Work Force produced a career best performance in the Eclipse. I wonder what he will expect when the horse runs over his best trip and ground. He has also said Sui Putra haw improved 4lb from his near identical beating at Ascot. All this is because he wants to rate So You Think 132. It looks like if you hype a horse enough people are affected by it.

fm, timeformwere clearly impressed by him given the figures he was given!

[smiley:crazy]

youve lost me... all i said is that timeform rated his win highly

His bare form in the Uk is that of a solid group one winning horse but we've yet to see anything exceptional.
If Rewilding had run yesterday theres no reason to suggest he wouldn't have won.
As i stated on earlier posts the reason we haven't seen the Exceptional SYT the Aussies talk about , may well
be that he prefers going Left handed. If he lines up at York against Frankel we'll find out if he is the horse
they rave about.

His time was excellent, nothing overrated about it.

I'm not here to support Timeform's methods, but they don't use "yardstick" handicapping, wisely so, imo.

First of all, ForceMajeure's constant haranguing of Aidan and Joseph O'Brien is cringeworthy. I must admit, I enjoyed his posts at first, but now I just skip over anything he writes. Hopefully, he will cop himself on sometime soon, and also apologise for his appalling comments on the horse racing forum yesterday.

As for So You Think the horse, I think he is a very good horse with the potential to be a great one. There will always be questions surrounding the form, so the only way to answer the critics is to prove his versatility and his consistency by bagging one or two more Group Ones at 1m 2f and 1m 4f before winning at the Breeder's Cup. I accept the distances to Sri Putra are consistent with one another but I'd be wary about reading too much into them. So You Think is comfortably superior to that animal, and in the end, there will be more to his legacy than just the lengths and pounds he gave to his rivals.

Can I also remind users that since coming to Ireland, So You Think has won two Group Ones and a Group Three, and was headed into second in another Group One when supposedly not fully fit. Not many horses do that. And remember he has already won two Cox Plates as well as four other Australian Group Ones plus finished third in a Melbourne Cup. Worst case argument is that he's a very good horse.

If people want to argue his handicap ratings, then that is a different story. In my opinion, ratings are fallacious. They do not reward consistency, versatility, longevity, temperament, or style. Analyse So You Think and Sri Putra in each of those categories, and I think the former comes out with a lot more in hand than what the winning margins might suggest.

Think it's the best race of the year personally and SYT defo one of the great horses I have seen. I backed WF yesterday and although initially disappointed he did not win he ran a great race. Possibly in front too long but it was a 10f race and I guess they had to gamble one way or the other with it not being his best trip. SYT will not get beat over 10f again IMO.

comfort zone over 1f that is (wf) sorry.*

and was headed into second in another Group One when supposedly not fully fit

Anyone believe that?  I certainly didn't.  He was fit at Ascot alright and was beaten by the better horse.
So he loses half a length to Rewilding and was unfit and beats Workforce half a length and was fit.
Crock of sh1t.  He's been fit since after his first run. Aidan did this with DOM and Dylan Thomas, records of whom his is looking quite comparable at the moment.

The crunch comes with what he does for the rest of the season. DOMarmalade tailed off and left a legacy of being a top older horse but not quite a champion, Dylan Thomas won an Arc:  immortality gained.

He's at that level and what kind of races he runs in from now on will tell us his true class.  I'm not for rating a horse highly for beating a high class but small field.  Sea the Stars best rating came out of his Irish Champion win yet I challenge anyone to deny that his Arc win was his most exhilarating performance by far.  So far So You Think's European campaign looks all about ticking boxes for breeding purposes.  He needs a mega Group 1 on his CV for me and he may well be good enough to get one. We'll see.

Note: I meant to say the Arc is NOT a left handed race

So You Think

I was one who doubted whether SYT could better his already good performance in the POW, but in the Eclipse I have him improving on that by 3lbs. Whether that was through a slight fitness improvement or better tactics I couldn't say. Are you seriously saying, though, that his one and a quarter length defeat of the 9yo Zipping, who was giving him 3lbs, was better than his performance on Saturday?

My ratings are only time based, but in my view that was the best Eclipse win for a number of years, Workforce's performance was easily good enough to take an average running. If SYT can run to that form in October he'll be very hard to beat. Unless he's a freak he must be feeling the effects of those last 2 races combined now, he had to dig deep to get the better of Workforce. There has to be a doubt about how many more times he can run to that sort of level this year.

tactics got him beat on the POW. had he been ridden like he was v WF he'd have won. (imo of course)

rewilding is a good horse fresh, dont feel like SYT diasppointed that much, no doubt hes perhaps slightly overrated by AOB given his comments 'the best i've ever trained...' and looking at some of the brilliant horses he has trained in the past. syt may be the best hes ever trained but he still has more to do if he is to prove this as even if AOB is saying this , its pure guesswork at this stage because the horse hasnt done it on the track! won nicely the other day and was well on top at the line i thought. more of the same please, super race!

Unless he's a freak he must be feeling the effects of those last 2 races combined now, he had to dig deep to get the better of Workforce. There has to be a doubt about how many more times he can run to that sort of level this year

Nah, So You Think probably thinks he's on holidays up there. Take his second Cox Plate win. One week later he wins another Group 1 10f race (by 4 lenghs no less) then THREE DAYS LATER he runs in the Melbourne Cup over 16f - and while he was defeated into third place, I don't think his racing schedule was too blame, he was simply outstayed by two horses (but did beat 21 lightly weighted horse home).

Fields of Omagh, now there was an iron horse who matured like a fine wine with age, perenial bridesmaid to Sunline, Northerly, Lohnro and Makybe Diva etc etc, I remember getting matched at $50 on Betfair Ante Post when he won the Cox plate.......memories!

Just got this in my inbox BTW.

"Undertones of nationalism through the racing weekend ultimately proved discordant for the British, who saw one of their champions beaten on home soil and another chastened on his return to a foreign field. Michael Owen's Brown Panther could not justify his billing as favourite for the German Derby yesterday, while the colt who won the Epsom original last year, Workforce, had succumbed to So You Think, the Australian import, at Sandown the previous afternoon.


Nowadays stabled with Aidan O'Brien in Co Tipperary, So You Think may yet be sent "home" in search of a third success in the Cox Plate this autumn, provided quarantine issues can be resolved. If so, there would be an irresistibly piquant subplot, his former trainer having allowed resentment of his sale and export to fuel some trenchant observations about his new environment. To beat Bart Cummings and company in their own backyard would be especially sweet for O'Brien, who seems to have an inadvertent knack for winding up Australians.

When Cummings won the Melbourne Cup for a 12th time, in 2008, O'Brien saddled three of the last four finishers. Seated at his dinner table in a city hotel, he was astonished and incensed to be summoned back to the track for a stewards' inquest into the tactics used on his runners. In the event, they took no action, but local press and professionals savaged the Ballydoyle jockeys for forcing a reckless pace between them. A former senior steward declared that Johnny Murtagh "obviously had a brain explosion" and should be "ashamed" of his performance. Cummings himself could not resist a dig. "They must believe their own publicity," he said. "I can't believe what they did."

The outspoken octogenarian may well have admitted a corresponding sense of schadenfreude, then, after So You Think's odds-on defeat at Royal Ascot last month. For all his success, including with previous imports in Haradasun and Starspangledbanner, O'Brien will never be as respected or cherished as Cummings in Australia. And there was renewed derision for Ballydoyle's tactics after O'Brien's teenage son had a rather chastening experience on the pacemaker at Ascot. Characteristically, however, the harshest criticism was that reserved by O'Brien for his own role.

He immediately suggested that he had miscalculated the volume of work required to bring So You Think to his peak, and appeared to be vindicated in that judgement on Saturday. The notion that a gruelling race at Ascot could "put him right" for Sandown would ordinarily sound quite outlandish, but So You Think palpably sustained an unflinching charge at Workforce through the final two furlongs.

It was gratifying to see the race play out so consistently with its billing as a showdown between two of the best thoroughbreds from either side of the Equator. They had certainly looked the part beforehand. So You Think is so physically intimidating that the process of dominating his rivals begins long before he starts extending that vast stride out on the track. And Workforce, his brawny shoulders rolling, has developed into a captivating composite of solid bulk and liquid movement.

The race was set up perfectly by Jimmy Fortune, who showed exactly how a pacemaker should be ridden on Confront. Aside from pulling wide as Ryan Moore struck for home – fully three furlongs out, in an effort to bring his mount's stamina to bear – Fortune further obliged Workforce by hemming Seamus Heffernan against the rail for as long as he could. As a result, So You Think had to get through the gears fairly hastily, and the final margin of half a length does inadequate justice to the authority of his inexorable challenge.

Heffernan coolly resisted any temptation to force his way out and deserves to retain the ride, regardless of Moore's availability next time. Workforce was by no means diminished by defeat, and connections are entitled to hope that he could yet embellish his stud profile with a Group One success over 10 furlongs, but their priority will be the defence of the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe in October."

I know that Figgis, whose opinions I respect greatly, doesn't care for "yardstick" ratings.

However if, as many on here have stated, he lacked fitness at Ascot where in any case the race was run to suit Rewilding and not SYT I can't get my head round the fact that his margin over the ultra-reliable Sri Putra increased by a mere half length.

This is not to say that I don't rate SYT. I see him as a very good horse, a true high 120's performer. But no more.

I was probably going to say something cringeworthy but you summed it up better than i was going to.