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All you have to do is win, wether you are impressive or not, he’ll be back next year and again they have him to beat, he is lightly raced by comparison and this will stand him in good stead IMO.
I don’t give a damn about comparisons, all I know is that todays race was the most exciting and emotional I can remember and he won! That’s what mattered. I loved every single moment of it and sat glued to the TV all afternoon while the kids went upstaisr in disgust! Best Mate, today, is the Bees Knees!
Having watched todays race I have to agree that Best Mate is the greatest racehorse of all time. It was an absolute joy to watch, almost as exciting as watching Fulham, the greatest football team of all time. <br>I’m not sure if it was as good as watching Cliff Lazarenko, (the greatest dart player of all time) but I would suggest it was as good as watching Tony Meo (the greatest snooker player of all time)
<br>I hope he goes to Punchestown but next year I don’t think he will go for the King George, it will most probably be the Lexus Chase in Ireland again.
i am completely bored with hearing about Himself
It happened in black and white, too long ago now…
what do u feel about those that ramble on about Nat Lofthouse or Denis compton? exactly…
If we are to bang on endlessly about arkle, why not golden miller?
No doubt he was great etc, but with improved training regimes and general science, it may well be that he couldnt have beated todays best today. Much the same as the way that Arsenal would destroy man utd circa 67 simply becuase the speed and strength would be too much to cope with
time moves on and these dicussions should be left to the coffin dodgers
A fine performance on ground he clearly didn’t relish, he would have won more easily on genuinely good ground, or even sloppy ground. Certainly, it’s cheered everyone up and gave us all a break from the various serious problems which have bedevilled the sport in recent weeks.
But I think that comparisons with Arkle, except on the matter of number of Gold Cups won, can now been put to one side. "Himself" would have annihilated this field.
Hi everybody<br> <br>What everybody is forgetting is the FACT that racehorses these days are trained to the point of perfection when it comes to the big races.
If Arkle was at his peak during Gold Cup months within the same era that Best Mate IS around then Best Mate would really make a mockery out of Arkle.
In the golden era, racehorses were made to prove their worth week in week out. By the time Cheltenham came, it was down to the most battle hardened to emphactuate themselves within the shades of glory.
These days, the only horses who triumph are those who are the biggest, strongest and fastest when it matters.
The idea of horses conceding 2 stone to moderate animals to prove their worth in this day and age is absolutely absurd. Seriously, it is like Arsenal giving away a 4 goal lead to Man Utd. We know that Arsenal (and Man City for that matter) are eons superior to Man Utd but making Arsenal fight with one hand behind his back will prove nothing.
That is part one of my ”Why Best Mate is the best racehorse of all time” lecture, but Misery Mesh knocked the nail on the head in saying that this is the true great of our generation and we don’t know any better.
Peace out everybody
True, today is surely the wrong day to be making or questioning such comparisons, but I disagree that comparisons between generations have to be irrelevant.
There was a Scandinavian-American woman called Babe Didrikson Zaharia (her husband was a wrestler), who used to take on men in sports as varied as golf (and I mean pro golf) and boxing, and beat them.  If you don’t know about her, do a Google search. Now she was a super athlete, the likes of which has probably not been seen since in the womens’ ranks. I doubt even Fanny Blankers-Cohen, though she may have been before Babe’s time. (Sometimes, as with football, it evidently is relevant. Although the improvement was thanks largely to the continentals, who applied science to the training and approach).
I believe Babe played in a men’s golf  tournament in Scotland once, and it must have been a severe culture shock to the Scottish men of the day, who would have been used to thinking of the Missus as the "wee wifie"!
A journalist once asked her if there was any game she did *not* like to play. She just snorted, "dolls!"
Incidentally, there have a few been horses in more recent times who were able to run up an extraordinary sequence of top-class races. Falbrav wasn’t too bad was he? But I was always astonished at how Night Nurse and Grundy could keep on running and winning again and again in the same season. In one respect, Sea Biscuit reminds me of William Marshall, the medieval knight, who was fighting "at the sharp end" into his seventies, and had never ever lost a tournament. One of his French hosts during a time when he was in France, the tournaments having been banned here –  nicknamed him the French equivant of something lime "guzzle-guts", and said he spent most of his time between tournaments, sleeping; which was said about Sea Biscuit in the cable TV documentary.
(Edited by Grimes at 12:04 am on Mar. 19, 2004)<br>
(Edited by Grimes at 12:08 am on Mar. 19, 2004)
Quote: from Kotkijet on 11:54 pm on Mar. 18, 2004[br]Hi everybody<br> <br>What everybody is forgetting is the FACT that racehorses these days are trained to the point of perfection when it comes to the big races.
If Arkle was at his peak during Gold Cup months within the same era that Best Mate IS around then Best Mate would really make a mockery out of Arkle.
In the golden era, racehorses were made to prove their worth week in week out. By the time Cheltenham came, it was down to the most battle hardened to emphactuate themselves within the shades of glory.
These days, the only horses who triumph are those who are the biggest, strongest and fastest when it matters.
The idea of horses conceding 2 stone to moderate animals to prove their worth in this day and age is absolutely absurd. Seriously, it is like Arsenal giving away a 4 goal lead to Man Utd. We know that Arsenal (and Man City for that matter) are eons superior to Man Utd but making Arsenal fight with one hand behind his back will prove nothing.
That is part one of my ”Why Best Mate is the best racehorse of all time” lecture, but Misery Mesh knocked the nail on the head in saying that this is the true great of our generation and we don’t know any better.
Peace out everybody<br>
lmao that was the worst argument PRO Best Mate I have ever heard, you could be forgiven for thinking you were pro Arkle in parts of that post lol (only the battle harderd won back then – that shows class and shows why the times were so different) Keep going though I am on the edge of my seat for part 2 I am dying to know why you think an average horse who struggled to beat average company is so damn good.
"……………………….<br>If you genuinely love horse racing, you’ll respect the horses that set the standards by which all others must be judged – the Arkles, the Birgadier Gerards the Sea Bird II’s the Secretariats."
Ian am I missing something here?<br>Was there more than one Arkle, more than one Brigadier, more than one Sea Bird or more than one Secretariat?
Yours, a very puzzled Colin
(Edited by seabird at 8:29 am on Mar. 19, 2004)
It’s terribly difficult to compare horses from different eras. For me Arkle was the best ever, but to a certain extent that’s by the way. Best Mate is an outstanding chaser by modern standards, setting a level of performance not matched since Arkle, and one that certainly puts him amongst the greatest chasers.
Enjoy the moment, and enjoy a truely top-class performer. They don’t come along very often.
If racing has had it’s problems in recent times, then they paled into insignficance when the vast majority 60,000 odd souls were bawling their heads off towards the finish of the Gold Cup. It’s those moments that the sport is all about, treasure them!
Rob
Why not enjoy this moment for what it is? We have seen a great horse win his third Gold Cup, none of us know if we will ever see that again. For many of us it is the first time we have seen that done, Arkle, Cottage Rake and Golden Miller are just ghosts of the past, great horses now long gone. We now have our own three time winner, something we should savour, instead of constantly detracting from this amazing acheivement.
The Arkle/Best Mate comparison is just silly really.<br>Has anyone here ever tried to compare Steve Cram with Roger Bannister?  Obviously Steve Cram was the better runner, because Bannister struggled to break 4mins for the mile.  Cram would have stuffed him.<br>Silly arguement?  Exactly.
(Edited by Racing Daily at 1:08 pm on Mar. 19, 2004)
Racing Daily makes the most valid point here comparisons across the ages are futile. All sports change and evolve, things are different. Take the Arsenal team of today and transport them back to play the the top team of Arkle days and the result would be a massacre but of course this does not mean that the footballers of the 60’s were not as good as those today simply that the game has changed.
Best Mate has now won 3 Gold Cups beating the best stayers of its own generation. It is clearly the best staying chaser around and I for one do not believe that the standard of racing now is significantly worse than in the past.
<br>Yep, the Best Mate/Arkle comparisons are a bit of a waste of time. Timeform ratings of the 60’s may now not be relevant in the present. Racetimes may too not be relevant given that Arkle tended to canter to the line.
As Irish Stamp said, these are two different horses in size and shape. I wish the Racing Post hadn’t made an ordered 100 top horses list. It would have been much better to just make a list of 100 top horses in history in no specific order. That way we would have had a series of articles on really good horses and some great one’s and it could have been a good read.
Of course Best Mate is a very good horse. It’s pretty easy to analyse his three Gold Cup wins and find problems with the form. I’ve looked at them and questioned them and I think it is right to because, as a punter, I want to find a time to oppose him.
If people want to compare horses, compare Best Mate with the top horses of the 80’s and 90’s. I would think the ratings are more reliable and relevant to the present.
You seem to forget Daily that a fair number of athletes, equine and human hold records for a long time. I suspect Arkle would murder best mate now.
I think at least one of Secretariat’s records – even harder to preserve on the flat – is still held, possibly comfortably, since our Derby winner in that year would have been at the furlong pole when Big Red crossed the line.
That was the way Arkle won. It’ll take more than a few generations before would-be rivals will be able to catch up, I reckon.
Your argument holds for superstars, but Arkle and BR were supernovas. A heck of difference.
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