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Picking The Brain Of Our Beloved Steward: Turf Miler Edition
Original article written by Jack Meyer posted 9 years 1 week ago
So, if any of you are like me I’ve always wondered who the best all-around horses were to ever grace the track. I’m not talking about just the greatest 2 or 3 of all time, they’d likely come from one division, I’m talking about the best of the best from the six major divisions in the SIM. As I was sitting around thinking of ideas for a few articles here and there, I remember something a little “bird” said to me not so long ago and decided to go ahead with it. This edition will be the first of 6 to come, and who better to tell us who the greatest horses of each division are than the very creator of the game we all love so much.
I decided to start with the milers because it seems to be the division that has fallen behind. As I thought about a few things to cover in my time with The Steward I decided to begin with those on the track. I came along in mid-year 35 so the Turf Milers that I know are runners like War Lock, Old Majesty, Legionnaire, Lion of Senet, and Stefan, all great runners but I wanted to know how the division has evolved. Em was kind enough to give me a history lesson, “Although I often hear talk about how turf milers is just now "getting going" I don't think that's true at all. The fourth year of the SIM back in 1999 unveiled probably one of the best turf milers of all time, Future Hero, who would happily be able to compete with those runners today. He went on to sire nine millionaires back before there were half the opportunities the breed has nowadays to make money. Year in and year out there have always been good milers, and actually, compared to other divisions it has always been very gender equal, with the fillies being able to run against boys no problem.”
I have to admit I was one who thought this division was just “getting going”, I just don’t know much about it which is the main reason the little “bird” and I decided this would be an interesting series.
With the division well established as far back as 1999 with Future Hero I asked Em to give us a little more of an idea of some other greats who compare to Future Hero. “After Future Hero there was Tulloch, who won 7 of 9 at a mile and produced 13 millionaires, including 1 1/2 mile horses and 6 furlong horses. The Steward's Cup Mile winners list reads like a list of superstars, in my opinion - Lokite Magic was one of the fastest horses ever in the game, Give Applause defied all odds to come back and win two Steward's Cups, Playingforthecrowd won over $5 million, and more recently, the unbeatable Silver Screen Star going undefeated and just last year Rilian became only the second horse to pull off that double that Give Applause did.”
A pair of multiple Steward’s Cup winners along with a super star who left the track with an undefeated record still intact tells me this division is well grounded, maybe just misunderstood?
I figure runners don’t always turn out to be good breeders, my next question for Em was who are the greatest all around horses in the Turf Miler division, ones that were good on and off the track. “For me, it's Future Hero of the old SIM and Silver Screen Star in the new SIM for flat out ability. But the division is so good and has been so good that if you ran a Steward's Cup race with 40 entrants, you'd get a different winner probably 35 of those times. It's just a solid, hard knocking division of fancy horses.”
That’s diversity in my opinion, the division is so challenging that there isn’t a real dominant horse that was so dominant that nothing else could get established in the division, I love it!
As I stated earlier I thought of the division as sort of a work in progress, I asked Em where she thought the division is in the SIM right now and where it’s going heading into the future. “See, that's what I'm saying - I don't think it needs to catch up with the others. It's always been its own thing, with few people interested, probably because there wasn't a lot of purse money involved at first. Now you have a Steward's Cup race for 2 year olds and a Dubai race for older horses. Because so few people cared, the division got stagnant with the same few bloodlines going around, but it's definitely opened up now with more people, so suddenly it's become an exciting game again.”
It has evolved very nicely I see with new Steward’s Cup races with higher purses, I think once SIM nation begins to understand the breeding side of it the division will likely smooth out the rough edges in everyone’s mind.
Since it is Steward’s Cup week and I’m a little biased with a big runner in the Turf Miler division I decided to finish up with Em’s thoughts of the yearlings and 2YO’s, I wanted to know what she thought of the young ins of the division. “I don't want to talk about the 2 year olds until after the Steward's Cup, because I think we might see a pretty special matchup in both the boys and the girls divisions, but I have a colt by Good Omen, who I think is really underrated, that I'm quite high on.”
The best source in my opinion on the history of the SIM is the very person who put it together. I know that my knowledge of this topic is minimal at best so this is a great learning experience for me; it gives me a chance to turn back time into an era that I wasn’t a part of. It gives me the chance to search these past greats to get a feel of what it was like back when the division was born and how it has evolved over the years. So much history has been made and so much more to be made, this is part of what makes the SIM so great, no matter when you joined there are ways to relive the past.
Jack Meyer