How good does this make Ebony Flyer?

What else would you expect from the Magic man BC, after reading this we would be hard pushed to exchange Miss Diana for Igugu.................lol

thanks magic... your term true champion is now put into perspective............ & im sure one day igugu will prove that she is worthy of CHAMPION status in your eyes..

Has any other horse ever come anywhere close to achieve what Igugu has achieved at this stage of her career...?

Short answer NO...

that should effectively be the end of discussion... however for the non believers...

she obviously has to prove to more people that she is a worthy champion but she can only beat what is presented to her and from what I have observed < that is enough for me IMVHO


Barry you are more that welcome to prove Igugu wrong with Ebony Flyer or the likes, however history has already been made by Igugu... and the challenge is healthy for SA racing...

I like Robyn Louw's article as regards Igugu..as she says.."a rare jewel for South Africa"..instead of trying to devalue Igugu's status, pedigree and performance like some racing journos are doing here

oscar Wrote:

---

> I like Robyn Louw's article as regards Igugu..as
> she says.."a rare jewel for South Africa"..instead
> of trying to devalue Igugu's status, pedigree and
> performance like some racing journos are doing
> here

Oscar mate I doubt Karel and Lips are trying to devalue Igugu's status, pedigree and performance .. All they saying is that Igugu maybe has a few more big ones to win before being labelled a Champion. Everyone is allowed their opinion ??

I was thinking how many more fillies do you guys think are capable of winning the triple tiara.I believe that you have to be a super horse,and i doubt if we will see that happen for a long long time to come,just my thought.

Ok fair enough Punter..if winning Triple Tiara by a cumulative 20 lengths, then cruising to win the July as a 3 yr old filly (against some very optimistic opposition trainers with 3 and 4 yr old colts and geldings) is not enough for a racing journalist to be excited that they are able to watch a horse of this stature live in their own country..then I personally give up.

Just remember the runner up (who at no stage had any chance of getting near to beating her with one of the best Jocks around flying all the way from Hong Kong to ride him and timed his run to perfection) was the so called "Peoples Champ"..now all of a sudden he too has been all of a sudden downgraded to just maybe a good horse...yes we all know horseracing in SA is stuffed but rather let the journalists write about that than take away a performance of a 3 year old filly that has put up over the last 6-8 months a Champions performance ..consistently

oscar buddy she won a handicap....

This thread has become one of emotion vs fact.
The fact is that Merit Ratings are the internationally accepted standard by which the relative ability of horses is measured and Igugu ran to a 113 in the July.
The highest horses in SA at the moment are: Past Master 115; Pocket Power 114
and all of Dance with the Devil,Bravura,Earl of Surrey and Hear the Drums are 113.
What has to be borne in mind is that wins are relative,as has been proven by Hear the drums,who kept running up wins without the need to improve and similarly Igugu would have probably won a 3yr old fillies Pentathlon(never mind triple) if continually meeting the same opposition,at the same conditions.
Igugu may well prove to be capable of a much higher rating,and I am sure EVERYBODY,like I do, hopes she does.....in the meantime she is 113 !

Oscar
You are entitled to your excitement, but Magic is still right. When you sound off about an utter champion that Igugu may be, you just cannot deny that she is (only) a constant 5 lengths better than Emerald Cove and his argument about improvement is really very hard to dispute. She may well be a champion, but mostly she beat fillies (who could never even get in the July) and then a handicap. She has in fact been brilliantly, masterfully campaigned.

My personal opinion is that the Fillies Classic where she beat Las Ramblas, Berry Blaze and Hollywoodboulavard by 10L+ may in future confirm that she may well be much better than rated. Two weeks ago I backed winner Stormy Coast (albeit over 1450) who has run 24L, 14L, 17L and 25 lengths to Igugu on the basis that Igugu is better than rated. The reason that one can't say it though, it that if Igugu approached 120, then those beaten fillies would have to all be as good as Pierre Jourdan.

In fact, if you ignore a sprint up, Dancer's Daughter won in succession the Paddock S. Gr1, the Majorca Gr1 and the Gold Challenge Gr1 to dead heat the July with Pocket Power while beating River Jetez by 2.5Kg and a length. She also went into the July rated the same 109 (but carried less as the competition had higher ratings) and emerged 114.

The point here is that it's unfair to rubbish the journo's when they point out that the enthusiasm may have lost perspective. Had Empress Club been in this July as a 3yo and winner of (I would guess) 6 grade 1's against everything, she would have probably have run now off a 115 or more and had to carry 58.5Kg before conditions. Don't ask for perspective and then moan when you get it.

Read this lot and all I can say is that some of the opinion is worse than the Financial Services Boards Regulatory exam. They test the meaning and understanding of words rather than the facts. The fact is she keeps winning! No horse in SA could beat her in the July!

This whole discussion centres around the definition of Champion. If opinion is to be believed then there is not a champion in SA at the moment. The premise of some of the argument is that all SA horses are so crap that any half decent horse could beat them rather than she is so good that she makes the rest look ordinary.

I was not convinced that Igugu could win the July going into it and PJ was for me. When she passed the line in front so easily I was sold. What more can she do but win. Should she beat the July field with MDK on her back? EF will not meet her in SA so the whole issue is a theoretical one and is the same as asking who is better Wolf Power or Horse Chestnut?

We are all entitled to our opinion - she is a champ and Dubai will seal it!

Amazing how this discussion has deviated from the original premise of how good Ebony Flyer's form in the Cape Fillies Guineas has been made to look. Of course it's all in the definition. Is Igugu an all time great? If your list of all time greats consists of three or four, no. If it consists of 100, yes.

It is absolutely true that in winning the Triple Tiara she achieved something never done before, but a unique achievement in and of itself does not make a horse a world beater. That Igugu is entitled to be considered the current star of SA racing is hardly open to much dispute, but to label a horse a "Champion" that has never been tested in a WFA race is premature. As I said before, WFA races are the true championship tests, but unfortunately we don't have any worthy of high status beyond 1600m in SA. That is not Igugu's fault, but it remains a fact nevertheless.

Having said all that, she is a fantastic advertisement for horse racing and I would love to see her conquer the world. Whether the headache of African Horse Sickness will allow her the opportunity to travel any time soon remains to be seen. For the time being, she is indeed racing's darling. Whether she is a champion is a subjective matter, and there is really nothing more to add to this without going around in the same circles over and over again. I love her as much as the next man, but in the past dozen years we have developed the unfortunate (if understandable) habit of comparing everything of considerable class to Horse Chestnut. Igugu may be a better candidate than most, but she still isn't Horse Chestnut.

And for those of us who think the July is the only true indicator of championship class in SA, then the best horse by a country mile of the last 60 years must have been El Picha. He won it twice, which to some minds makes him a far better horse than Horse Chestnut or Empress Club, who never won it at all. The July is a great race and it remains the king of the castle in terms of prestige, but it is a handicap. Nowhere else in the civilized racing world is a handicap consistently taken to be a country's best indicator of championship status, with certain exceptions (like Makybe Diva winning the Melbourne Cup three times).

I am not trying to run Igugu down. I just think that some of the things that are now being said about her are a bit over the top. It will nevertheless be a travesty if she doesn't get horse of the year, but she surely will and that makes me as happy as anyone else.