Photo Finish It's a Two-Horse Race Between Zenyatta, Blame; Who Should Be Declared the Winner?

Los Angeles Daily News › November 23, 2010

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Summary

Who should be voted thoroughbred racing's Horse of the Year for 2010? Zenyatta, the 6-year-old mare based in California whose 19- race winning streak over four seasons has created zealous fans? Or Blame, the 4-year-old colt with Kentucky roots who held off Zenyatta's late charge to win the Breeders' Cup Classic by a head? The argument has been hot and heavy on the internet. Results of balloting by racing journalists and executives will be announced Jan. 17 in Miami Beach. Staff writers Art Wilson and Kevin Modesti debate the cases for each horse in an e-mail exchange.

ART WILSON: To me, when voting for Horse of the Year, you must consider the whole body of work and not just what the horses have done on the racetrack. On the track, Zenyatta won five Grade I races this year and came up a head short in the Breeders' Cup Classic to Blame. Off the track, she's off the charts. Zenyatta has done more for horse racing than any horse in our lifetime. Yes, Blame is a nice colt, but nice horses should not win Horse of the Year. One of his four 2010 victories came in a Grade III race. When you take their total resumes into account, both on and off the track, Blame needed to beat Zenyatta by more than a scant head to overcome what still is a wide discrepancy between the two.