Our editor, John Baxter, authors today's post.

Ask the average American racing fan who s/he picks as Horse of the Year ("HOTY"), and it's pennies to pounds they'll tell you "Smarty Jones", arguably the best known horse in the world this year. Ask the American racing literati and glitterati, who actually do the voting, and you'll get a very different answer. According to a straw poll conducted by Bill Finley of espn.com, an overwhelming majority of HOTY voters will be siding with the BC Classic winner, Ghostzapper, ahead of America's Horse.

Why so ? How can it be that the most talked about horse in the USA since Secretariat and Seattle Slew won't be the HOTY ?

Well, it seems that, unlike the racing proletariat, the industry's intelligentsia want to demonstrate that they haven't been taken in by the fanfare which attended Smarty Jones' every move in his run at the Triple Crown. They will tell you it's a vote for substance over style, for the real thing over the pretender. They will tell you that Smarty beat up on a weak bunch of 3yos and never took on the big boys. They will tell you that Ghostzapper, on the other hand, went for 4 for 4 throughout the year, made a stellar BC Classic field look pedestrian, and ran Beyers the like of which we haven't seen for years.

They may be right.

But I know which one I'd rather have the job of promoting at stud...

JRB