Harness: Horse of the Year debate in full swing

How do you measure the immeasurable?

At a time where nearly every sport has figured the percentages of coaching decisions to a finite degree, harness racing is still in a rare position to compare and contrast on the basis of final times and wins and losses. Sunday's (10/11) races at The Red Mile left voters who will decide this year's Horse of the Year in a rare position of trying to quantify every characteristic possible to separate two great horses.

First and foremost, before going into any analysis between Tall Dark Stranger and Party Girl Hill, it should be noted that the connections of the filly did not know whether they would or wouldn't face Tall Dark Stranger before entering the Tattersalls. For had the two drawn together there would be no need for this type of discussion. Let's give the group credit for putting the filly in against colts and then performing up to expectations.

What voters must decide should both Tall Dark Stranger and Party Girl Hill continue their winning form through the rest of the racing season, is not necessarily which horse would win if the two were in a match-race, rather what the degree of difficulty was for each throughout the racing season. We know it is subjective to attempt to determine the obstacles both horses needed to overcome to get to this point in the season with just one cumulative loss between the pair.

While Red Mile analysist Dave Brower did an excellent job in trying to cast Tall Dark Stranger's team of Nancy Takter and Yannick Gingras and Party Girl Hill's connections of Chris Ryder and Dexter Dunn into spokespeople, offering affirmation of their candidates following Sunday's Red Mile races, the fact is it really shouldn't matter to voters what is said. What should matter to voters is what has been seen over the course of the racing season.

Still, let's try to take some of the bias out of the commentary, at least when it comes to an analysis of just this past Sunday's efforts by both Tall Dark Stranger and Party Girl Hill. While both horses paced miles in 1:47 2/5, driver Yannick Gingras alluded to the fact that his horse Tall Dark Stranger was pacing faster crossing the finish line than he had during the entire race. His implication, if I'm taking it literally, was that Party Girl Hill was not.

The nuance of this critique begs the person listening to believe that although both horses traveled the exact same time for a mile, one was slowing down going past the finish line and the other was actually going faster. What is clearly missing from this view would be the reality of the visuals of the final quarter-mile, not just the final strides. In the case of Party Girl Hill, there was an explosive burst of speed that saw her open nearly four lengths on her rivals coming out of the final turn into the homestretch. Given a final quarter in 26 2/5 seconds, one could assume the first eighth of that quarter could have been garnered in 12 seconds or under, with the final sixteenth closer to 14 seconds. That is likely why horses that Party Girl Hill had left in the dust at head-stretch had the appearance of closing in on her near the wire.

Conversely, Tall Dark Stranger marched along to virtually even fractions and maintained a consistent edge over his rivals through the stretch. No points should be taken away from the colt just because driver Yannick Gingras kept pounding away on the son of Bettor's Delight, who seems to need the encouragement to get down to serious business.

Throughout his career Tall Dark Stranger has been correctly categorized as a very brave horse. His willingness to fight back under pressure has been the mark of some epic victories, most notably this year was his Meadowlands Pace triumph where Papi Rob Hanover had passed him in the early stretch and Tall Dark Stranger rallied back to victory. The Meadowlands Pace remains the signature performance on Tall Dark Stranger's resume among his 10 victories. While some may argue after that mid-July contest, Tall Dark Stranger had some close finishes where he was victorious but never had to battle a horse with the credentials of Papi Rob Hanover again.

Early this season trainer Ron Burke made the correct observation when looking at a long list of sophomore male pacers in his care. "There's the top two and then there's the rest," Burke said to me in July. That was clearly evident this past Sunday when his 1:46 4/5 world-record holder Cattlewash got the perfect pocket trip to Tall Dark Stranger and then was left in the dust in the final quarter.

The contrast between Party Girl Hill and Tall Dark Stranger goes beyond sex and it should not go unnoticed that the Captaintreacherous-sired filly was a "green" horse entering her 3-year-old season when she first challenged one of the finest filly pacing crops we've had in years. Party Girl Hill had just two competitive races before she was entered against the top-class Pennsylvania Sire Stakes fillies in July at The Meadows.

Another significant difference between the two leaders for Horse of the Year was the schedule they embarked upon and the varied size tracks. In the case of Tall Dark Stranger, there were no races contested over five-eighths or half-mile tracks. He raced almost strictly Grand Circuit with the exception of two Kentucky Sire Stakes events at The Red Mile. Both horses went to Woodbine Mohawk Park to compete and offered comparatively similar performances in the Fan Hanover and North America Cup. Party Girl Hill looked somewhat vulnerable in her Fan Hanover trial and then dominated in the final. Likewise, Tall Dark Stranger held off a host of threatening rivals in his North America Cup elimination and then proved dominant winning the final.

With no previous races over a half-mile track, Party Girl Hill went to Delaware in September to race in the Jugette. While some have suggested had the filly raced the colts instead over the famed Delaware half-miler and been victorious, as was Fan Hanover in 1981, she would already be the Horse of the Year favorite. Nevertheless, Party Girl Hill's performance in the first heat of the Jugette was her signature performance. Allowing last year's division champion Lyons Sentinel the privilege of soft first-half fractions that would have compromised most any of her contemporaries, Party Girl Hill defied logic in pacing a final half without cover in 53 seconds in a world-record 1:49 3/5 victory.

Party Girl Hill and Tall Dark Stranger will not meet in a race. That was the luck of the draw. One is unbeaten and the other is not. They are both great horses that are in a league of their own against their individual class of competition. Party Girl Hill has already stepped out of her comfort zone to race against boys giving her a slight edge in my mind. Perhaps Tall Dark Stranger can do her one better racing against older rivals in the TVG and winning.