The Pegasus World Cup made me sad. It wasn’t the rain. Wet happens. It wasn’t the surface. We’ve all seen worse. And it wasn’t the looming night. Darkness only adds to the drama. The Pegasus World Cup made me sad because saying goodbye to a horse like City of Light at this stage of his career is a crying shame.I would like to believe that is exactly what little Stella McCarthy was feeling when she was captured in mid-sob by photographer Zoe Metz during an emotional farewell in the horse van alongside her dad, trainer Michael McCarthy. More likely, though, it was a young child’s goodbye to a family pet, while skeptical of assurances that her favorite horse was going on to a wonderful life full of green pastures and girlfriends in a magical land called Kentucky. As far as she was concerned he would be gone now, like tears in rain.All credit is due to McCarthy and his crew, whose work with City of Light stacks up with any major talent management over the past several seasons. McCarthy has outgrown the knee-jerk designation as “Todd Pletcher’s former assistant” to be referred to as very much his own man, who has now won the nation’s richest race after only five years as a public trainer.But now his best horse is gone, leaving questions left unanswered. City of Light proved he could be exciting in the way only 5-year-old stallions with speed and competitive flair can thrill a crowd – horses like Gun Bow, Ack Ack, Precisionist, and Cigar. City of Light also is a walking billboard for what people want in a stallion, and – so the thinking goes – the sooner he can be removed from the jeopardy of training and racing, the sooner he can start to deliver the promise of his DNA.Despite the murky stage, the Pegasus allowed City of Light to come into focus as a star of transcendent ability after laboring for most of last year at the edges of national recognition. He beat Accelerate before the wider public took Accelerate seriously. He won a pair of seven-furlong races in California, then lost the one that really counted in New York, after which he promptly disappeared into a quiet plan of his trainer’s crafty design. When City of Light reemerged to blow the doors off the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile, no one was surprised, but they were amazed. Alas, his turn in the spotlight lasted only a few hours before he was upstaged first by Enable and then by Accelerate. And, sad to say, no one ever remembers the winner of the Dirt Mile unless you own the winner of the Dirt Mile. Or cashed.At that point, City of Light already was sold to stud, as was Accelerate, both on their way to following Justify to the shed. (It was a clean sweep for the breeding game, retiring North America’s best 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old of 2018.) The prospect of the Pegasus at least gave fans of Accelerate and City of Light a chance for a memorable encore.It was, at least for City of Light. The big horse splashed across the Gulfstream slop like an airboat skimming the everglades. Accelerate was always working hard and the rest were working harder, resulting in a field strung out over some 40 lengths at the end. Such conditions rarely encourage nail-biting finishes – Accelerate romped over similar going in the Santa Anita Handicap – but they do allow for some spectacular individual performances, such as American Pharoah’s Preakness, and the winner always deserves full credit for rising above the mess.In a perfect world of fan fantasy, City of Light would now go on to defend his title in the Oaklawn Handicap, take Belmont by storm in the Met Mile, add the Whitney during the summer, then regroup in California for the Awesome Again. After that, he would be playing a home game in the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita, in which he would have a chance to prove his 10-furlong maturity – as did Gun Runner in 2017 – and at the same time erase the sour memory of the starting gate debacle involving his talented sire, Quality Road, in 2009.Instead, City of Light takes up his new duties in the same stud row as his 13-year-old sire, while out here on the racetrack the cards are shuffled and the game will be playing with a new deck of older runners. One of the ways, we have been told, to push back against early retirements is to make purses worth the risk, and the Pegasus World Cup was a step in that direction. But at this point, any lingering idea that the Pegasus World Cup was invented to keep some of the best horses in training should be dismissed. Positioned about two weeks before the traditional start of breeding season, the first three runnings of the Pegasus have done nothing to keep California Chrome, Gun Runner, Accelerate, or City of Light in competition beyond the Pegasus, which leads to only one conclusion:The Pegasus World Cup was invented to keep some of the best horses in training for one more race at Gulfstream Park. The event is more of a swan song than a giant horse with wings. And nobody likes to say goodbye.