Who are the greatest horses of all-time?
It’s amazing how such a seemingly simple question can elicit such a varying array of passionate answers. Some swear there will never be another like Man O’ War, while others think the more recent Big Red was the improved version. Those who remember seeing Citation run invariably have him rated no lower than #3, while many who fondly remember racing in the late 70’s tend to have their favorite of Affirmed, Seattle Slew, or Spectacular Bid rated near the top of the list. More recent runners like Sunday Silence, Cigar, and Zenyatta have current popularity in their favor. Whether you believe ranking the greatest horses of all time to be a near impossible task, or an exercise in pure fun, we all have opinions on the horses that have graced the sport for as long as we’ve been watching.
No one takes as much joy and puts in as much time in ranking the stars of our sport, and the non-stars for that matter, as my colleagues and I at Horse Racing Nation. Now, for the first time we are publishing the rankings of the greatest of the greats, both past and present. Our goal is to create the most comprehensive rankings list the sport has ever seen. To those ends we have begun a push. We are announcing the rankings tonight and now we warmly welcome all of you to help us by contributing regularly, with the goal of establishing an all-time list of the Top 250 greatest horses. The big announcement on our results will be come on March 1. Let’s make it a list that the entire sport of racing can be proud of!
As you can see there is plenty of room for discussion. I published my All-time Top 10 list a few years ago. For comparison’s sake let’s take a look where they fall on Horse Racing Nation’s current list:
You can see why I feel that many horses are too low. Conversely there
are many on our current Top 250 who appear to me, to be overrated in a big way. These are of course only one man’s opinion. The great thing about these rankings is it is not the opinion of one man, rather it is a consensus of everyone. That is where you come in. Please take a look at the list and start rating the horses. You can rate a horse once a week. By all means, share this with your friends. Discuss who you think who should be in the Top 20 or more. Is your favorite too low? Start rating them where you believe they deserve to be ranked. Zenyatta too high? Blame too low? Fix it. Are the horses of yesteryear not given the respect they deserve? You now have the opportunity to have your opinion count. The more people that take an active interest and vote regularly, the better the rankings become. Are their horses that are high on the list that you are not too familiar with? Now is the time to find out more about them. In other words … have fun!
So I ask again, Who are the greatest horses of all-time?