Blame, not Zenyatta, deserves top honor

An outraged Zenyatta fan butted in on a conversation last June at Churchill Downs. "I couldn't help overhearing you,'' he told me, "but if you think Rachel Alexandra deserved to be Horse of the Year, you don't know much about racing.''

I almost said I voted for her, but I didn't want to risk getting slugged.

Five months later at Churchill, a West Coast-based writer said that if Zenyatta won the Breeders' Cup Classic, the undefeated 6-year-old mare definitely would be "the greatest horse of all time.''

I said, "All time is a pretty long time." He sneered as if I'd insulted his mother and said, "You must be from New York, right?'' The next day we made eye contact and he glared with contempt. Why so serious? It's just dark brown horses running in a circle.

Yet to Zenyatta's zealots, this was way more than a megabucks race. Even many in the media took it very personally. When Blame held off Zenyatta by a head after a cosmic stretch duel, a radio guy hurled his program against a pillar in the press box. A writer proclaimed that only fools didn't think Zenyatta was Horse of the Year.

For once, I wisely kept quiet, but last month, I cast my ballot for Blame, who won 4 of 5 races. (Zenyatta was 5-for-6.) Tomorrow night at 9:30, the results of voting by racing writers, broadcasters, executives and Daily Racing Form staffers will be announced live on TVG and ESPN News.

If Zenyatta is denied again, venom will be spewed throughout the blogosphere. If Blame wins, I hope nobody throws any fine china at the elegant Fontainebleau Miami Beach, site of the Eclipse Awards ceremony. My gut feeling is he won't. As usual, passion will sweep away cold logic.

When the opinions of alleged experts determine a champion, it can lead to craziness. The only requirement for Horse of the Year is to run once that year in North America. It helps to win the Classic, as Zenyatta did in 2009, but she was snubbed even though Rachel Alexandra skipped it. And Queen Z could be passed over again after barely falling short of a repeat.

Zenyatta's perfection and charisma hooked thousands who never cared about racing. Blame didn't do that, and he's no horse for the ages.

"I think we should never forget the fans and what they mean to racing,'' Zenyatta's classy owner, Jerry Moss, said Thursday. "When you draw 45,000 to Oaklawn Park on a Friday afternoon, it means a lot of people want to see you.

"But I don't think she should get Horse of the Year because of her popularity, but because of what she accomplished time and again on the racetrack. With everything this great horse did over the past three years, I think it would be ridiculous if she weren't rewarded with one Horse of the Year award.''

You can't say she doesn't deserve an Oscar for lifetime achievement, and if she doesn't get it, part of me will feel bad. Daily Racing Form publisher Steven Crist called Zenyatta "The Horse of the Last Three Years Combined'' but voted for Blame. The Louisville Courier-Journal's Jennie Rees did, too, but said she was rooting for Zenyatta.

I considered voting for Zenyatta, and I'll use a football analogy to explain why I didn't. The 2007 Patriots were 18-0 before losing the Super Bowl on a last-minute touchdown. They dominated that season, but the underdog Giants won the showdown and got the ring.

That's why they play the games and run the races: To see who's better. The Courier-Journal's headline said it all: "Blame the winner.''