Re: Follow Up -- Let's have a dispassionate look, ...
by John Harris
Okay -- then, … for discussion purposes, let's get a time machine and we'll all go back to 1988, to pick up Mike Tyson when he was in his ring fighting prime (Tyson being the stand-in here for Secretariat).
You can help pick any local U.S. high school boxing champion then or now (that fellow being here the stand-in functional performance equivalent of Secretariat's opposition in the Belmont Stakes) and -- when Tyson knocks out the hapless high school champ in the time span of 0.002/100ths of a second in the first round, we can all proclaim the feat as being one of the greatest and most devastating sports accomplishments in the history of the world.
With all my best regards!!
P/s -- to respectfully address your rhetorically stated question ... with one such example: Damascus racing at 1-1/4 miles in the Travers Stakes bested his field of unremarkable runners by 22 lengths. Had the Travers been stretched out to a full 1-1/2 miles (the distance of Secretariat's Belmont), Damascus easily would have tacked on an additional 10 or more lengths, over the next quarter-mile, to greatly increase his winning margin to beyond 31 lengths.
