Black Caviar is clearly the best sprinter, maybe the best racehorse, going around in Australia this week.
That much can be said with certainty.
Other than that, the age-old dilemma of comparing the past with the present applies to any assessment of Black Caviar and those horses who have gone before her.
But the temptation to line her up against the stars of other eras won’t be resisted in pubs and TABs and racecourses all around Australia.
The closest thing to a fact that can be attached to Black Caviar is that she is the world’s highest-ranked sprinter in training, as assessed by Timeform, the rightfully respected ratings agency.
That doesn’t include horses in much of the northern hemisphere where the better ones are still in the warmth of their barns.
Timeform has given Black Caviar a rating of 131, the ninth highest of any horse to race in Australia since figures were first compiled in 1960.
The top-ranked horse on that list is Tulloch with a rating of 138, even though his best came in 1957.
Among the sprinters of the past 50 years, Manikato ranks highest with Timeform at 136, followed by Vain on 134 with Black Caviar next ahead of Dual Choice and Placid Ark.
No doubt, the Timeform rankings will provoke conjecture.
Vain’s record as a pure sprinter will, for many, be hard to go past.
Vain won his first start, in the Maribyrnong Plate, by eight lengths, he won the 1969 Golden Slipper by four and the Champagne Stakes at Randwick by 10.
Returning as a three-year-old in 1970, his wins included the Craven A Stakes by 12 lengths and the Linlithgow Stakes by six.
While Vain extended to 1600m in the Caulfield Guineas, his only two defeats in his 14 starts came at that distance.
For consistency and longevity, Manikato may have the edge.
By today’s standards, he won 18 Group One races including five William Reid Stakes, four Futurities, three C F Orr Stakes and two Freeway Stakes.
He also won the Blue Diamond Stakes and the Golden Slipper in 1978 – and he did much of it on crook legs and with a dodgy heart.
Manikato also had versatility.
Like Vain, he won the Caulfield Guineas, but it also took a horse of the calibre of Dulcify to beat him over the 2000m of the Australian Cup.
One horse who doesn’t appear in the Timeform top five is Luskin Star.
The chestnut from Newcastle won eight of his first nine starts, including the Golden Slipper when trained by Max Lees.
After being transferred to Bart Cummings, he won two of Sydney’s biggest sprints, the Expressway Stakes and the Galaxy.
Everyone has their favourite and everyone has their opinion.
Many will say that Black Caviar could be as good as the best.
If she wins the Newmarket at Flemington on Saturday and then comes through the ambitious program trainer Peter Moody has set her through the coming months, it will be difficult for anyone to argue against her.
AAP
