"Next month's Breeders' Cup is in the Californian town of Arcadia, but it might have been hell for Sea The Stars, whose six-month pageant through European racing required no further embellishment ..."

"The point here is not to denigrate an admirable soon-to-be champion but to question the level of superlatives surrounding him and the seemingly different standards used to define greatness in American and European racing."

"In his lathered coat and refusal to settle early in the race, there were the faintest signs that the wonder horse's internal machinery was starting to clank and groan. But it was hard to defend that suspicion when he burst from the pack, arrow-like, and passed the lollipop two lengths in front. This was not a bloodstock deal, a betting coup or a prize-money grab. It was flesh and blood and beauty."

"Handicappers admittedly offer the one objective gauge against which new champions can be measured against the great names of the past. But they can make no allowance for the fact that different horses have different ways of showing scorn for their inferiors." The limitations of quantifying greatness.

"Here, as all of racing knows, is the distillation of everything breeders and owners and trainers have searched for over centuries."