How good is this?

For all the lament dedicated to the premature retirement of the best 3-year-olds, the arguments, based in fact though they may be, that thoroughbreds do not reach physical maturity until later in life and that we are seldom permitted the luxury following the youthful stars of one year through careers of meaningful length, older horses somehow fail to ignite the imaginations of those whose decisions determine the structure of news budgets and therefore exposure of the sport's enduring stars in the mainstream media.

About a year ago, at a point just after the Belmont Stakes, while I personally and professionally was looking ahead to the summer at Saratoga, the Fall Championship Meeting at Belmont and the Breeders' Cup, the sports editor of a newspaper at which I was employed actually said this:  "All the big races are over."

This explains why I liberated myself from the newspaper business and the root of a larger problem for racing.  All the preaching is being done before the choir and many of the most memorable horses through the years did not win the Kentucky Derby, which seems to be perquisite nowadays for a greater degree of public recognition.

A week after the nation paused to witness Big Brown's ultimately ignominious failure to win the Belmont Stakes and the Triple Crown, a story that made the front pages of most major newspapers on the next morning and for weeks dominated the sports media in all its forms, Curlin  the best thoroughbred in the world and reigning American Horse of the Year  returned to competition in the Stephen Foster Handicap at Churchill Downs, his first appearance of the year in the United States.

Curlin, who has now won -- in succession -- the Jockey Club Gold Cup, Breeders' Cup Classic, two races in Dubai, including the World Cup, and the Stephen Foster Handicap, is the biggest star in racing, but unless you live in Kentucky there was probably no or at best scant coverage of his race either before or after the fact in your local paper.  Live television coverage was limited as it was on the day Curlin won the World Cup in Dubai with a performance that will be remembered as perhaps the best race Curlin has ever run on dirt.

Not since Cigar, whose record-equaling winning streak was about a dozen-races-long before he began attracting attention outside the core audience in the mid 1990s, has a champion older than three piqued the interest of mainstream news executives.  Invasor, a champion in Uruguay, the United States and winner of the Dubai World Cup in 2007 before an unfortunate, injury-necessitated retirement at age 5, was undoubtedly the best horse in the world at the time and arguably the best to race in the United States since Spectacular Bid pillaged the season of 1980, but was also the best-kept secret in racing.

Invasor, meanwhile, was a heroic figure in Uruguay, where he was undefeated at age three. His races here were major news events in South America.  But Invasor did not win the Kentucky Derby and after the horse that did, Barbaro, was injured in the Preakness no other racing story mattered in 2006.  Invasor's name never registered with news executives here even after he has won the Breeders' Cup Classic and was voted Horse of the Year. Pity.

Now Curlin is about to embark upon a potentially historic and certainly unprecedented campaign that quite possibly will carry him into retirement in a blaze of glory never before experienced by American racing interests.  Majority owner Jess Jackson, who told reporters at Churchill Downs after the Stephen Foster that Curlin is, "not fully defined," and trainer Steve Asmussen have targeted the most prestigious race run in Europe, the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe.

How good is this?

The plan is to work Curlin on the lawn at Churchill Dows, then point to a race on what Asmussen called a European-style course, most likely among the alternatives the July 12 Man o' War at Belmont Park, which is a Grade I worth $500,000 and, in 1973 and then run in autumn, was won by Secretariat in his turf-course debut. If all goes well, Curlin will be sent to historic and picturesque Chantilly to prepare for the Arc and would have prep in the Prix Foy.

Since  1962, when Carry Back, the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner of the previous year, was sent to the Arc and finished 10th, no American horse of Curlin's stature has attempted this.  Curlin  not Big Brown's foot -- is the most important racing story of the 2008 season. A victory in France would probably stand up as the racing story of the decade.  But it is highly unlikely that that the Arc will be seen live on American television let alone the Prix Foy, and even more unlikely that newspaper editors who sent hundreds of people to the Belmont Stakes will be dispatching reporters to Paris to cover the bigger story of  Curlin's race at Longchamp.

A year ago, Dylan Thomas, regarded then as the best horse in the world, won the Arc before suffering defeat in the Breeders' Cup Turf, which has been a target of many Longchamp veterans since the great mare All Along ran in both the Arc, which she had won a year before, and the inaugural Breeders' Cup Turf in 1984. The Breeders' Cup Turf is also perfect final American objective for Curlin.

Tiznow, the first to win consecutive runnings of the Breeders' Cup Classic, has been there and done that. Curlin could become the first horse ever to win both the Breeders' Cup Classic and Turf, a unique accomplishment that would that would stand the test of time perhaps as long as Secretariat's standing records.

Curlin is positioned perfectly to stamp himself as one of the all-time greats in American racing.  His every race is hugely important to that goal and at the moment it all appears to be within the realm of possibility. Based on what he has done already, nothing is beyond Curlin's reach. "I can't tell you how incredible it is to watch him lengthen his stride," Asmussen told reporters after the Stephen Foster.

Certainly, this is something that should be seen and appreciated by a wider audience.

Paul Moran is a two-time winner of the Media Eclipse Award, and has received various honors from the National Association of Newspaper Editors, Society of Silurians, Long Island Press Club and Long Island Veterinary Medical Association. He has also been given the Red Smith Award for his coverage of the Kentucky Derby. Paul maintains paulmoranattheraces.blogspot.com and can be contacted at paulmoran47@hotmail.com.