Mental and emotional preparation - those sure are some fuzzy things to quantify. In every other sport, we focus on equating the one thing we can control - physical exposure to the sport. Again, it is odd that horse racing has chosen not to do this and it leaves many casual observers scratching their heads.
As for the “three-race” requirement, by your logic, having qualifying trials and heats in other racing sports is ludicrous, but yet, everyone seems to agree this is the best way to do it. I don’t understand why there is such resistance and hostility toward bringing horse racing “up to date.” Every other sport aligns financial incentives with winning (you keep winning, you make more money and if you lose, you’re out) but horse racing has aligned the biggest financial incentives in the sport’s biggest races with being the “spoiler.”
If horses must be in all three races and only the “best” advance, please explain to me how this is considered the best form of competition in every other sport but is somehow “not competition” in horse racing. What exactly is anti-competitive about you win, you’re in, you lose/sit-out, you’re out?
First of all, there are win-and-in races now for the Breeder’s Cup. Which is truly the only thing close to real championships, not the TC series.
Second of all, you just do not get it. Horses are not the same as humans. You cannot expect a horse to head into a whole schedule and make it all. Likely they will bow out and lose the entry fee for many and then DQ for the end game. That is not fair when the animal is injured or ailing. And that happens frequently, partly exactly because the horse cannot communicate and the humans started him when he wasn’t actually all well. It is not the same as human athletes.
I like the old point system for the entire year, but that is gone probably because it did not account for all the variables. But it did point to annual honors, helping to pick best horses not by stakes won but by scoring. Tweak a bit and it would be a good thing.