Oh trust me dude, I'm not.
You can't take poorly crafted sections of a game and say "Oh its like that because its supposed to be HARD. Man up!"
Saying because the races are incredibly broken and unrealistically unfair to the player that was the way they were meant to be and it makes it harder is not an excuse for a poorly crafted system.
Look at the races in San Andreas. At times they were ball bustingly hard, but they weren't unbeatable. The races in Read Dead Redemption were just a chore, that left me with sore fingers and gritted teeth.
Also, how in the hell am I supposed to know that the horse you break near the beginning of the game is supposed to be the best horse in the game? This is literally like 10 MINUTES into the game! Nothing ever pops up to tell you, so unless you cheat and go online to get a strategy guide(which I only did because I couldnt beat the race...2 HOURS AFTER ID GOTTEN RID OF THE HORSE!), theres no real way of knowing that you are giving up the best horse in the game. And then, when you do realize the horse you have is not up to the task, what can you do? People without any guides aren't going to know where the bastards are, so they'll be utterly lost. And even if you do have a guide, its practically a 1 in a million shot.
Again, I'm not saying that the game isnt fantastic. It is for damn sure, but I stopped playing the game and took it back because of that, and I've stuck through **** before that some consider harder. I can't imagine what a casual player may have done.