THe mid-late 1980s was the peak of the TB production boom that saw nearly 50K horses a year registered. We are now down to something in the lower 30K range. (I'm relying on memory here, since I'm over in England without my library so I could be out a bit.) There were more horses around to fill races in 1992.
PS. the number of races has gone down to accomodate the lesser number of horses born, but the number of stakes races, and especially graded stakes races, has NOT. So we now have the expanded stakes schedules of the 80s, with the lower crop numbers of the 00s.
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