I thought it was an interesting comment by Lauren Stitch on ATR today: 50 years ago, it wasn't a radical idea to run a horse back after two weeks and then run again after another three. Trainers ran their horses into condition, so horses were used to running with little time in between.
Today's trainers have gotten away from that. They run their horses every four or five weeks, and you are lucky if a horse runs a dozen races in one year.
Maybe the problem isn't the spacing of the races or the distances. Maybe the problem is that today's training methods aren't conducive to keeping a horse sharp enough to run three races in five weeks. Should the Triple Crown change just to suit the changes in training and conditioning?
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