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Originally Posted by Phalaris1913
For the record, Alysheba, Gate Dancer and Ferdinand raced 20 years ago. Ferdinand is not really the greatest example of classic winners being important in the fall of their 3YO season, since he didn't run again after the Belmont until late December, but I'll talk about him anyway. They each had at least four starts at 2 and three pre-Derby starts at 3, and none ran nine furlongs before April. Alysheba's final Derby prep was nine days before the Derby and Gate Dancer's was 14 - both very common prior to the 1990s. (For the benefit of newcomers, most major Derby preps used to be run closer to the classics; the SA Derby, which has been run at about the end of March or beginning of April for decades, is a notable exception, but it used to be quite typical for horses to run in another race between it and the Derby.) Gate Dancer and Alysheba, both second across the line in the Classic as 3YOS, had 11 and 10 starts at 3, respectively. Both had their final preps in September but received their comeuppance at the hands of a horse who had had his final Classic prep within the last two weeks. Alysheba and Gate Dancer each had run back on 14 days or less three times before he stepped into the gate for the Kentucky Derby (not counting that the Derby start itself was on 14 days rest or less), Ferdinand twice.
Is trotting out 20-year-old examples of horses who were often run back on relatively short rest the best you can do to support the idea that the widely spaced campaigns currently in vogue is good for producing long-term careers?
While these horses did not have the testing 2YO campaigns that made champions of Affirmed and Spectacular Bid, they are not poster children for the great new way, and attempts to use them as such are disingenuous at best. It would be more pertinent to offer examples of classic winners who had one or two starts at 2, one race in the two months prior to the Derby and five or six starts as a 3YO, who were beating, or at least almost beating, open company in important races in the fall as 3YOs and remained high-class at 4. Let's hear about those.
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What are you talking about? Practically every horse out out there today does it the right way. The original question had to do with horses winning big races at 2,3, and 4. If there aren't any, then that makes your argument even weaker. It would mean that what I'm saying is not extreme enough. I'm saying that a horse can last and stay in top form as a 2, 3 , and 4 year old if they are raced sparingly. If I am wrong, and a horse can't stay in top form for 3 straight years running sparingly, then they certainly can't stay in top form for 3 years straight running 15 times a year. That's the stupidest thing I ever heard.
Anyway, if you look at the winner of the BC Classics the last few years, horses like Ghostzapper, Saint Liam, and Pleasntly Perfect were all lightly raced. They are even more extreme cases than what I'm talking about. These horses would support the argument that if you want to win the big handicap races, you should run even less often as a young horse than I recommend. It just shows how hard it is to keep horses sound these days. Unlike the old days, horses today are bred for speed rather than soundness.
Ghostzapper was a great horse but he wasn't very sound. Frankel couldn't run him very often. I don't even understand what you are saying. If you have a horse who has an injury, do you think that you can just whale on him and nothing will happen? If you had a sore ankle, what do you think would happen if you went out and sprinted on it? It would obviously get much worse. If you have a horse like Ghostzapper who has soundness issues, you have to treat him with kid gloves. You don't have a choice. If you drill him fast in the morning and try to run him every three weeks, he would last for about one or two races. It's not rocket science. As I said before, if you had a sprained ankle but you were trying to somehow run in a race in a month from now, the best thing for you to do would be to rest the ankle. If you went out and sprinted tomorrow, you would make your ankle worse and you woud lessen your chances of having any chance to make the race next month. With a very high percentage of horses these days, that is the type of thing that trainers are dealing with from day one. The horses are not very sound and you need to be very careful with them. There's not any question as to what would happen if you push them harder. If you push them harder, they will fall apart. There isn't a 99% chance that an unsound horse will get worse the harder you push him. There is a 100% chance. If you have an injury and you ignore the injury and put extreme stress on the injured area, the injury will get worse. There's no doubt about it.