Quote:
Originally Posted by cmorioles
And despite all the advances, we can't get horses to race more than every 5 or 6 weeks, at most. Call me skeptical that all these drugs do more good than harm.
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Seriously? If you are talking about the top horses it is completely by design. Blame Bobby Frankel and then Pletcher for that. Everybody reads sheets now, owners, trainers, racing managers, etc and as soon as a horse runs a big number the first thing they want to do is not run. Not because there is anything wrong with the horses but they want to "manage" them and avoid "regression" so they "give them time" and "space" races. Not to mention that once you get through a few conditions it is easy to run out of places to run. It is stupid and more harmful to horses than anything especially young ones because they dont gain experience training but hey dont blame the rest of us for that.
Look at the B and C level circuits and tell me horses can't run every 2 or 3 weeks. Sure there are guys like Walder who will wait 2 months with a 15000 claimer but he isnt not running because the horse cant, he is waiting for the absolute perfect condition. The fact that the condition books have changed with the normal claiming ladder mostly abandoned and the rise of the conditioned claimer has far more to do with horses running less than "drugs". How many times do you see trainers run a nw2 horse in a nw3 race? Almost never. So instead of running a horse in a open 10000 claimer and if they cant cut it drop to a 7500 race like it always was when we didnt have so many options, you wait for the 10000 nw2 race. Because the pool of horses for a nw2 race is much smaller than the pool for an open 10000 race it may take longer for the race to fill especially the two turn dirt races.
For the most part normal, everyday horses have no problem racing every few weeks. The idea that "drugs" have a negative effect on horses or doesnt allow them to run as much as they used to is stupid.