The 3-year-old males

[King Glorious]

Originally Posted by Betsy

If all the trainers feel that 2 starts is enough, then maybe it is.........times change. Don't you think that 3 starts is pushing it ? Didn't Northern Dancer's trainer (for some reason, I'm totally blanking, but I know him) say "never squeeze the lemon dry"?

No, I absolutely don't feel that two starts is enough. I think they should run 6-8 times as 2yos and the Derby should be a fourth start MINIMUM as a 3yo. Times may change but basic principles of conditioning and muscle training remain the same. You have to get your body ready if you are going to ask it to do something. Horses are athletes too and once you reach your peak, you stay in it with activity not inactivity. I think that's why you see a lot of Derby winners come back with really strong Preakness performances in only two weeks, which seems to fly in the face of modern thinking that you need 6-8 weeks to recover from a huge effort. I think that racing is a lot like other sports in that it's a copy-cat game. It worked for one so now everyone wants to do it and then, as I said earlier, they all end up in the same underconditioned boat and then it's no longer a disadvantage to any of them. I bet if a horse ran five preps this year and then won the Derby, next year, you'd see more with three or four as the pendelum would start to swing back again.