"Spaced" Races And "Fresh" Horses Are Killing The Sport

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by somerfrost

Not sure where that came from? The post qualified the theory as pertaining to top horses which you seem to agree with. Certainly trainers want their horses to race...my point, and I'll stick to mine and let others address theirs, is that because of insane breeding practices, the thoroughbred of today is too fragile to withstand long campaigns and frequent work!

By the way, I think that trainers are smart to run their top horses sparingly. It's really hard to keep horses sound and the top trainers know this. If you have a really good horse that looks like he has a good chance to win the Breeder's Cup and that race is your main goal, you would not plan the race to be your horse's 10th start of the year. You would want your horse to be at or near his peak on BC day. Therefore, you would not want the BC to be the horse's 10th race of a long, hard campaign. You would obviously want your horse to come into the race relatively fresh.

For all of you geniuses who think that horses can run 15 times a year, you should go and buy some horses and try it.