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

[Rupert Pupkin]

[quote=Phalaris1913]You gave us three horses from 20 years ago that were by reasonable definition not raced sparingly: multiple times they had come back on short rest and two of them had 10+ starts at 3. Your job was to come up with horses that were major stakes horses at 2, 3 and 4 which were raced sparingly. Perhaps this battle is mainly over respective definitions of "sparingly" but I will define "sparingly" as "typical of 21st century G1 horses - fewer than 4 starts at 2, maybe a half-dozen starts per year thereafter spaced widely." After all, this whole thread is about what widely spaced schedules have done to racing. Have at it. Find us some.

In the meantime, I'll trot out some examples of horses who somehow, miraculously, survived campaigns you say that horses can't handle.

The old American Racing Manuals had an interesting feature. They used to include the past performances of all the horses rated on the Experimental and Free handicaps in the early 1960s. Let's see what kind of race records that the horses who were good enough to make the Experimental Handicap at 2 and the Free Handicap at 3 and 4 had:

Foals of 1957
Colts and Geldings
All Hands - 9 starts at 2, 17 starts at 3, 13 starts at 4
April Skies - 9 starts at 2, 23 starts at 3, 18 starts at 4
Bourbon Prince - 12 stars at 2, 11 starts at 3, 15 starts at 4
Conestoga - 11 starts at 2, 17 starts at 3, 9 starts at 4
Count Amber - 15 starts at 2, 17 starts at 3, 10 starts at 4
Heroshogala - 15 starts at 2, 21 starts at 3, 21 starts at 4
New Policy - 11 starts at 2, 16 starts at 3, 12 starts at 4
Pied d'Or - 13 starts at 2, 19 starts at 3, 21 starts at 4
Run for Nurse - 21 starts at 2, 18 starts at 3, 19 starts at 4
T.V. Lark - 14 starts at 2, 23 starts at 3, 18 starts at 4
Fillies
Airmans Guide - 6 starts at 2, 4 starts at 3, 10 starts at 4
Darling June - 11 starts at 2, 10 starts at 3, 15 starts at 4
Evening Glow - 7 starts at 2, 5 starts at 3, 17 starts at 4
Make Sail - 4 starts at 2, 19 starts at 3, 18 starts at 4
My Dear Girl - 7 starts at 2, 11 starts at 3, 2 starts at 4
Rash Statement - 12 starts at 2, 17 starts at 3, 17 starts at 4
Sarcastic - 8 starts at 2, 14 starts at 3, 10 starts at 4
Undulation - 3 starts at 2, 10 starts at 3, 4 starts at 4

You misunderstood what BB was asking me. He was saying that there are no good trainers any more and that the proof is that these trainers can't keep their horses in top form in their 2,3, and 4 year old years. I was saying that there are tons of horses out there that run great in their 2, 3, and 4 year old years. There may not be any horses that have won both the BC Juvenille and KY Derby but there have been plenty of horses that ran really well for at least two if not three years straight years. Off the top of my head, I was trying to think of BC Classic horses that ran well in Triple Crown races. There have been a ton of them. The only reason I named Alysheba and Ferdidnad is beacuse I remebered that they ran against each ohter in the BC classic when one of them was a 3 year old and the other was a 4 year old and BB asked about 4 year olds in addition to 3 year olds.

I don't know why you keep bringing up what happened 50 years ago. Nobody disputes what happened 50 years ago. These are different times. In baseball, I think pitchers used to pitch more 50 years ago. I don't know why. I think they pitch less now, yet they still seem to have a ton of problems with their arms. I'm not sure why but I don't think the solution to arm problesm today would be for the pitchers to pitch even more. I'm sure that would make their arms worse.

Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin

The goal of every trainer out there is for his horses to make as much money as they can on the track. The only exception to this rule is the rare horse that is worth millions for breeding.

Very, very naive.

All it takes is one big syndication deal ... and the trainer's share is enough to fix him up for life.

Sure it's nice to train winners of $1,000,000 and make $100,000 ... but it's a lot of hard work and you certainly can't be financially secure from it.

But get that $40,000,000 syndication deal ... and you make a few million in one swoop ... the equivalent of 25 years of toiling in the salt mines.

That's the main objective of today's trainers of G1-level horses ... win that one big one ... and start the negotiations.

Originally Posted by Cannon Shell

Cy Young won 511 games,,,pitched 7000+ innings...last one as a 44 year old...were you there for it?

No ... remember I'm from Brooklyn ...

... I gave all my advice to Dazzy Vance.

Originally Posted by Cannon Shell

I would like to take in Todd Pletchers yearly income on stallions seasons from horses he's trained.

Bingo ...

... that's exactly the business he's in.

Why develop horses into professional athletes at classic distances ... when you can make big bucks foisting off fragile sprinters on eager breeders ... who know they in turn can clean up with their pretty foals at yearling auctions attended by the ever-multiplying mega-rich of the world?

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

There?

He was catching.

Ha Ha Ha ...

... the joke's on you ... I'm left-handed ... I was playing first base.

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by Phalaris1913

(continued from previous post)



If you have a horse who is already unsound, of course you do not race or train. You put him away until he's right and spend the time it's going to take before he's ready to approach speed work again. (That could be several months if he's gone more than a month or so without work at near top speed.) If he's never going to be reasonably right, given that most athletes of any description have minor issues, retire him. If his career was shortened by inherent problems that may be congenital, geld him. But it's dead wrong that avoiding high speed work is the way to prevent injury in the horse. You want to prevent athletic injury in the racehorse? Don't race him. If you are going to race a horse, you are morally obligated to use only specimens who can handle the demand and then train them in an appropriate manner to do that which we ask of them, and researchers tell us that nothing prepares a horse for high speed work except high speed work.

There is nothing more important in all of horse racing than to ensure the best possible safety for its equine participants. Without horses who can competently and safely race, there is no horse racing. No sport. No gambling vehicle, nothing. And the horses have no say about their involvement; they can do nothing but rely upon us to do the right thing by them. It's inexcusable to pursue policies which either directly or indirectly result in increased injury risk to racehorses. It is impossible to construct a humane argument supporting a practice which ultimately causes more horses to get hurt than some other alternate practice. If ever it can be demonstrated a given practice correlates to more injury than some other practice, those of us in any position to study the matter are obligated to investigate, and, if necessary, recommend the abandonment of - or at least seriously question - bad practices.

Is that all ivory-tower stuff? You bet. Here in the real world, money matters more than the risk of racehorses getting hurt and there are a lot of practices that are likely detrimental to horses which are all about lining pockets. Until those practices no longer bring in the money, there will be little impetus to change them. I can stand here and shout in the darkness for the rest of my natural life to no avail if that doesn't happen. But I know that I'm doing the right thing by looking for answers and speaking up when I think I have something to contribute.

I am often accused of being on the side of trying to break down horses because I realize that among other things, light racing schedules are associated with injury-shortened careers. Yes, that could be because physically troubled animals are raced less often, but it doesn't explain - if racing is inherently destructive to horses - why sounder horses that race more often are not necessarily compromised by their more strenuous campaigns. I've been studying this problem for over 15 years and I still don't have an answer. I am always working on studying various risk factors to refine what is, and isn't, likely to be part of the problem. (I just discovered last night, for example, that over a recent nine-year period, horses which are destined to break down in a race average about a month younger in age than the general population when they have their first start in a race at a distance more than a mile.) But what is definitely part of the problem is refusal to accept that there is a problem, that it's getting worse, and that it could possibly be associated with any of an endless list of changes that have occurred since there was less of a problem. When most people realize that they're on the wrong road, they turn around and go back to look for where they made a wrong turn. In horse racing, no one seems remotely interested in where the wrong turn was, or where the right road is now - they just keep on going, or even turn off in new, even more wrong, directions, while inventing new destinations as they go to justify their actions. It's astonishing how many people who do sincerely care for the welfare of the horse are so dead-set on persevering with methods that seem comparatively less successful at keeping racehorses safe and sound. And I'm the bad guy (er, girl). Go figure.

Theoretically, knowing that horses are perfectly capable of much more than we ask of them today, the fact that so many of them are too unsound to train or run indicates a problem. In a horse without predisposing physical issues, that problem very possibly lies in the training, racing and other preparation to which it was subjected before that unsoundness surfaced. Although I have come to some conclusions of what are good ideas and what aren't, I'm not a horse trainer and I'm not going to lecture on what training should be. However, the people who trained the horses on the lists above are horse trainers and while most of them are not alive today to tell us their views, ample records exist for us to inspect and theorize how these - and countless other horses of lesser repute - did just fine through campaigns some would have us believe are impossible.

You are right. I agree with your quote, "The fact that so many horses are too unsound to train or run indicates a problem." I agree with you 100%. I don't know what the problem is either. I don't know if it's the breed or the track surfaces or what. But I do know that there aren't very many sound horses out there. Many of these horses were horses who were trained really hard early in their two year old year at the two year old sales. So you can't say that they are unsound because of a lack of activity as a 2 year old.

All of my experience as both a handicapper and as an owner/racing manager over the past 25 years is that the harder they are on 2 year olds, the less chance there is that they will be winning big races as an older horse. I am sure that trend will continue. You won't see many horses winning the BC Classic that ran 20 times between their 2 and 3 year old years.

By the way, I think a relatively sound 3 year old or a 4 year old can run more than 6 times a year. I don't see any reason why you can't run them 7-8 times a year. I would always give them at least 4 weeks between races.

Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin

You misunderstood what BB was asking me. He was saying that there are no good trainers any more and that the proof is that these trainers can't keep their horses in top form in their 2,3, and 4 year old years. I was saying that there are tons of horses out there that run great in their 2, 3, and 4 year old years. There may not be any horses that have won both the BC Juvenille and KY Derby but there have been plenty of horses that ran really well for at least two if not three years straight years.

And yet ... and yet ...

... you still haven't provided a single example of a colt who has been developed into a multiple-year champion or near champion ... by a trainer who has employed the "spacing" and "fresh horse" method.

Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin

You are right. I agree with your quote, "The fact that so many horses are too unsound to train or run indicates a problem." I agree with you 100%. I don't know what the problem is either. I don't know if it's the breed or the track surfaces or what. But I do know that there aren't very many sound horses out there. Many of these horses were horses who were trained really hard early in their two year old year at the two year old sales. So you can't say that they are unsound because of a lack of activity as a 2 year old.

All of my experience as both a handicapper and as an owner/racing manager over the past 25 years is that the harder they are on 2 year olds, the less chance there is that they will be winning big races as an older horse. I am sure that trend will continue. You won't see many horses winning the BC Classic that ran 20 times between their 2 and 3 year old years.

By the way, I think a relatively sound 3 year old or a 4 year old can run more than 6 times a year. I don't see any reason why you can't run them 7-8 times a year. I would always give them at least 4 weeks between races.

You're completely avoiding the issue ...

... we're provided dozens and dozens of examples of G1-level horses who thrived on 12, 15, even 20 starts per year over multiple years ...

... and yet you can't provide a single example of one who has thrived on the "spaced out" regimen.

Who do you think is getting the best of this discussion?

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by Bold Brooklynite

Very, very naive.

All it takes is one big syndication deal ... and the trainer's share is enough to fix him up for life.

Sure it's nice to train winners of $1,000,000 and make $100,000 ... but it's a lot of hard work and you certainly can't be financially secure from it.

But get that $40,000,000 syndication deal ... and you make a few million in one swoop ... the equivalent of 25 years of toiling in the salt mines.

That's the main objective of today's trainers of G1-level horses ... win that one big one ... and start the negotiations.

You obviously did not read my post. I was not talking about horses that are worth tens of millions. I was talking about the other 99.9% of horses out there. By the way, even with the huge deals the trainers usually don't make big money unless the owners are very generous. The trainer will usually just get 1 share in the horse. With a really good horse like Saint Liam, Dutrow would make much more money if the horse kept on running. He's not going to make much from having 1 share in the horse. How much is 1 share worth in Saint Liam worth? Maybe $100,000. When the horse won the BC Classic, Dutrow made $300,000 in one day.

Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin

You obviously did not read my post. I was not talking about horses that are worth tens of millions. I was talking about the other 99.9% of horses out there. By the way, even with the huge deals the trainers usually don't make big money unless the owners are very generous. The trainer will usually just get 1 share in the horse.

That's not the way it works ...

... trainers usually get 2 - 4 shares ... making a $1,000,000 per share syndication worth $2-4 million for the trainer ...

... and it takes most trainers and awful lot of years to make that sort of money.

Meanwhile ... where is your football-field-long list of horses who have had multi-year championships or near-championships from a race-spacing regimen?

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by Bold Brooklynite

You're completely avoiding the issue ...

... we're provided dozens and dozens of examples of G1-level horses who thrived on 12, 15, even 20 starts per year over multiple years ...

... and yet you can't provide a single example of one who has thrived on the "spaced out" regimen.

Who do you think is getting the best of this discussion?

What are you talking about? Practically every single horse out there does it my way. Pleasantly Perfect, Ghostzapper, Saint Liam, etc.

Practically every horse that wins the BC Classic these days is lightly raced. A lot of the good 2 and 3 year olds never make it to the BC Classic because they are either retired or mishandled. I think that the Triple Crown races are practically criminal in this day and age. I think it's nuts to run a horse in the Derby, then two weeks later in the Preakness, and then 3 weeks later at 1 1/2 miles in the Belmont. It kills most horses. Even an iron horse like smarty Jones couldn't handle it. He came out of it hurt. Afleet Alex came out of it hurt. Funny Cide was never really the same. I don't think War Emblem was ever the same. They need to add an extra week between each Triple Crown race. I think this would make a huge difference.

[Cannon Shell]

Originally Posted by Bold Brooklynite

That's not the way it works ...

... trainers usually get 2 - 4 shares ... making a $1,000,000 per share syndication worth $2-4 million for the trainer ...

... and it takes most trainers and awful lot of years to make that sort of money.

Meanwhile ... where is your football-field-long list of horses who have had multi-year championships or near-championships from a race-spacing regimen?

Why would you want a multi-year championship when so much money is available in the breeding shed without it ?

I mean you want evidence to prove your theory even though you agree that there is no incentive to campaign like you want horses to.

[blackthroatedwind]

I wouldn't suggest this is the only reason, by any stretch of the imagination, but isn't there some concern that one reason many of these horses have such well spaced campaigns is often the recovery time from whatever medication they may be using is substantial?

[Cannon Shell]

Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin

What are you talking about? Practically every single horse out there does it my way. Pleasantly Perfect, Ghostzapper, Saint Liam, etc.

Practically every horse that wins the BC Classic these days is lightly raced. A lot of the good 2 and 3 year olds never make it to the BC Classic because they are either retired or mishandled. I think that the Triple Crown races are practically criminal in this day and age. I think it's nuts to run a horse in the Derby, then two weeks later in the Preakness, and then 3 weeks later at 1 1/2 miles in the Belmont. It kills most horses. Even an iron horse like smarty Jones couldn't handle it. He came out of it hurt. Afleet Alex came out of it hurt. Funny Cide was never really the same. I don't think War Emblem was ever the same. They need to add an extra week between each Triple Crown race. I think this would make a huge difference.

But the truth of the matter is most of those horses could have come back as 4 year olds if there was not so much money available as stallion prospects. Their success level at 4 would be unknown.
BB wants evidence that he is right and you are wrong but there is no evidence because the game changed. Like it or not, for better or worse, the game changed.

[Cajungator26]

Since we're on the discussion of soundness, I want to know which stallions are the best to go to for SOUNDNESS. The day I own a racehorse, I want one that isn't fragile.

[Cannon Shell]

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

I wouldn't suggest this is the only reason, by any stretch of the imagination, but isn't there some concern that one reason many of these horses have such well spaced campaigns is often the recovery time from whatever medication they may be using is substantial?

Recovery time from the medication itself?

[Cannon Shell]

Originally Posted by Cajungator26

Since we're on the discussion of soundness, I want to know which stallions are the best to go to for SOUNDNESS. The day I own a racehorse, I want one that isn't fragile.

The stallion is only 1/2 of the equation.

[blackthroatedwind]

Originally Posted by Cannon Shell

Recovery time from the medication itself?

In essense. Basically I'm suspicious in general, and the fact that we often see dramatic improvements in horses who subsequently hold that form for one, or maybe two races, and then often disappear for what may be quite a while, if not forever, makes me think that medications that improve performance also take a heavy toll on the horses. Thus I figure the spacing between races is somewhat related.

I'm probably just overly paranoid.

[Phalaris1913]

Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin

You misunderstood what BB was asking me. He was saying that there are no good trainers any more and that the proof is that these trainers can't keep their horses in top form in their 2,3, and 4 year old years. I was saying that there are tons of horses out there that run great in their 2, 3, and 4 year old years. There may not be any horses that have won both the BC Juvenille and KY Derby but there have been plenty of horses that ran really well for at least two if not three years straight years. Off the top of my head, I was trying to think of BC Classic horses that ran well in Triple Crown races. There have been a ton of them. The only reason I named Alysheba and Ferdidnad is beacuse I remebered that they ran against each ohter in the BC classic when one of them was a 3 year old and the other was a 4 year old and BB asked about 4 year olds in addition to 3 year olds.

I don't know why you keep bringing up what happened 50 years ago. Nobody disputes what happened 50 years ago. These are different times. In baseball, I think pitchers used to pitch more 50 years ago. I don't know why. I think they pitch less now, yet they still seem to have a ton of problems with their arms. I'm not sure why but I don't think the solution to arm problesm today would be for the pitchers to pitch even more. I'm sure that would make their arms worse.

None of those trainers were involved with Alysheba, et al, nor were they examples of products of current training regimes. Not to put words in his mouth, but I pretty sure BB doesn't doubt that horses can be good at 2, 3 and 4 - the question is whether the current infatuation with racing horses as infrequently as possible has a track record of producing horses that can.

I ran a query and got the names of the horses who have won or placed at the G1 level at 2, 3 and 4 who were born over the last 10 years (picked arbitrarily to reflect a trend that is very recent). It's not a very long list and it's not full of horses who seemingly fit the "sparing" model of a couple of starts at 2 and distantly spaced, handful of starts thereafter. Perhaps you would have in mind a different set of criteria and if you do, I can run queries like that until the proverbial cows come home.

I brought up older data, in this case from the early 1960s, because it is pertinent, as much as you'd like to think otherwise. Apologists for the current situation are very fond of going on about how different everything is now, as if racing before last Tuesday might as well have been heat racing contested by offspring of Lexington out of Glencoe mares. Of course it's different - it's different because of accumulated changes in practice. We are merely seeing the latest development of four decades of unhealthy trends toward big money for bloodstock and reduced racing of horses. Do you think the horses you're betting on are the first-generation descendants of horses placed on this planet by aliens? No, they're the second, third and fourth generation descendants of horses of the 1960s who were perfectly capable of doing the things that BB and I are talking about. Despite the best efforts to breed horses that should be culled, a good number of today's horses could also do these things if they had been prepared properly to do them. The reason that they cannot is in large part because preparation, training and racing of horses has changed, not because the horses have changed. In 40 years, there has not been massive genetic drift from "horses that can" to "horses that can't." It doesn't happen that way.

The same physics that applied to thoroughbred racehorses of the 1960s apply to thoroughbred racehorses of 2006. If racing were inherently destructive, then it would've been just as destructive to those foals of the late 1950s as it is now. Why wasn't it? That's the question. There was nothing magical about those horses that made them impervious to injury, there was just a combination of factors that made them better able to withstand the job of being a racehorse.

Not all of those factors can be laid at the feet of training practices. As I said in an early post on this thread, perhaps those foals bred by breeder/owners left to play at pasture instead of stalled arrived at the track with stronger legs. Maybe the tracks were softer. There are different drugs in play today, but don't forget that bute was legal in some jurisdictions when the horses on those lists were running, and in those days, drug testing wasn't nearly as able to detect violations with the drugs that were available.

However, there are conspicuous differences in the way that well-intended horses were trained and raced and it is reasonable to investigate which, if any, of those changes are correlated to longer, more successful, more injury-free careers. To my eyes, these are glaring changes, and there are experimentally determined facts about horses which call into question the wisdom of some of these changes.

[Cajungator26]

Originally Posted by Cannon Shell

The stallion is only 1/2 of the equation.

I understand that, thanks.

Let me rephrase myself. IF I had a nice, SOUND mare to breed, which stallion should I consider?