What the hell would it hurt?

[Derby2004]

What would it hurt if the triple crown was pushed for 4 year olds? Can anyone give valid reasons as to how it would hurt the industry? Oh no, people have to wait an extra year for their fragile superstars to bring 6 or 7 figures at the sales, the world is ending. And then of course there's the tradition of the whole triple crown. It's been this way for over 100 years. True, but the horses today aren't weren't they were 100 years ago. We have the softest horses ever thanks to careless breeding. When a stallion or mare is defined by how fast it worked a furlong at the two year old sale, and completely overlooking the fact that said horse broke a damn leg in his 4th or 5th start, is not ethical breeding. But by God, he won a six furlong maiden race in 1:08 and change, so let's put a 20k stud fee on him and breed him to 150 mares. So, someone tell me I'm a dumb a** by thinking two year old races should pretty much be done away with and the TC be for 4 yos. Now I understand that if that happens, pretty much the whole world would have to follow suit to make it work. So by all means, let's continue and imitate what Europe does. Because that has worked so well for us before. As we all know, it's all about the money. Run them earlier and get a check earlier. My thinking is this, run them earlier and pay a larger vet bill earlier. Then there's the argument that at 4, they don't have as much talent as they did when they were 3. I call bull sh*t. Someone call zenyatta and tell her she was done 3 years ago. If they are actually given time to develop as juveniles, their talent will last much longer. How many potential superhorses in the making never had their chance due to a selfish trainer or owner, to really showcase their talent? Kantharos might have been one of them. You wouldn't send your kid to play in the NFL straight out of junior high would you? So why make a horse push the limit on his body so soon? And then everyone sits back and wonders what happened to racing and all the glory of yesteryear. Most people watch the derby just to make sure a horse isn't injured. And instead of completely enjoying it, we are too preoccupied watching every step they take, holding our breath and almost passing out from lack of oxygen, praying for a good race where they all return in good condition. All this could be changed by being patient and allowing our athletes to mature. And as an added bonus, a horse might get some fans when he lasts longer than 10 races and can go til he's 6 or 7. But their breeding value is too immense. Thus bringing the people back to the tracks. With the economy the way it is and horses not bringing what they did 3 years ago and beyond, is their breeding value that important? Now would be a great time to make changes since the industry is at a low. I'm looking for valid reasons as to why making the triple crown for 4 year olds, would negatively impact racing.

[Mahubah]

By your own statements, the problem is not the timing of important races; you quite rightly note that horses had no trouble with the very same timing of the very same races 100 or even 50 years ago. IMO, the problem is that among major outfits, we have had a paradigm shift away from the sportsman-owner who had made his money in some other field and bred and raced his horses for the pleasure and sport of it to the businessman-owner whose primary motive is to maximize profit as quickly as possible. When the potential stud fees for just one year at stud far exceed what a top racehorse could earn on the track, or when a filly is worth more as the potential producer of a home-run yearling than she is as a racer, retirement from the track as soon as a sufficient resume has been assembled is obviously the most profitable move. That's good business sense but not overly compatible with maintaining top horses in training, and until the risk/rewards ratio for continuing a horse in training vs. retirement to the breeding shed shifts substantially, I don't see much change coming.

The other piece of the puzzle as I see it is, again, tied into the demise of the sportsman-owner as the dominant type among major racing stables. Most owners of that sort had their own farms and private trainers, meaning that a horse that needed letdown time could have it and be worked back into shape slowly at the farm's training track before returning to the racing string. Nowadays, most horses spend months and months on end at the track in the stables of public trainers with all the attendant limitations of that situation; they don't get the time to allow overuse injuries to heal thoroughly, and they don't really get the legwork in they need to be dead fit. I believe English trainers have a sizable advantage over their American counterparts in that regard; they don't usually race all that often during a season, but when they do bring a horse up to a particular race, the beast is usually good and fit from plenty of work on the training gallops and perhaps a private trial or two against stablemates -- no hustling horses off the track by 10 a.m. so that the oval can be gotten ready for the first race of the day.

Basically, you can shift the timing of races all you wish, and, no, it won't kill racing. Racing has made many changes since the Thoroughbred began emerging three centuries ago and will doubtless make many more. But without changing the all-too-common attitude of "racing to breed" and the limitations of American-style training as it is usually practiced, you probably aren't going to do much about the apparent fragility of the modern TBs and may even be counterproductive, given that horses that start racing at two actually have longer careers on average than those that start running later (probably because soundness issues and injuries are common reasons for delaying that first start and may keep a horse from running at all). And that doesn't even begin to address some of the physiological data out there that indicate that the breed has probably been pushed to the limits of the speed/soundness tradeoff -- the same traits that tend to maximize speed (muscular bodies, relatively light bone frames) leave little margin for error when something goes wrong. The problem is a lot more complicated than just the availability of 2yo racing and the timing of the TC races, and there just isn't a quick fix, I fear. All conscientious owners and trainers can do is to take care of their own horses the best they can and have sense enough not to push an animal that isn't fit to run.

By the way, the NFL analogy really doesn't hold up. Sure, you don't send a junior high or high school kid to play NFL ball, but 2yo racehorses don't run against their fully matured elders either, nor do the 3yos until late in that season. Just as junior athletes generally play against other youngsters at their own maturity levels, so do young racehorses.

[Derby2004]

The NFL analogy was meant to be taken in another sense. Yeah the horses race against their own age range, but they run like there is no tomorrow. The kids in junior high aren't pushed like a horse to perform their best. Just to have fun. But you never gave an answer, would there be more negative impact or positive if the TC was pushed to their 4yo year? But I do agree with you on the fact that the owners of these horses aren't weren't they were years ago.

[Dave C]

It wouldn't 'hurt' anything, it wouldn't change anything either. We have 2yo racing and prestigious 3yo racing now for the same reason that we had it 100 years ago, and 100 years before that: owners/breeders want to prove the precociousness of their stock. You can argue that owners now are just looking for a quick return on their investment but that implies that horse racing is profitable and in the end what does it matter, the result is the same. Changing the TC to 4yo won't change any of the underlying economic forces of the industry and therefore won't change anything.

[louis finochio]

I just finished researching all of our TC winners & Ky. Derby winners. When Ph. over Ph. is found in todays matings, the soundness takes a major hit. Those matings of Ph. over NP breed a sound tb, & those tb average more lifetime starts.

Our tbs of the past NP over NP, or Ph. over NP could carry their soundness at 3, 4, & up. More On this subject later.

[ArchDandy]

I like the idea, however it is my opinion that few people can keep a good racehorse sound until 4- they are usually so destroyed by the unnatural care they receive.

[Mahubah]

The NFL analogy was meant to be taken in another sense. Yeah the horses race against their own age range, but they run like there is no tomorrow. The kids in junior high aren't pushed like a horse to perform their best. Just to have fun. But you never gave an answer, would there be more negative impact or positive if the TC was pushed to their 4yo year? But I do agree with you on the fact that the owners of these horses aren't weren't they were years ago.

I'm afraid you haven't been around some of the youth sports I have. Kids sometimes get pushed very hard by coaches and/or parents; Little League and gymnastics in particular have become notorious for the number of kids that suffer injuries that will give them chronic problems for years, if not for the rest of their lives. And a lot of the kids getting hurt in these things are not even into puberty yet. 2yo horses are a lot closer to high school kids from a physiological standpoint -- not that high school kids should be driven to the breaking point either.

Perhaps I was a little too "between the lines," but I do not see changing the timing of races as helping any, although it probably wouldn't do any drastic harm either. Since 2yo racing and the timing of the Triple Crown races were not problems when horses were making many more starts per runner, I don't see them as being the problem now. You usually don't blame a constant for changes in a variable; you look for changes in another variable. Shoot, 2yo racing got an even heavier emphasis around the end of the 19th century, when Cup racing in America was in decline because a colt could earn more in one or two rich juvenile events than a good staying Cup horse could earn in a couple of seasons. Today's purse structure is actually less skewed towards 2yo racing than it was back then. Yet the average runner of the Gay 90's and the pre-WW I era made many more starts than its modern counterpart. That leads to the logical conclusion that 2yo racing isn't the problem in and of itself, though it can certainly reveal problems with a fragility that wasn't present 50 years back.

The biggest single change on the racing scene has been the Breeders' Cup and its assumption of the role of a year-end championship event, and I've heard a lot of debate about the BC for good or ill, particularly when it comes to the juvenile events. But soundness was on the decline before the BC began, so while it may have contributed to trends, it didn't start them.

BTW, one thing that pushing back the age of racehorses probably would do is knock more small owners and breeders out of the game. A lot of them would be hard put to support their horses an extra year before having any chance at all of return on their investments.

[ratherrapid]

--would TC lose some luster where the entrants will have records more tarnished than early 3 yr. olds?

[Bast]

Ratherrapid.

Basically, you can shift the timing of races all you wish, and, no, it won't kill racing.

It isn't 2 y o racing that is making TBs unsound.

50 years ago I remember seeing 2 y o races scheduled in February. By no means do I advocate such, but the fact is that TBs started earlier and ran more often 50 years ago. A number of the top 2 y os also became the best 3 y os, as did Dr Fager, Buckpasser, Seattle Slew, in fact, any 2 y o not obviously a sprinter was generally expected to go on and be good at 3.

Horses aren't fit when they run. Even on tv, they don't look fit. Find a picture from any of the top endurance rides if you want to see what a fit horse looks like.

I knew a man who was extremely successful with homebreds. He had hilly pastures, and his young stock spent their time running up those steep hills. When they were broken to ride, they didn't go to the track; he paid local kids to ride them around the local mountains. They got tough, and they also got very well-mannered and sensible.

Young bones need stressing. Repeated mild stress strengthens bones. An older horse, taken from a soft life and handled the way most TBs are, will fall apart just as quickly as a young horse taken from a soft life.

Horses are prey animals. Prey animals have to run fast enough to get away from predators to live. Running is not a foreign activity, but the way we raise and race TBs is not conducive to producing animals who will run very far.

Read some of the histories of TBs not so long ago, and you will be astonished at how often and how well they raced. Remember, the breed is descended from heat racers, who had to win the best 2 of a possible 3 4-mile long heats.

Some of the problem is in the pedigree--some lines are just not very sound--and some is in the size of the horses running. A horse doesn't have to be 16.3 to be fast. But a lot of the trouble is in how they are handled.

And consider this grandson of Bold Ruler (considered a source of unsoundness way back then), a foal of 1980, who won 39 races in 206 starts!!!

http://www.pedigreequery.com/sir+prize+birthday

The genetics are still there in the breed.

[ratherrapid]

Bast--nice post. When I became a new TB handicapper about 1983 at Ak-Sar-Ben very first thing I notice was how unfit those racing animals looked.

[Bast]

Bast--nice post. When I became a new TB handicapper about 1983 at Ak-Sar-Ben very first thing I notice was how unfit those racing animals looked.

They are not fit physically or mentally. In Europe they don't use pony horses. Horses there are broken well enough to be handled in large open areas and on the side of roads going to and from their gallops.

The Kentucky Derby used to be a contest between a handful of top horses with another handful of improving horses and yet another handful of dreamers. Now, most of the entries are dreamers because so few of them have been really tested. Some of them are still learning how to race.

[Daisy Jal Dastur]

Bast--nice post. When I became a new TB handicapper about 1983 at Ak-Sar-Ben very first thing I notice was how unfit those racing animals looked.

They are not fit physically or mentally. In Europe they don't use pony horses. Horses there are broken well enough to be handled in large open areas and on the side of roads going to and from their gallops.

The Kentucky Derby used to be a contest between a handful of top horses with another handful of improving horses and yet another handful of dreamers. Now, most of the entries are dreamers because so few of them have been really tested. Some of them are still learning how to race.

TOTALLY agree with you...... for whatever it's worth, the Inidan triple crown is run from January-March for four year olds... so it does happen.

[Joltman]

What would it hurt?

Credibility. It would be acknowledging that the breed, the trainers, methods, etc. aren't what they used to be. Forever these great races would be 'asterisk' races, like the baseball Hrs of the 90s power hitters. Who cares? Hit 70 hrs or 100. They made the game too easy and now they can't get it back. Baseball is doing OK, but the old notion of records and stats is gone.

Recall the incredibly close 'almost' races in the 90s. The breed hasn't changed THAT much. If there had been a winner of the TC nobody would be asking the question.

jm

[Bast]

WThe breed hasn't changed THAT much. If there had been a winner of the TC nobody would be asking the question.

There was a brief fad for races of about 4 miles in the 1970s. The winning times were not that different from those of 2 centuries ago.

What has changed in the last 50 years is the 'medication' allowed in American racing. Horses race less often, and make fewer career starts. The best horses run in stakes races that in general have been shortened--while the Jockey Club Gold Cup was run at 2 miles (!) it was won twice by a mare (!), Shuvee. There aren't any real handicap races for older horses any longer, either; a highweight of 122 pounds with a low weight of 114 is just silly.

50 years is no time at all in genetic terms.

This leaves the human element. Curiously, the same bloodlines run overseas farther and more soundly, without pharmaceutical support. Every year, there seems to be a good American 3 y o whose trainer becomes fearful of doing anything with him, and doesn't do much of anything with the horse--should we be shocked when the horse gets beaten in the next start???

[wangkw]

Changing it to 4 yo is merely on humanity ground for these gracious 4-leggers...Alternately how about shortening the 3rd leg
to 10.5f... or even swaping it for a turf option ? Why must all be dirt ?
Somehow I feel the Canadian 3-crown is a niche.