Beyer in Chilie
 

I wonder how the announcers are in Chile.

They probably make 40 cents per race call there.

The toughness of the horses there has a lot to do with the breeding and small purses.

I was looking over the pp's of the horses in the '35 Kentucky Derby field ... you had horses making career starts number 44, 42, and 38.

* Trainer F. M. Bray was so fearful that his 44th time starter would not be fit enough for the Kentucky Derby - that he actually worked him 10 furlongs two days before the race (only the most recent workout appears in old forms - and it's under the horses name)



* Blackbirder raced 35 times before November of his 2yo season! :



* McCarthy looks like a pus$y by comparison :

Interestingly enough, the sire of this horse - Tutti Frutti - had actually raced in Chile and won the triple crown there.

Bottom line - the American breed of thoroughbred is substantially weaker in comparison to horses reared in other countries. An overwhelming focus on speed and a wholehearted overbreeding has led to what we have today. A ton of horses who race less frequently, bleed, etc.

Can horses come back in a few days and run again and win? Then again? And again? Absolutely. Happens in...not Chile...but the UK...and more than you think. I can think of two recent examples of horses who did it.

FINAL DRIVE - UK-based horse who won three times over 15 days in November, and then after a third beaten a nose, came back and won three more times in 18 days in December.

http://www.attheraces.com/search.asp...l+drive&type=H

SILAAH - also based in the UK - had two seconds and two wins in 22 days before shipping to Dubai and grabbing second in a $110,000 race.

http://www.attheraces.com/search.asp...=silaah&type=H

Click the links and then their names to bring up lifetime free PPs.

To me, the greatest indictment about the pervasiveness of drugs in American racing is not best shown by what happens in the US, but rather, by what happens everywhere else. American racing is the pariah. WE are the crazy ones, at least in the minds of the rest of the racing world. Can horses be raced with such frequency? The answer is yes...

Can it be done in the US? Not so much...

I am a critic of American culture more than most.

However, I think what you are saying is ridiculous. Show me anywhere in the world that has heavily raced world class racehorses.

The reason some horses are raced heavily is because they can be, and need to be (from the owners perspective).

Australia is the most obvious place

those non- US horses aren't required to race gate to wire. They all just fall out of the gate plod along and then sprint for the wire
really only running an 1/8th of a mile at most
so get off it already

They race as often on dirt in South America as they do here.

well obviously we suck

We're a lot faster and a lot more fragile.

You have to go all the way back to Invasor to find an elite horse who has come out of South America. I think Einstein was bred in South America - but didn't race there.

Brazil

Ever think that all of the very best US breeding stock has left the country to race in other countries. Breeders havent weakned their stock intentional, they sold it.

Leroidesanimeux was also Brazilian bred I believe and did race there early in his career

Really? Their grade 1 horses run 200 times?

50 times?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunline

Although she was a NZ horse, most of her racing was in Australia.

Yep. But his championship year was one-year before Invasor's.

There have been a few pretty amazing superstar horses from South America in each decade going back quite a ways.

Pat your post is ridiculously unfair.

It's a 90 day meet that billionaire shieks and their billionaire sheik friends spend countless billions to entertain themselves with. It's a carnival it isnt a business. It is run solely for entertainment purposes only. The horses and there future wellfare is completely ignored as long as the carnival goes on. If millions and millions of dollars of stock is destroyed(ruined) all they do is buy more.They are toys, if they break you just go to the store and get new cooler ones. Then you have the fact that this horses are only going to race during this carnival and will be laid off for the next 6-9 months at no worry or care(money) to their connections. Win lose or draw these horses sole role in life is to race as much as they can in 90 days, yet you seem to think this makes what they do incredibly different than US stock.

Hey Freddy - next time, quote me, will make it easier for others to compare your drivel to my actual post.

And further, maybe if you got off the soapbox and READ what I said, you would realize it has nothing to do with sheikhs or their horses. The two horses in question in my post are owned, and primarily raced, by UK-based connections.

Silaah is owned by Mrs. Jackie Love and David Nicholls (who also trains). While Final Drive is owned by Par 4 Racing and trained by John Ryan.

Do me a favor and block me from your feed, it will save you the trouble of being wrong again.

25 times? 33 times?

While yeah, that's pretty nice, don't forget, Zenyatta ran 20 times.

Not a huge difference.