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Originally Posted by The Indomitable DrugS
Why do they race so infrequently now--and so many need a lot of time between starts?
You're saying medication, be it illegal or legal, has nothing to do with this trend?
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The trend has been in effect since 1960. One of the biggest culprits in the current time is statistics. First off owners are far too concerned with a trainers win percentage, therefore trainers watch those like a hawk. Many guys will wait out a horse until the perfect senario occurs before running them. Also the Sheets mentality has become so accepted that no one wants to run back quick and risk a poor performance because the sheets guys say that it is bad. Of course at the lower tracks where much of this doesn't matter the trend is not nearly as noticable.
The funny thing about the whole starts per year per horse trend is that average field size has dropped very little in the last 40 years. I believe that it has dropped less than a horse per race while the avg starts per year has dropped signifigantly. Of course factors like winter racing and crop size are never brought up when talking about this topic, just bad trainers and evilmedications. The fact that 2 year olds in particular are campaigned so lightly in comparison to years ago is another factor that should be taken into consideration. How many 2 year olds not trained by Jamie Sanders (sorry Fearless Leader) are run more than twice or 3 times? Very few. A solid 2 year old campaign used to consist of 6 or 7 races even for the top horses.
I am not saying that we as trainers have not become too dependant on medications, because we have. But blaming everything that is wrong with the sport from breeding practices to less hardy horses to lighter campaigns on medication is just too simplistic for me.