Requiring a sire or dam to wait until they were five or six wouldn't make sense to me. If a horse is fragile and is going to be passing fragile genes, it will happen as a 5yo just as it would if he was breeding at four. Also, while there are plenty of horses that are retired sound that could have continued racing, there are still those that suffer actual injuries that preclude them from racing. It's unfair to the owners of those horses to make them wait if they have a 2yo or 3yo that can't race and earn any money in any other way. And this doesn't even get into the area of insurance.
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The real horses of the year (1986-2020)
Manila, Java Gold, Alysheba, Sunday Silence, Go for Wand, In Excess, Paseana, Kotashaan, Holy Bull, Cigar, Alphabet Soup, Formal Gold, Skip Away, Artax, Tiznow, Point Given, Azeri, Candy Ride, Smarty Jones, Ghostzapper, Invasor, Curlin, Zenyatta, Zenyatta, Goldikova, Havre de Grace, Wise Dan, Wise Dan, California Chrome, American Pharoah, Arrogate, Gun Runner, Accelerate, Maximum Security, Gamine
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