[Cannon Shell]

Originally Posted by Danzig

there is no way you can institute minimum breeding ages. you can't force owners to keep their horses on the track.
we've had this discussion before, how to persuade owners to keep their horses in training. it's a difficult proposition. one way you'll see it happen right now is that the economy is down, and the breeding market is down. there will be a lot less horses rushing to the shed this year than in years' past. it happened with the years of silver charm, real quiet, etc. if there is more money to be made on the track, they'll stay there.
also, chuck is right. the best horses back in the day didn't race on as often as some think, or run in as many races in total. man o war retired at 3 to avoid carrying weights horses hadn't seen before. he ran 21 times, and decades later, native dancer ran that same amount. count fleet retired at 3. yeah, he suffered an injury-but not one typically career-ending.
i do think it's a bit laughable at the announcements of stud deal for a few of these older horses, such as student council-he hasn't won since the pimlico special. i have a hard time thinking he'll be a good sire, but he does have a farm to back him up. tiago got a deal-ok. i don't see it for some of them, but some do. and the expenses can get huge for owners, and when they get an offer, they have to consider their bottom line. for many it's perennially in the red, so how can you really judge them harshly when they leap at the chance for some money to finance future racing endeavors?
you just have to hope that enough horses stay on to make things interesting, and wait for some others to come out from the woodwork.

I do wish that top horses would race more and run at 4 but does 2 campaigns of a top horse make a big difference when you are comparing horseracing to other sports where the stars play for 10 or more years. I just dont buy into the theory that the sport would somehow become mainstream if Curlin or Big brown were to run till they were 6. And while we can bag on Shiekh Mo for retiring horses and having bizzare campaigns with them there are a lot of owners that need to sell their horses at their peak because they arent billionaires. If they wind up in the breeding shed so be it.