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Originally Posted by Phalaris1913
Ten years ago, I wrote a column that in part discussed the fate of the previous season's Derby starters. There was a very neat division: all of the horses with only four starts or less at 2 had sustained premature injury. All but one of the rest were still in training.
In 15 years, I have never seen compelling evidence that current trends of racing and training horses produce better horses; "better" defined as horses capable of proving their worth by winning more races, for more seasons, against the best divisional rivals. Transcendant greats of the sport are great because their greatness was a pattern, not an instance.
I realize that today's trainers have gotten the idea that asking horses to run as infrequently as possible is the only reasonable idea and I'm sure that they'll tell you so. Perhaps they've had to learn to deal with cripples who can't walk down the shedrow without chipping and that's the only way to get even a few starts out of them. (There was a time when horses whose conformation predisposed to chips were called "culls." Now people pay millions for them, so that they can produce more of their kind. So I suppose it behooves trainers to get a requisite win or two out of them to ensure their chance at triple-digit books.) Perhaps they're just sure this must be right, just like people were once sure that low heel/long toe increased stride length. I admit that I know more first-hand about training horses for other disciplines than racing, but you don't have to take my word for it that there may be other viable or even better ways of keeping racehorses on four feet. You could, for example, look to what Hall of Fame horsemen from other times did, and pretty much without exception, they accomplished more, with products of training and racing strategies that demanded more.
What trainers today are doing is not working, unless you live for two- or three-race wonders who get hurt early, or horses who don't run more than once every several months. The current situation with 2YOs - who once, with regularity, became major players at 3 and often beyond - is particularly dismal. One would be hard-pressed to find a time since they started racing 2YOs in the 1800s when you saw more loss to injury and more discontinuity of form from 2 to 3 and beyond. Sure, maybe it has nothing to do with the fact that 2YOs used to start earlier, race more often and at shorter distances. It could be global warming. It could be anything.
But rather than - as a blind, knee-jerk response - call someone an idiot for pointing out that professional, highly reputed horsemen used to use a strategy that yielded better results, why not at least consider why what they were doing may have been working better? If only a moron would run a 2YO more than three or four times, if it were invariably destructive, then why did so many legendary trainers do so, and get so many of those horses through the campaigns that BB has reminded us of? Why can't the Zitos, Mandellas and Pletchers present us an unending parade of high-class 2YOs that are major stakes winners at 3 and 4 with their infinitely superior strategy of barely racing them?
And yes, in response to a later post, I am aware of the popular idea that since horses are so much faster today than they used to be that they require more time between starts. I am not sure where this idea is coming from, in that I see little evidence of fast-track major stakes events producing faster times, except possibly at sprint distances. Maybe there's more cushion on those tracks, resulting in slower times - but if that's the case, I'd better not be hearing a single peep from anyone who believes this that the harder, faster tracks are responsible for horses getting hurt. It just doesn't go both ways.
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