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Originally Posted by Phalaris1913
At the end of the day, I agree. I don't believe that modern trainers are idiots. They are charged with producing successful horses based on a different paradigm than previous times. People want one-time brilliance, or a few easy romps unmarred by defeats. Therefore, there is a modern tendency to make every start count. The traditional idea of a "prep race," a race in which a horse runs to gauge its current form and fitness and to tighten it up for an upcoming target race, is utterly obsolete and foreign. You don't see in-form, high-class horses running in allowance races anymore and now, we're starting to see them skip stakes races seen as preliminary to the races that matter. BB and I recall times when the best horses ran in the Woodward, Marlboro Cup AND Jockey Club Gold Cup; just one of many series of once-prominent races that have diminished (or disappeared entirely) due to lack of interest. Ironically, now that there are many times the number of stakes races as there were a few decades ago, a given stakes-caliber horse will run in fewer of them. The inevitable result: the handful of best horses are spread among several races, creating poor fields with one or two good horses up against a few lower-quality animals who have nothing to lose in showing up and being beaten.
The "make every start count" theory of racing and training horses not only dictates avoiding minor races or serious competition for as long as possible, it also requires avoiding anything that might prove a challenge for their horse. Some of us remember when serious handicap horses ran in Carter Handicap and Met Mile, because it wasn't assumed that a horse capable of getting 10 or 12 furlongs was utterly incapable of - or at least irretrievably harmed by - running in a race less than 8.5 or 9 furlongs. You saw major turf winners runnning in major races on the dirt, and vice versa. You saw 3YOs taking on older horses and fillies in against open company. Lots of times this resulted in defeat, but when good horses were running 10 or 15 times a year, a defeat or two didn't ruin your resume.
The result was high-class horses with more defeats, but also better, more interesting sport - unless, I suppose, you groove on the idea of a handful of MLB teams playing a half-dozen times a year mainly against collegiate-caliber competition with championships determined at the end by a single inning in a single game against whatever shows up - no playoffs neeeded. Compared to a real baseball season, that's pretty much what horse racing has turned into and there are some of us who lament what has been lost. We're not going to apologize for our feelings on the subject, either.
Current trainers of good horses have a completely different sort of expectation placed upon them and they are sorting themeselves out by those who are best able to spot horses in places where they can win. We can't reasonably accuse them of incompetence for failing to turn out horses of a more traditional mold, because they are not even sort of trying to do so. When (and it is a matter of when) the artificial bubble that is the thoroughbred bloodstock market pops, some of them will convert themselves to a new situation - in which horses are worth what they can earn on the track - just fine, just as many of their horses, trained and campaigned with this in mind, will. I firmly believe that most thoroughbred foals cavorting on a farm somewhere today are capable of much better, and much more, than their older brothers and sisters are producing. The difference is in the intent of those who prepare and campaign them - not necessarily the horsemanship of those people.
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