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Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin
Racing is completely different overseas. There are many possible reasons as to why they can run more often over there. In US races, horss are often times running hard the entire race. In Europe, they often times just gallop the entire race and only run their hardest the final quarter or 3/8 of a mile. They train the horses totally differenty over there. They give them these long gallops on soft grass. Here they train them on the hard dirt and they have to train them for speed since the fractions of our races are very fast.
From training on the dirt, horses in this country get all kinds of foot problems that are pretty much non-existant in Europe. To suggest that horses here could run more often since they run more often in Europe is absurd.
Guys like Frankel have been training for over 30 years. He's run thousand of horses on 3 weeks rest and he's run thousands of horses on 4-5 weeks rest. So have all the other trainers. They have seen that horses run much better and stay sounder if you give them more time between races. This is no great mystery. I don't get why some of you don't understnad this. It's not really that complicated.
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Part of the reason we don't get it is that the best trainers from 20 years ago were running horses on 2-3 weeks rest, and those horses appeared to be running very well. We're not convinced that the breed has changed so much in 20 years or that trainers have gotten so much smarter.
And I'm sure there's an element that we WANT horses to be able to run more often that is influencing our responses, too.
--Dunbar