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Originally Posted by King Glorious
There will still be a Derby winner, a Met Mile winner, a BC Classic winner every year. But it seems like more and more, the quality of the overall product is decreasing. And because so many people just sit and say "we should be lucky that we have a Bernardini this year" and are content with the continuous garbage that they are feeding us, there is no incentive for them to ever change anything. It won't be until we start demanding a better product that things will start to change. Why does everyone seem so content with the way things are and just resigned to accept that this is all we are going to get?
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The more horseracing becomes a "business", the less joy there is in it, for fans and competitors alike. When people that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars retire horses because "they have residual value" or "nothing left to prove" you are heading down the wrong path. The biggest problem with expensive and talented horses is that the connections are afraid to lose. It is the biggest difference between racing now and 20 years ago. One of the reasons that the Pletchers of the world "space " so much is to try to find the softest spot possible, to try to keep the horses and his personal record intact. Not that I blame them, because they are playing by the rules that the owners and breeders have set. Breeders lowered their standards in the late 70's to early 80's to produce more horses to keep up with the first bloodstock boom. In doing so they accepted more flawed horses, soundness, bleeding, conformation, etc. Now with huge stallion books that problem is even greater but the bloodstock machine which sucks in hundreds of millions of dollars per year needs to continue to be fed. So a filly that has a race record of 2 wins in 4 starts is bred to a stallion that made nine starts and the market will continue to buy those types of horses.
Sorry to sound so pessimistic but horseracing is really becoming a soulless "sport"