Quote:
Originally Posted by Cannon Shell
Everyone loves to use the av starts per year stat but they fail to recognize 2 things that negatively effect that number. The fact that 2 year olds are included skews the numbers simply because nowdays virtually every 2 year old that runs will drag the number down. The 2nd is nowdays trainers are judged almost exclusively by win percentage. Giving a horse a prep race is hardly acceptable any longer. Even guys like Zito who would seem to be secure in their place have adjusted the way they train high dollar babies because the owners look at a loss as a huge negative even if the experience is beneficial for the horse. A guy like Whittingham would be scorned now as too old fashioned because he almost always gave his first timers a race or two. Even at the lower level tracks trainers are selected by win percentage. You solve that and trainers will be filling the box because for the most part we make money by running but if we have a barn full of empty stalls, well you know...
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Some people think that lasix is one of the reasons why horses run less now than they did 30 years ago. I don't know whether this is true or not. I think it is certainly a reasonable hypothesis. I know that you do not think it is true.
My question to you is whether you think the opposite is true. Do you believe that the advent of lasix has actually increased the number of starts per horse, per year (when the other factors that have decreased starts are taken out of the equation)? If everything Riot says about lasix is true, lasix should actually increase the number of starts per year, per horse. Yet I think that all the evidence points to the opposite. Sure there may be other reasons why starts per year have gone down. But I still think the best case scenario is that lasix has had no effect on number of starts per horse, per year. If it has no effect, then I think all the supposed positive benefits are overstated. We know that when a horse bleeds in a race, that horse will need extra time off before his next race. If lasix is doing such a great job of preventing bleeding, then you would expect that lasix would lead to more starts per year, per horse. There is no evidence that this has happened. If anything, the evidence points to the opposite.