[King Glorious]

Originally Posted by freddymo

you routinely hear Beyer defend the big figs from the past, that said other figure makers seem to disagree that horses are getting slower? I think CJ's figs are higher of course he takes pace into account. I dont follow Jerry Brown but he also seems to digree from Beyer in that horses are slower in 2020 than they were 25 years ago? some suggest the tracks are deeper? How the heck would anyone save a trainer or super know for sure? These are interesting conversations to have, I have no problem challenging Fig orthodoxy, sometimes they break out races, sometimes they make artful assumptions, it ain't perfect or is it meant to be. But the random "I think its a tad light" stuff is comical.

Someone made a comparison that I don’t know how much merit it has but that I do at least find interesting. Much like the way we don’t see the freakish home run totals in baseball anymore, has the cleaning up of the sport as far as illegal drug usage in horses, led to a more realistic product?

I think there are several factors that lead to lower figures but not necessarily slower horses. Don’t shoot me if I have this wrong but I think I remember years ago that when they use par figures for the Beyer system, it’s based on the past three years? Is that accurate? I feel like in general, we breed lesser horses. There is such a demand on horses due to having so many tracks and so many races that they need to breed more horses and I feel like it makes the sport sacrifice quality for quantity. I once read that about 70-75% of the races in this country are under 8f so now you add in breeding more for speed than stamina. Now, add in the fact that as we get newer and younger blood in game from a human perspective, they are more and more into the “instant results” era so we are breeding more horses to be precocious early rather than the ones that develop later and improve with age. All of these things lead to less sturdy horses that run far fewer times which makes it that much harder to get a base on them. Because top horses run so infrequently now, you get a lot more slower horses running in top races and that will throw a lot of numbers way off.

So I think that overall, the horses are slower than in the past but I think the best ones are still as fast as the best ones have been before. It’s worth noting that we don’t get to see as many of the top 3yo horses like American Pharoah run as older horses and that plays a part in it also.