"Do We Need a Sturdier Racehorse?"

[reese]

Originally Posted by Riot

That's a measurable quantity, the breeding boom has been looked at, and Chuck's right: If you breed 20,000 horses, and have 10,000 end up "race quality", breeding 35,000 horses doesn't get you any more race quality, it just gets you more crap on the bottom, because it's an increase in breeding lesser-quality animals, not best-quality. Weird but genetically true. Breed more = less quality (unless you go to genetic cloning)

I heard Bob Baffert radio interview some years ago (WE era)and he was asked to elaborate on this similiar issue.

Baffert's take was 50-75 years ago top pedigreed horses raced against each other a few times while the rest of while of the fields they competed against were inferior via a vis breeding. In those days, there were more inferior pedigreed horses racing against top horses THAN today.

Baffert stated that the breeding industry expanded...and your horse today(circa 2001) is racing against similarly pedigreed horses...a level playing field if you will. In the past, the top horses raced against a field of "inferior" bred horses more so than today's racer who faces competition of the same caliber.