Fed Biz off the Derby trail

[King Glorious]

Originally Posted by Clip-Clop

Granted that few continue on very well after that two week turnaround but most of the horses that run well in the Derby do turn around and run great races again in the Preakness.

I feel like that points to the fact that the horses would indeed do better with more activity. The horses are trained to be at their peak for the Derby and so coming back in the Preakness, they are still at that high state of readiness. What it seems like we end up seeing is that the horses make it through the Derby and then come back to run in the Preakness and/or Belmont and do well in a lot of cases but it comes with a price. Often, that price is that they end up the worse for the wear and either are retired or end up missing the rest of the season. Sure, we get some that make it through and continue to thrive like Lookin at Lucky or Shackleford, to name a couple of recent examples. But it seems like we get more examples like Animal Kingdom and Nehro. It just seems to me that when horses were running more complete 2yo seasons, there were more horses that lasted through their 3yo seasons and when the trend started slanting to "less is better", with horses running only 1-3 times as 2yos and having races spaced out 6-8 weeks apart, the number of injuries has increased.