Crazy Ideas

[Cannon Shell]

Originally Posted by pgardn

Train them.
Because you know most of the animals, if trained properly, will give you everything they have in a race. Enough to hurt themselves at this age. And the rider cant slow them down when there is money on them.

There is this falicy that horses only get hurt when they are giving all they have. Horses get hurt in most cases because they have conformational defects that dont allow them to strike the ground on an even, consistent basis. Eventually the problems that crop up as either primary lameness in the defect area or secondary lameness somewhere else due to the original defect. Younger horses are more apt to get sore shins but the thing about young horses is that they recover and heal quicker also.

Of course having a year's worth of training expenses in a 2 year old with no chance of recovering anything is not going to make the owning horses any more economically viable.