"Spaced" Races And "Fresh" Horses Are Killing The Sport

Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin

By the way, I think that trainers are smart to run their top horses sparingly. It's really hard to keep horses sound and the top trainers know this. If you have a really good horse that looks like he has a good chance to win the Breeder's Cup and that race is your main goal, you would not plan the race to be your horse's 10th start of the year. You would want your horse to be at or near his peak on BC day. Therefore, you would not want the BC to be the horse's 10th race of a long, hard campaign. You would obviously want your horse to come into the race relatively fresh.

For all of you geniuses who think that horses can run 15 times a year, you should go and buy some horses and try it.

And the geniuses who think they can't ... should learn a lot more about thoroughbred racing history.

You've bought into the "fresh horse" theory ... and I completely disagree with it. Nothing will definitively resolve the difference .. but ...

... I do know that thirty years and more ago ... I watched all the best horses in every division race 12 or 15 or more times every year ... top horses facing each other five, six or more times within the campaign ... and today ... fans only get to see their favorites a handful of times at best.

Regardless of which training method works better ... the old way at least made the sport a lot more interesting.