Drug Free Racing

[Rileyoriley]

Originally Posted by Honu

Fifty years ago in racing the large breeding farms controlled the stock , they culled out what they wanted and raced what they wanted , which may have not been a bad thing . They had control of the stallions and most of the good broodmares and sent what they thought were the best to the track , if a horse proved to be no good they simply culled it out, gelded it , sold it , killed it ,whatever but they didnt keep them.
You can see a trend starting in the 70's with private ownership of stallions , they were being offered to the public and the owner of the stallion approved your mare or not. That was the beginning of the end of the big farms ruling the racing world and deciding what was a good horse and what wasnt.
So now you have every Tom , Dick and Harry thinking they have a stallion prospect or a broodmare prospect if their horse can just get a graded win and sometimes not.
Dont blame the horses and dont blame the trainers , blame the people who have the stallions and mares and breed them and sell them . So you can basically say this what people want , they want speed not endurance , they want a fast 2 yr old and a quick turn around , they want the chance to profit from a limited amount of running so they can capitalize on the trends.

Couldn't agree more, which is why I'm starting to watch the europeon racing more. They still breed for distance.
On a side note, how's the Tinman feeling?