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

[Assttodixie]

Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin

So are you saying that there are no good trainers today? That's like saying there are no good golfers today, no good doctors today, or no good baseball players today. It's absurd. As I said before, if a business is lucrative you will have a lot of talented people in that field.

If you guys are right and all these trainers are doing it wrong, you guys should go into the business. You'd make a fortune. Think how easy it would be. You'd be the only good trainers in the business.

Its not necessarily that the trainers of today are "wrong". Could it be perhaps that the money and the media of today are so extreme that they arent as willing to try different things? Ah, now theres a different thought.

Its safer to do what everyone else is doing lest you make a mistake and have everyone call you a donkey and say you ruined a potentially great horse. Beyond that, they really dont race to race anymore. They race to breed.

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by Assttodixie

Its not necessarily that the trainers of today are "wrong". Could it be perhaps that the money and the media of today are so extreme that they arent as willing to try different things? Ah, now theres a different thought.

Its safer to do what everyone else is doing lest you make a mistake and have everyone call you a donkey and say you ruined a potentially great horse. Beyond that, they really dont race to race anymore. They race to breed.

It's only horses that are valuable for breeding that race to breed. There are plenty of good horses out there that don't have much value for breeding.

[Cannon Shell]

You can not solve this issue with a golden bullet. There is no answer, there are a series of differences that cannot be weighed against each other. All modern day trainers are not bad. All breeders aren't breeding unsound horses. All current horses aren't weak, infirm dogs that would get dragged around the track by Swaps. Stats wont work because we are talking about different eras. Would Wilt average 50 pts per game now? Because Shaq never averaged 50 pts per game is he inferior to Wilt?

One thing that never gets taken into consideration by anyone in this fight is the actual number of horses that were in existence in the good old days versus modern times. There are many more horses produced now than say in the 50's. With the increase in quantity you will naturally have a decrease in quality.

I think that any reference to any of the top trainers horses is a moot point. First of all they control a great majority of the top horses, however they consist of less than 1% of the total number of horses that are racing. The other 99%, the majority of which are crows, who are also declining in starts per year. But the tricky question that never gets brought up is the fact that field size has remained relatively constant over a 40 year period. So essentially if the number of starts per year were to remain at 1960 levels we would be averaging 13 per race! Sounds crazy but do the math.

One point I dont understand is how people can state 27 2 year old champions in a row have failed to become 3 year old champions, but on the other hand say that racing horses often at 2 can make them sounder. Seems that you are on both sides of the fence on this. I mean what happened to them at three? Can they all be bad trainers?

The modern trainer is under much more stress than the trainer of old days. Expenses are extreme, bloodstock is much more valuble, statistics tell you each and every day if you are a star or a bum, there is virtually zero owner loyalty, the tracks are constantly on you to run, often in spots where you dont belong. Everybody trains using vitamins, ulcer medications, clembuterol, etc. Some use even more if you know what I mean. Owners used to dream of winning big races. Now they all dream of selling Sheikh Mo a $5 million dollar yearling. They dont want to hear that the pony that they paid big bucks for(and there are varying degrees of big bucks) cant run. And this has always been a follow the leader type of business. So when Pletcher and Frankel start talking about spacing and such, and they seemingly win every big race everybody follows along, right or wrong.

There is so much more but I'm tired of typing.