[QUOTE=Where’sMyWhite;8595606]
And I’m wondering what he’ll do at stud… his bloodlines aren’t quite as notable as American Pharoah’s are… could be for Chrome the $$ is at the track and not in the breeding shed. I just don’t know.[/QUOTE]
What’s the rush? I think racing would be a heck of a lot more popular if more high profile horses ran longer. It is what draws people and makes them into fans. Most careers are so short the public doesn’t have a chance to bond.
[QUOTE=SportArab;8597205]
What’s the rush? I think racing would be a heck of a lot more popular if more high profile horses ran longer. It is what draws people and makes them into fans. Most careers are so short the public doesn’t have a chance to bond.[/QUOTE]
Can you imagine if Secretariat had raced his four year old year?
^^ However, if he breaks down/gets hurt that will blow all the good generated to pieces, for sure.
Back in the day, there were plenty of horses that ran for years and years without breaking down. I would think that an older, well care-for, well conditioned horse, would be less likely to breakdown than a youngster.
Currently embarking on a book on one of those warhorses. It will be interesting to compare how old time race horses were conditioned vs. today.
[QUOTE=SportArab;8598336]
Back in the day, there were plenty of horses that ran for years and years without breaking down. I would think that an older, well care-for, well conditioned horse, would be less likely to breakdown than a youngster.[/QUOTE]
As I recall from the recently released/updated mortality report, the older the horse, the higher the risk for a fatal breakdown…
[QUOTE=SportArab;8598336]
Back in the day, there were plenty of horses that ran for years and years without breaking down. I would think that an older, well care-for, well conditioned horse, would be less likely to breakdown than a youngster.
Currently embarking on a book on one of those warhorses. It will be interesting to compare how old time race horses were conditioned vs. today.[/QUOTE]
The EID stats the JC collects suggest older horses are more likely to suffer fatalities. Horses 4yo+ suffer fatalities are a rate (i.e fatalities per 1000/starts, so not just a lump sum) at a rate of 33% more than 2yos. Granted the longer you run the greater your risk. But interesting none the less.
I wonder about those stats. What’s running after age 3 these days is probably not comparable to what ran after 3, say 50 years ago.
[QUOTE=SportArab;8598888]
I wonder about those stats. What’s running after age 3 these days is probably not comparable to what ran after 3, say 50 years ago.[/QUOTE]
Why would you say that?
I bet there is the same percentage of cheap horses running nowadays as their was 20, 50, 100 years ago. TB racing has always been a pyramid, with the bottom heavy with low level horses running for smaller purses and tiny elite level at the top.
Plenty of horses broke down years ago. Just no one was keeping track of it.
People have created this idyllic image of the “olden days” of racing where all horses made at least 100 career starts with nary a short step, living on nothing but oats, hay, and water.
In reality, when you read the history books, many of the influential sires of the 1800s and early 1900s retired before the age of 4 and raced no more frequently than the stallions of today. There are documented references to unsoundness and injury of many of these stallions during their racing careers. And while these horses did not have the wide array of pharmaceuticals that are now available, it would be naive to believe their conditioners did not employ physical or chemical methods to give their horses an advantage.
[QUOTE=ASB Stars;8597244]
Can you imagine if Secretariat had raced his four year old year?[/QUOTE]
I’m still wishing we could have seen what American Pharoah did as a 4 yr old… That horse’s brain and will in a more mature body… bet that would have been just amazing.
I think it used to be, at the higher levels, that more horses did race until 4 or 5. Would like to see the numbers on that from around the 60s. Back then, one of the criteria many used for “greatness” was the ability to carry weight. After 3, most of the big races were handicaps. So a successful horse had to keep carrying more and more weight. Kelso was the prime example of that. But he had many 4 or 5 year old competitors and not all geldings!
But then it got easier to ship horses and tougher for handicap races. Rising stud fees and syndication for 3yo stars encouraged early retirement.
More stakes open to older horses seemed to develop. Ultimately the Breeders Cup! But the “win and retire to big stud fees” system was firmly established. Will be interesting to see which way things sway in the future.
[QUOTE=Texarkana;8599525]
People have created this idyllic image of the “olden days” of racing where all horses made at least 100 career starts with nary a short step, living on nothing but oats, hay, and water.
.[/QUOTE]
Don’t forget that they were all running over long distances. That’s another bit of false nostalgia that people trot out.
Other that a small handful of races like the JCGC being 2miles or 12f, the lion’s share of American races have always been 6f to 8.5f, just like today. Go back and look at race cards in old copies of the DRF from the 20s through the 70s and one will see that this is the case.
As to horses retiring early, this is hardly new either. For godsakses it’s been around since the beginning of the TB as s breed. Indeed the original classic races in England, the Derby, Guineas and St Leger, were created 230 odd years ago for the expressed purpose of determining who the best 3yos were so they could be retired to stud for the betterment of the breed.
You don’t see older horses running in the Derby for a reason.
You have to go back to colonial times and the infancy of the United States to find a significant percentage of races over long distances here. By the early 1800s, dirt oval racing clubs took over in popularity in this country and we haven’t looked back.
Yet amazing, many folks seem to think they remember these “gold ol’ days” when we bred for long distances in the US.
Art Sherman was interviewed and was speaking about this very same subject; Horses don’t mature on the track very often, especially these days. He mentioned a few famous horses who ran into four/five years of age.
I don’t understand the frequent public outcry that the owner(s) are greedy and want to race a horse until the end of a three year old campaign. Three year old. Greedy?
[QUOTE=greenleaf;8601297]
I don’t understand the frequent public outcry that the owner(s) are greedy and want to race a horse until the end of a three year old campaign. Three year old. Greedy?[/QUOTE]
They’re greedy of they race them, they’re greedy if they quickly retire them to the shed. Someone always has an opinion.
Because you know, people get into horses to make money. 
[QUOTE=Texarkana;8601203]
You have to go back to colonial times and the infancy of the United States to find a significant percentage of races over long distances here. By the early 1800s, dirt oval racing clubs took over in popularity in this country and we haven’t looked back.
Yet amazing, many folks seem to think they remember these “gold ol’ days” when we bred for long distances in the US.[/QUOTE]
There were 4 mile races up until the Civil War and after. The last was, I believe, in the 1880s. In fact, a world record for 4 miles was set in 1874 by Fellowcraft. https://archive.org/stream/americanthorou00trev/americanthorou00trev_djvu.txt
From The American Thoroughbred published in 1905 which talks about the transition:
This much is given of Alarm to show the dif-
ference between the type of horse that was racing
in Lexington’s day and the type that had already
begun to be prominent as early as 1871. There
were still horses capable of going a distance and
raced at those distances for years after this, but
Alarm was the first of the sprinting kind of which
Voter was the last distinguished representative
which we had on the American turf. The four-
miler died hard.
Ten Broeck won the four-mile heat race in
1876 at Baltimore, called the Bowie Stakes,
and that gave him the first of his real fame.
He was by the English horse Phaeton out of
Fanny Holton by Lexington out of Nantura,
who was the dam of Longfellow. “Uncle” John
Harper, the man who brought Longfellow North
to beat Harry Bassett, also bred Ten Broeck.
Ten Broeck was saved until he was a three-year-
old, and then he began a career that made him
look like a champion. There were a great many
good horses out in his day, but Ten Broeck kept
pace with the very best of them. He was not
trained as carefully as he might have been, and
he was beaten at times when it would seem that
he outclassed his field.
[QUOTE=invinoveritas;8602089]
OK go look at www.thechampisback.com and read about “genetic dynamite.”[/QUOTE]
Thanks…besides, him pretttyyyyyy!
Either my eyes are deceiving me or in the TaylorMade conformation photo Chrome has a rather weak loin connection. In the Genetic Dynamite section, they seem to be grasping at straws.
[QUOTE=vineyridge;8602111]
There were 4 mile races up until the Civil War and after. The last was, I believe, in the 1880s. In fact, a world record for 4 miles was set in 1874 by Fellowcraft. https://archive.org/stream/americanthorou00trev/americanthorou00trev_djvu.txt
From The American Thoroughbred published in 1905 which talks about the transition:[/QUOTE]
The transition wasn’t overnight. But mile heats became the fad with the dirt ovals, the first of which began cropping up in the late 1700s. 
But people talk about these great distance horses as if they were part of their childhood.
I have a really interesting book about the Thoroughbred horse from 1800-pre Civil War, also published in the early 1900s. I wish I could share it here!
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