Hi Everyone,
I have always wondered why racehorses are started as 2 and 3 yo’s but in other disciplines it is desired to start the horses later. What is the history and reasoning behind this?
I am in no way trying to start a debate whether the racing industry starts their horses too early, racing is not my discipline but have always been curious! 
Thanks in advance,
JD
Racehorses are started as long yearlings. The data supports putting youngsters into work, it’s not a debate. There is a window of time when horses are young that they reap the greatest strengthening benefits from work and this follows them through their lifetime. The data shows that the horses who are left alone and not put into work as a youngster are less sound. Those who leave horses out in the fields to “grow up” and mature miss this window. I’m not even sure what genius decided that waiting until a horse was mature to work it was a good thing - there is no evidence to support it. If you google the Equine Injury database there is a decade of statistics you can review, and many reports as well.
The thing I see cited by folks often is when the growth plates close. Generally that’s not until much later, like 5 or 6.
ETA: I have no skin in this game, just sharing the point folks make most often in my circles.
Speaking as someone who showed hunters and foxhunted pretty extensively in the dark ages (1960s-70s), it was my experience that all kinds of horses used to be started much earlier than they are now. And, of course, going even further back in history, it was true then too. Horses were thought of as work animals and they were put to work as soon as they were physically capable of doing the job.
I rode at the top hunter/jumper barn in the country as a child and horses there were started at 2 (most were Thoroughbreds and virtually none were warmbloods.) By three, they were not only jumping, they were routinely showing over 3’6" courses (the height for First Year Green Hunters–and also the lowest height a horse could jump at a recognized show.) A friend of mine bought a horse who was started at 2, and was the AHSA First Year Green National Champion at 3. She showed him as a Junior Hunter at 4 while a pro showed him in Second Year Green. Nobody saw anything unusual in that.
It’s only since warmbloods have taken over the show rings that everyone worries about riding a horse too early and–heaven forbid!–jumping before it’s 5 or 6. I’ve always wondered if when you let a horse sit in a field for 4 years before you ask anything of it, you end up with a horse who has no work ethic. But that’s just me.
So as it happens, history is on the side of the racing industry which simply continues to do things the way they’ve always been done.
Callie was born on May 12 so her Kentucky breeder/owner raced her as a 3 & 4 and 5 yr old. Lucky mare. Then a brood mare with six foals before on her way to auction when we met. She was 18 and sound.
Warmbloods don’t get backed as young and aren’t jumped when young in Germany. Warmbloods should not be jumped young. They have a work ethic at 5 plus years
In the early 1980’s a 3 year old was champion at Washington HS, and a 3 year old was Champion at The National Horse Show (Madison Square Garden). 2 different horses, both 3 years old. In the A/O division (3’6")
To qualify for those shows, the horses must have been showing for much of the year. So it was not unusual to start horses early.
TB’s are bred to mature early… The “joint closing age” you mentioned in your post was for WB’s. They are much bigger and heavier than a TB, and they mature at a much later age.
I do not approve of rushing a horse – far from it. But it was not a big deal to see very young horses in the ring.
As an aside, WB fillies in Europe are often bred at 2 so they are “working” while out in the field.
I think the other thing that plays into it is that people need to get a horse to the bank as soon as possible. In other words have them making a living and paying their way or not.
Thanks everyone for your input and own experiences! Great to read through all your replies
-JD
It’s when the growth plates are NOT closed that they get the most benefit from work.
"Aren’t horses running on undeveloped bones and joints – not just as 2-year-olds, but all horses?
Dr. Larry Bramlage: Roughly, this is a schedule of the disappearance of the growth plates. Skeletons mature from the ground up, and just because the growth plates are still there does not indicate anything related to injury. The one that’s commonly followed is the growth plate at the distal end of the radius or what horsemen mean when they say ‘Are the knees closed?’ That was shown 30 years ago in a paper by Dr. Gabel at Ohio State that it had no relation to injury. That’s because the skeletal age, or the maturity of the bones, is not the thing that causes the horse problems – it’s adaptation to training.
Most people that have some passing interest in horses think you should wait until the horse is fully mature and has no growth plates in its limbs – that would be four or five years old. The growth plates in the withers, those are going to be there until they’re 12 or 13, if that gives you an indication of the fact the growth plates aren’t all that important as far as skeletal maturity. But the people who think you should wait until the growth plates are gone before you start training, that gets proven to be wrong over and over in scientific studies. The reason is that as the horse finishes growing, he’s got the blood supply and cell population that supports growth. What’s best for the horse is to start training during that period of time and convert those support processes from growth to adaptation to training. The cells that would disappear because the skeleton is fully grown just switch jobs and start modeling the bones for the stress of training.
This all goes back to understanding that racehorses are not born with racehorse skeletons, they make them. The training is most effective when you catch the horse at the time they’re most able to respond, which is roughly the time when they’re two years old."
@Palm Beach Couldn’t agree more. I’ve been seeing that stupid skeleton chart with the growth plates passed around Facebook and hand wringing about not starting the little darlings into anything vaguely resembling a work program until they’re five, even six. Well, the major human growth plates don’t close, on average, until our early 20’s, and there’s some that stay open until early 30’s for some folks. Guess we’re not supposed to have youth athletics. The backpacking trip I’ve got planned for my kids, heaven forfend, their plates aren’t anywhere close to closed enough to carry weight in such an unnatural way! Of course that’s ridiculous, my kids are in PE and also have extra activities because their bodies can handle it and all the evidence points toward what they do now can set them for much better long-term health compared to hanging about and playing the occasional entirely voluntary game of tag.
In my field I’ve dealt a lot more with dogs and cats than with horses, but my horse (and physician) colleagues tell the same tale. The young have a tremendous ability to adapt, remodel, fortify, adjust in response to the biodynamic forces applied to their locomotive (and other) systems, even (especially) if those forces aren’t a normal sort of thing. The very young also heal injuries, when they occur, exponentially faster than the adult, sometimes so completely you cannot see a trace of the original injury later in life. Is it possible to push a young athlete, of any species, too hard, too fast? Of course it is, happens all the time. But it’s much, much easier to push an adult anything into injury and overwork, particularly if they have never really done any exercise before. Even a young adult. And then it will take them a LOT longer to recover, IF they recover.
It kinda ends up being a debate between the TB horsemen (and women) who understand the research and train the horses and those members of the hand wringing public that the little darlings should sit on their behinds in pasture until they are 5 or 6 or 7 
frugalannie, I would tend to disagree that a young bred WB filly out to pasture is really in "work’
ASB Stars, not sure I totally agree that the reason the youngsters are racing at 2 or 3 isn’t the $. Much information presented above that shows work early is good for the youngster. The good owners and trainers will wait until 3 if their horse needs time to mature and grow into their body (Justify comes to mind).
Justify didn’t really hold up to training and racing. He did not race until age 3 due to physical problems, and only raced for a handful of months until physical problems prompted his retirement. He was a big horse, which raises another point. The older a horse gets, the bigger it gets, until maturity. So starting a horse young means there is actually much less weight for the horse to carry as it first begins training. They are able to build a strong skeletal foundation as a youngster that will enable them to perform safer at a greater weight as they mature.
Thank you for sharing this! So essentially some training at a younger age is helpful to strengthen the bones (and tendons/ligaments?) for later workload. Very interesting! In dogs, early exercise is linked to things like hip dysplasia, so I do wonder about joint health with an early workload? Is there similar research on this for horses?
[QUOTE=Where’sMyWhite;n10379190
frugalannie, I would tend to disagree that a young bred WB filly out to pasture is really in "work’
.[/QUOTE]
Hence the quotes.
I didn’t mean “in work”. I meant that the filly is being productive and a nice foal can add to the owner’s bottom line.
Do you have any links to support and clarify the hip dysplasia thing? Activity at a young age will certainly accelerate the radiographic progression of visible degenerative changes in patients that already have hip dysplasia, but it doesn’t cause hip dysplasia. Radiographic changes also do not accurately reflect comfort and functionality. Active, athletic, well-muscled dogs often have severe changes on radiographs, but they often don’t seem to notice (9/10 IME if those dogs start limping after about five, it’s cruciate disease or something else that’s not hips, even if their hips look horrible). The overweight lifetime couch potatoes are the ones that have lameness and mobility issues from seemingly similar degrees of degenerative change in the hips. On a somewhat related topic, if a severe hip injury occurs in a very young dog, it’s really amazing how well they can remodel and adapt, without intervention, where if the same injury happened in an animal at or near skeletal maturity they would be literally crippled by it, and there may not even be a great surgical option. Had a really great, thoroughly documented example in my residency. One of my co-residents had a Dobe pup she had bred, fell off the sofa when he was a wee thing (maybe four weeks?). He was sore on one hind leg, but we couldn’t see anything on the rads since he hardly had any mineralization anywhere yet. We rechecked him, and it was clear that some kind of de-vascularizing injury had happened to his femoral head, as it never ossified as the other side did. Some of the best small animal vet ortho surgeons in the world, with specific interest in canine hip disease, were at that institution, and they all said, “Whelp, not a lot we can do other than maybe some salvage things depending on how things shake out as he grows.” They didn’t need to do anything. He had just a stub of an end of the bone, and all of the soft tissues and correlating bone on the other side just adapted to the forces as he grew and moved around. He was never lame after the initial few days since the fall, and she got conformation and agility titles on him. I’ve also seen less well-documented cases where it appears that the hip joints luxated completely at a very young age, and “pseudoarthroses” form wherever the femoral head happened to wind up in contact with the pelvis. Most of the ones I’ve come across, the patients are NOT lame, and the images are being taken of the abdomen (for vomiting and such) and happen to include the pelvis. Luxations that occur in adult or near-adult patients don’t have that kind of outcome without specific treatment to put the joint back in place, because the tissue does not have anywhere near the same adaptability to unusal forces.
@Toblersmom this is one article a vet friend posted recently, but it’s not the first I’ve seen of it.
https://www.instituteofcaninebiology…vU5CZqnZfJJk9M
On a related note, we also don’t recommend folks take their puppies running because of the damage that can cause. I don’t recall sources for it, though it seems to be a well-known and oft-repeated recommendation.
Taking these things together, it seems to be different from what the research says about horses. I would generally think the advice would be the same for both. Just trying to rectify this in my own mind.
There is a decade of statistics available on the Equine Injury Database, which is an effort by the racing industry to identify and control factors leading to catastrophic injuries. The most recent reports have the most up-to-date information and conclusions.
http://www.jockeyclub.com/default.asp?section=Advocacy&area=10
Also, google the Nunamaker Shin Study, “On Bucked Shins,” and related articles and studies. It discusses progressive loading and training adaptation. Here is a good summary article
https://veterinarynews.dvm360.com/bucking-strain-bucked-shins?id=&sk=&date=&pageID=3
Anyone who rides and trains horses for competition should educate themselves on conditioning methods so they can get the horse physically fit to successfully participate in the competition without suffering injury. There is a lot of “old school” opinions and some “logic” that has been scientifically disproven.
I think there is a difference between working a young horse and breezing a young horse weekly at under 2 yrs of age. There is a difference in hunters doing flat work and low courses at 3 and horses galloping as fast as they can at 1.5 - 2 years old. there is a difference between cantering a horse around the track and breezing it at that age. Each put tremendously different levels of stress on the skeletal and muscular systems.
In hindsight, horses, like humans, heal better and faster at youthful ages.
I am from hunter land and always believed in working young horses. It gives them something to do and starts them off on the right foot. Small jumps, every once in awhile, ok.
But people from era’s gone by believe that because they jumped 3’ courses at A shows with a 3 and 4 yr old back in the 60s, 70s, 80s, that it is right and today’s naysayers are wrong. There is something to be said for time, and the knowledge learned over time. Veterinarians and the like are far more educated and knowledgeable about the equine body today than they were then. No different than human doctors and their knowledge of humans. In addition; just because horses were winning national titles in the hunters at 3 yrs old in the 70s doesn’t mean the decision to do it was right. Veterinarians are constantly learning and developing new opinions on different scenarios based on studies they develop. Their knowledge and insight on things will be forever evolving with time.
Little regard is ever looked into the soundness and quality of life of the horse later in life due to such decisions because those within the racing industry don’t honestly care; I think. Do they care if the 18 year old gelding they once bred is crippled with arthritis because of the effects their practices had on him; I don’t think so. Do the trainers of top 3 yr old hunter prospects jumping courses regularly care if the horse is also crippled at 18 and cant move because of their practices. Lets be honest; they don’t. Granted, its affect on the horse can be linked to genetics and overall resistance to stress. But as other posters have noted its all bout getting bang for your buck as quickly as possible. Breeders and consignors want to turn these horses over for a profit as quickly as possible. the longer they stay in the stable; the lesser profit they make. The industry is driven by the sales industry and I don’t think that has necessarily helped the TB or the racing industry as a whole. Perhaps; negatively impacted it in some aspects.
TBs tend to have greatest monetary value when young, and this generally increases from a foal up to a 2 year old breezing in front of potential purchasers. That is a big driver for starting them young. Owners then spend a great deal of money and want a quick return. Once a TB races, it’s ability is apparent and value can crash. That is why ex-race horses are so cheap.
However, TBs do tend to mature earlier than most breeds. In the UK horses bred for jump racing used to be ‘stores’ which were turned away to grow and were then started at 4 or 5, like other horses, but that pattern has changed as more flat bred horses have moved over into jump racing - with great success. But size is a significant variable and a big TB might not be raced until grown enough.
The WB, which is a lot bulkier than a TB, does take longer to mature, in body and mind. The enormous 18+ hh WB has become far less fashionable in dressage as it just takes far too long to grow up. The monetary value plays out here too. Specialist European producers, aiming at high prices, do start horses young and push them far beyond their mental and physical strength. It is noticeable how few 3, 4, 5 yo champion young horses grow up to become top level performers. As more ‘blood’ is used in ‘modern’ style WB breeding, it will interesting to see if they reach maturity sooner.
The UK native ponies reach full maturity when they are 7 or so. In their moorland and mountain homes they are busy finding food and learning their environment so speedy maturation is not important. They loose ‘type’ when raised away from these traditional locations, always a concern for the breed societies. A New Forest pony raised in the New Forest will be at least a hand shorter than one bred off the forest.
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