Are Racehorses Getting Faster- Part One

[TGJB]

Just out of curiosity, do you think that Sham ran the second best Derby ever, or was the second best horse ever to run in it? Because... he ran the second fastest raw time.

[miff]

Re SHAM,

I don\'t think he was very special or fast, but I have a theory about horses being natural herders that will \"chase\" beyond their normal optimum speed( a long story)

Now do you really believe that SEC would not have demolished Birdstone given the exact same trip as Smarty had in the BELMONT.JB, you\'ve been around a long time and I respect your knowledge, take a look at CtC posting of SEC\'S lines and honestly tell me you believe that SMARTY could have beaten him on both their best days.

Mike

[Michael D.]

take a look a \'bid\'s lines some day, and his 1:57 and change race (most likely a TG # in the positive range). some of today\'s horses getting negative #\'s for their 10f races would not have come close to bid that day. something is wrong here.



Post Edited (11-17-04 18:44)

[TGJB]

Yes, by quite a bit. Same as I believe todays swimmers would beat Mark Spitz, who in his day was unbeatable, and Michael Jordan would have dismantled my idol, Jerry West. Same as I believe the Rams \"fearsome foursome\" would be pushed all over the field by any offensive line in football today, same as I believe Jesse Owens would finish last in some high school track meets today. Same as I believe Tiger Woods, playing with today\'s equipment, would have won every major from 1950 to 1980. Same as I believe Bonds would have hit about 100 homers a year in the 60\'s.

On the other hand, Bonds would have been picking himself up off the ground against Gibson and Drysdale a lot. So maybe not.
And I\'m not saying he would be able to do it without the help he may be getting now-- like todays horses do.

[Michael D.]

TGJB,
i can\'t believe you continue to bring swimming pools into this discussion?? are you serious??

[TGJB]

Why wouldn\'t I be? They have the advantage of not changing speed, as far as I know.

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

TGJB wrote:

> Yes, by quite a bit. Same as I believe Bonds would have hit about 100 homers a
> year in the 60\'s.
>
> On the other hand, Bonds would have been picking himself up off
> the ground against Gibson and Drysdale a lot. So maybe not.

LMAO, Gibson would have definitely would have dumped him on his butt and kept him on his heels.



Post Edited (11-17-04 19:37)

[jimbo66]

\"Racehorses getting faster\" makes a good case.  I can\'t deny that.

Lets say that comparing Secretariat from 1973 to Smarty in 2004 is a tough comparison because of the time difference and the incremental changes in surface and the changes in the breed itself.

What about an even shorter time difference, where these track changes and breed changes are not so big.  Silver Charm won the Derby in 1997.  Looking at the sheets in the archive, T-Graph has Smarty 5-7 lengths faster than Silver Charm on average if you look at their body of work.  I just don\'t get it.  Who did Smarty Jones beat?  Any real race horses in this year\'s 3 year old crop?  Silver Charm beat Captain Bodgett, Free House and Touch Gold.  All solid animals.  Was Smarty 5-7 lengths faster than the in-form Silver charm of his 3 year old season?

Sham:

>Just out of curiosity, do you think that Sham ran the second best Derby ever, or was the second best horse ever to run in it? Because... he ran the second fastest raw time.<

I don\'t think Sham was anything special, but I think he ran well in the Derby and Preakness.  

One of the best \"subjective\" cases for Secretariat\'s ability is the gap between Sham and the rest of the field in the Derby and Preakness.

For the non-speed figure oriented, \"who beats who\" by \"how much\" and visual impressions are the only ways to evaluate horses.

This is one of the problems I have with some of the current figures.

Today\'s best horses are usually beating watered down Grade I fields because everyone avoids each other. Plus, \"much\" of the quality is overseas. Horses move from the allowance ranks into Graded company and perform well all the time these days. That kind of stuff rarely happened years ago when a Grade I race was typically 6-8 deep full of excellent stakes winners. Many of the negative figure horses today are not even impressive winning. They look like crap visually.  

Maybe they are running faster, but given equal drugs (or whatever) no one is going to convince that some of the garbage cans putting up negative numbers these days are as good as the horses that dazzled me in the 70s.



Post Edited (11-17-04 19:52)

This is the obvious problem for people that believe there are methodolgy issues with making accurate speed figures over very long periods of time. If you use high level subjective comparisons the figures don\'t make any sense. I can watch today\'s professional human athletes and see the superior bodies,  superior athleticism, deeper competition etc... When I look at today\'s horses I see garbage cans running a minus -2 while getting beat regularly and looking terrible doing it.  

>What about an even shorter time difference, where these track changes and breed changes are not so big. Silver Charm won the Derby in 1997. Looking at the sheets in the archive, T-Graph has Smarty 5-7 lengths faster than Silver Charm on average if you look at their body of work. I just don\'t get it. Who did Smarty Jones beat? Any real race horses in this year\'s 3 year old crop? Silver Charm beat Captain Bodgett, Free House and Touch Gold. All solid animals. Was Smarty 5-7 lengths faster than the in-form Silver charm of his 3 year old season?<



Post Edited (11-17-04 19:51)

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

jimbo66 wrote:

>
> What about an even shorter time difference, where these track
> changes and breed changes are not so big.  Silver Charm won the
> Derby in 1997.  Looking at the sheets in the archive, T-Graph
> has Smarty 5-7 lengths faster than Silver Charm on average if
> you look at their body of work.  I just don\'t get it.  Who did
> Smarty Jones beat?  

Smarty beat some very good horses. He beat Lion Heart, who I gained more regard for with every race. Lion Heart broke down. He also beat Birdstone, who was a much better horse than people will give him credit for. Bird broke down in the Classic is my guess. If he didn\'t, the Lone Star surface certainly didn\'t agree with him. He beat Purge, in fact he wore that one out. I\'m not sure who is gonna rise from Smarty\'s crop now that the big four are on the shelf. TCE was not a bad horse. I don\'t know what happened to some of the others.

[miff]

JB,
What happened? Now you toss the SCIENCE and come up with an opinion?, how unscientific of you. Better look at Smarty\'s final splits and compare them to SEC\'S, not even close, do the math.In no race did Smarty come close to finishing the last eighth/quarter as fast as SEC did.Forget final raw times, that\'s a real joke.

It seems, that you have concluded that BIRDSTONE would have beaten SEC in the Belmont if I read you right.With that absurdity, I surrender.

[Michael D.]

i will never find out if every race track is a lot slower than it used to be. my suspicion is that horses are much faster at 1m and less than they used to be, but as you go from 9f to 12f, the increase in speed advantage over past horses diminishes, to the point where they actually run 12f slower than they used to. i don\'t know for sure though, i don\'t think anybody does, but maybe we should move on to the next topic.



Post Edited (11-18-04 03:33)

[twoshoes]

Miff,

Just a little more food for thought though I\'m sure your mind is made up - and that\'s fine. Just please keep in mind that it\'s understandable for the rest of us to look at this with a bit more of an open mind.

From a link previously posted here by bdhsheets:

\"Every thoroughbred horse traces its ancestry back 300 years to three Arabian stallions brought to England from the Middle East, according to the Jockey Club.
Since then, the philosophy of breeding these animals has remained remarkably unchanged: Breed the best to the best and hope for the best. That kind of selective breeding improves the speed of the thoroughbred. While few speed records are being shattered these days, thoroughbreds are consistently faster. Still, it is not easy to make a champion. \"No one\'s found the magic formula,\" said David Williamson, bloodstock adviser at Gainsborough Farm in Versailles, Ky., the home of Elusive Quality, Smarty Jones\' sire. So many disparate factors go into a winning horse. According to Williamson, the recipe breaks down like this: 25 percent genes, 25 percent quality of upbringing and care, 25 percent training, 10 percent jockey skill and 15 percent luck. Science does not yet know how to manipulate genes into building a better racehorse, said Cecilia Penedo, an equine research geneticist at the University of California at Davis. \"The goal is to understand the genetic basis of performance traits,\" she said. \"There\'s still a good amount of folklore involved in breeding.\" One tool that horse people have in abundance is pedigree information. They can trace a horse\'s ancestry and performance back generations. Understanding this improves the odds of producing a better horse, said Mark Ratzlaff, a professor of horse anatomy at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Washington State University. \"But it can\'t measure other things, such as the horse\'s desire to win.\"
Much breeding today is little more than informed guesswork based on pedigree - \"so much baloney,\" said Jeff Seder, who runs EQB, the West Grove equine biomechanics company where Miller works. People buying young, unraced horses consult with Seder, who tries to pick future winners based on precise tests and measurements of the animals and how they move. EQB studies family histories of horses, particularly to see which consistently produce large lungs and hearts, with thick walls. Seder uses ultrasound to measure hearts. The great Secretariat had an unusually large heart. The theory, then, is that a great heart makes a great performer. Speculation about Smarty Jones\' heart - as yet unmeasured - is that it is colossal. \"I\'ll bet he has gorgeous cardio,\" Miller said. When Seaman measured Smarty after the Preakness Stakes, he was amazed to find that he outscores the three greatest horses of the last 30 years: Smarty scores a perfect 1 out of 10 for gravity, meaning that everything fits together in proportion. For leverage - the length of hips, shoulders and legs, which helps determine stride - Smarty scores a Plus-9, the highest. And for ratio or efficiency - a function of body mass and leverage - Smarty gets a score known as 10$, the highest. By comparison, Secretariat got an 8 for leverage and a 4 for ratio; Seattle Slew, a 9 and a 5; and Affirmed, a 10 and a 5. Though smaller than the champs, Smarty has more power, Seaman said. \"Technically,\" he added, \"Smarty Jones is the best horse.\"

And possibly, just possiblty, faster.

[fasteddie]

One thing left out of this conversation....WEIGHT! Nobody carries weight today! In my mind Dr. Fager\'s 132.1 is a mark for the ages; he carried 136 that day and won by 10 under a hand ride. His 120.1 Vos. he carried 139! Ta Wee (his half-sister) carried 140 lbs. beating the boys in the Fall Highweight, when that was a real race. Today\'s horses are too inbred and brittle.

Just like human athletes, I suppose! Baseball
30 years ago had 4 man rotations, they pitched 300 innings, threw just as hard, and didn\'t break down. Today, a pitcher who throws 10 complete games leads the league! In \'72 Steve Carlton had THIRTY completes, 9 shutouts, and AVEREGED 8.3 innings-per-start.

Today, despite deeper (safer??) tracks, high quality horses can\'t stand up to hard training.