Another View of Modern Racing From Bobby Trussell

[TGJB]

BB-- on the subject of changes in the tracks themselves, you should read \"Are Racehorses Getting Faster (1 and 1A) in the archives of this site. The cushions are much deeper, and the soil has a higher percentage of sand and less clay. As I said, I talked to Joe King when I was researching that piece. At that point (2003?) he had already not been involved for several years.

[BitPlayer]

Barry -

If you have a chance, can you elaborate on what you mean by this and how it weakens the breed?  Thanks.

[fkach]

TGJB,

You are going to have to take my word on this. Back in the 70s I used to take a look at the chart with cushion depths every time I went to the track trying to find correlations between that and rail biases (never found much and stopped). I can\'t recall any of the specifics, but the cushion wasn\'t nearly as deep then as it is now at the NYRA tracks.  

On the flip side, since we know that moisture is also an issue in this, I wonder whether more frequent watering, a higher average moisture content, and rolling, floating etc... are having offsetting impacts on both speed and the hardness of the tracks?

[TGJB]

I don\'t have to take your word. Porcelli gave me details, and they are in ARGF.

[fkach]

Yes, I know that. But BB was giving opposing testimony from Joe King about NYRA.  I can verify that Porcelli is correct about NYRA (definitely Belmont because that\'s where all the dead rails were I was trying to predict better).  I don\'t remember any 2 3/4 cushions, but low 3s almost definitely on occasion.

[Barry Irwin]

The racing/breeding industry today stands on the precipice of perhaps another disaster, as it did in the late 1980s.

When consumers become producers and there are few replacement consumers, the market equation collapses.

That is happening as we speak.

If the game does fall down the hill, then you may have more people joining you in trying to beat the game through the wickets than as owners.

[bloodline bob]

TGJB -

I\'ve read it and think it\'s a very interesting theory. I\'m just not sure it\'s correct. Belmont is just one track. We discussed this in a thread a couple years ago. That\'s one reason why I called Joe King. I asked him if the tracks are considerably slower now than 30 years ago. He told me no. I said I heard that when Secretariat won the Belmont there was a 2 3/4 inch cushion.  He told me no way. So are you trying to say he is out of it and is not a good source?

I agree it is logical that horses should be getting faster. We have been selectively breeding a certain type for 20 years at least.  Sprinter milers to be specific. So we should be getting faster horses up to a mile and slower horses from 9-12 furlongs. That\'s probably what we are getting.  But to say that Secretariat would be a nice allowance horse now and that you couldn\'t find him in today\'s Triple Crown races is taking a (now disputed) data point about cushion depth and extrapolating it way too far in my opinion.  The best way to resolve this is to study grass racing.  When we discussed this you dismissed that because of pace but that should be a constant.  I don\' think we\'ve changed the way we ride grass horses. And if you look at it observationally it does seem that grass sprints are getting faster and the routes are not. I did look at some major races like the Yellow Ribbon that have been run for decades and the times were faster in the seventies.

Also do you believe tracks are getting slower and horses are getting faster each year or did this level off at some point?  It seems that fig inflation has accelerated the past few years.

[TGJB]

1-- Joe King would have no way of knowing whether tracks are slower unless he was a) using one of the energy return machines George Pratt invented, or b) using figures that are accurate, which is to say have not relied on pars for the last 20 years, which is to say TG (and not Ragozin, who cut loose from pars relatively recently). His account of the cushion depth does not square with what Porcelli told me (and frankly with what King told me, which was that he didn\'t disagree with anything Porcelli had told me, and didn\'t have much to add). Porcelli started the accurate record keeping at NYRA, and was the one who put me in contact with King. Without any doubt, the cushion depth at the NYRA tracks has increased over the period of time Porcelli has been involved, specifically when Terry Meyocks came in.

2-- As I pointed out a year or two ago when the issue of grass race times was last brought up, there have been a lot of VERY fast grass races run in the last couple of years (I listed a dozen or so at the time from the previous 6 months). Additionally, as I make clear early in the article, the prevailing theory today is that soft=safe, and the same thing presumably applies to grass, to the degree it can be controlled by not mowing, watering, etc. Trainers start screaming when racetracks get hard, and Darrel Vienna (for one) does not like to run horses over the Hollywood grass course when it gets too hard.

3-- \"Fig acceleration\" is I believe a function of such things as drugs. On the question of track speed today, it\'s all over the map, especially since the advent of poly etc.

[Barry Irwin]

Here is just one way this impacts the breed.

Breeders plan their matings by trying to come up with the best match for their mares by choosing a stallion that compliments their mares.

As with any breeders of animals whose function follows form, conformation is important.

Let\'s say you have a stallion that goes to stud that was born with legs that were severely deviated or deformed. Let\'s say this horse--we can call him him Real Quiet for the purposes of the hypothetical example--underwent surgery to correct his limbs.

Let\'s say that Real Quiet went on to win a race such as the Kentucky Derby. We will throw in the Preakness just for the sake of fun.

Well, by and by, Real Quiet goes to stud. His legs look all right. Breeders support him. When his foals are born, they have the same type of legs that Real Quiet had when he was born.

The breed has been weakened.

This is merely one example of the detriment of this type of manipulation.

When I first started writing about this stuff 8 or so years ago, I was not a popular figure among farm managers in Central Kentucky. Some of them, I have been told, paid money to a certain scumbag to make fun of me and my ideas in a certain scandal sheet printed in Kentucky.

Nowadays, everybody is talking about these things and certain people are trying to obtain full disclosure of the practice on young horses. Good luck to them because they have an uphill struggle ahead of them, as the establishment in the bluegrass like the status quo just fine.

By the way, conformation and honestly depicting the body of a dog is considered so important, that it is considered unethical to evem touch up a photograph of a dog, let along to surgical change its body.

[sighthound]

99% of the dogs you speak of exist in a vacuum outside of any performance requirements, other than \"being pretty\".

Function doesn\'t follow form - form follows function.  Horse purchasers have to be willing to not accept \"perfect\", and to realize that a variety of what are thought of as \"flaws\" are perfectly compatible with function and soundness.

Admittedly difficult to do, to have experience as that teacher, when those flaws never are allowed to make it to the track extant.

[miff]

\"Porcelli started the accurate record keeping at NYRA, and was the one who put me in contact with King. Without any doubt, the cushion depth at the NYRA tracks has increased over the period of time Porcelli has been involved, specifically when Terry Meyocks came in\"



JB,

FYI,there was a period of time during spring 2005 that the posted cushion depth at Belmont was studied for 32 consecutive racing days.During that period, 9 racing days in a row had a posted cushion depth of 4.25 inches but raw times wildly fluctuated during the 9 days. Whether it was wind,maintenance,humidity or a combination of many factors the exact posted cushion of 4.25 was IRRELEVANT as to how fast raw times actually were during this period. I suspect the result for the entire meet would have been similar.

Conclusion: The Posted cushion is rather meaningless to raw times, at least at Belmont and I wonder about all other venues.


Mike

[sighthound]

> The economics of this sport never cease to amaze
> me. I\'m not an expert on horse values, but it
> seems to me the income streams don\'t even come
> close to justifying the prices paid for horses.

Opening up this week\'s Blood-Horse to the article crunching the final numbers for the Keeneland sale, the large excerpt in the middle of the page reads,

\"Lurking under the lofty numbers posted by the Keeneland September sale is the fact that only 25% made a profit for their breeders\".

[Barry Irwin]

You sound like an advance man for Cot Campbell, who never lets a crooked leg stand in his way of buying a beautiful pedigree!

[Street Sense]

sighthound Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> > The economics of this sport never cease to
> amaze
> > me. I\'m not an expert on horse values, but it
> > seems to me the income streams don\'t even come
> > close to justifying the prices paid for horses.
>
> Opening up this week\'s Blood-Horse to the article
> crunching the final numbers for the Keeneland
> sale, the large excerpt in the middle of the page
> reads,
>
> \"Lurking under the lofty numbers posted by the
> Keeneland September sale is the fact that only 25%
> made a profit for their breeders\".


That 25% figure isn\'t correct.  They\'d need to count live money RNAs and sales negotiated after the horse goes through the ring for an accurate figure.

[fkach]

>\"Lurking under the lofty numbers posted by the Keeneland September sale is the fact that only 25% made a profit for their breeders\".<

If that many breeders are losing money, then owners paying huge prices must be getting demolished. I thought that breeders were benefitting from the strange economics.  IMHO, income streams must determine intrinsic value, not the ability to find a greater fool and sell at a higher price.