Modern Training

"I'm glad you posted on this subject because this trend is becoming ridiculous. I don't mind trainers bringing a horse along slowly, but to me that has always meant increasing the difficulty of their races slowly - Not avoiding races alltogether."
Joseph

"i wonder why trainer and owners are going more with racing horses lightly before the derby/ does it have to do with the health of the horse and/or are training techniques getting better so that they can get the horse ready with fewer races"
Gerry

I personally feel that training techniques are the main problem with this sport. Many people blame breeding, they feel that horses aren't built like they used to be, they feel the modern thoroughbred is incapable of standing up to the rigors that they used to be able to. My belief is that the horse is as it always was. Sure there are speed influences and some unsoundness being passed on but have you ever considered how foreign horses are supposedly more durable yet they have nearly the same bloodlines?

Australia's wonder mare Makybe Diva was the kind of horse Americans wish they could witness on their own shores. She won three Melbourne Cups in a row, the Melbourne Cup by the way is an open two mile contest that draws the best stayers in the world. She prepped for her last Melbourne Cup victory with a win in 10f Cox Plate, which is Australia's premier middle distance event. The interesting thing is that the Cox Plate is run just 10 days before the Melbourne Cup and the Diva was a 7 year old. It would be unheard of for an American horse to run in the nations two biggest races just 10 days apart. Especially when one of them is a two mile race where she had to carry 128lbs.

She was an ultra durable horse but she almost seems otherworldly until you look at her pedigree. She is basically North American up and down. Her father, Desert King, was an Irish bred but he was by Danehill. Makybe Diva basically has an all American pedigree with heavy Northern Dancer influences on both sides. Not unlike a plethora of horses you see stateside but it is my firm belief that the differences lie with how she was trained and what her connections expected of her.

“Instead of encouraging extreme stoutness and endurance . . . it is now the fashion to aim at attaining the highest speed, thereby entailing the production of an entirely different description of horse”
Baily's magazine, 1896

I love this quote, it shows that the perception of frailty is nothing new. Whatever the era, there have always been those complaining that the horses they're seeing just aren't bred to be as robust as the generation before. It's all rubbish, there is nothing physically wrong with the Thoroughbred, it's our minds that have changed.

Trainers in North America are all about the winning percentage. That is the stat that attracts new owners. Breeders would also prefer a stallion with a 7-6-0-0 career record than a 30-20-5-4 record. Trainers basically don't feel free to lose with their horses. So they work them into razor sharp condition before exposing them to race conditions. I think this actually contributes to injuries more than anything. Anyone who has ever trained for a sport knows that training is no substitute for the sport itself. Prolonged periods of training actually make your muscles tighter and more susceptible to injury. That's why body builder's make terrible football players despite their impressive physiques.

Trainers drill horses short, fast and frequently and usually always the same way making them muscularly unbalanced. In contrast foreigners tend to gallop over long distances, uphill and down, both right and left. They don't even time workouts, because that isn't where the focus is. They don't want to post a bullet, they want to win a race, and they're willing to lose a few races in order to win the one that counts.

I think training techniques have developed for the worse. I don't think the majority of horses are truly fit, they are simply tuned for a specific task. Trainers are to blame for many of the ills in this game, they're willing to trade a horse's long term well being for the pursuit of a statistic.