Why Aren't Horses Getting Faster?

It also affects the way that races set up - if you don't care about time all you have to do is train for the cruise and finishing kick (like Olympic races rather than rabbited WR attempts in athletics terms).

Lack of time bonuses mean that a horse who is winning easily (which is also a horse likely to be close to a WR) isn't going to be "ridden out" fully (which is also why more than half of the recognised WRs have been set in claiming races - which are the equine equivalent of the local 5k). Any jockey who rode a horse out when winning by 10 lengths would be immediately sacked by the trainer, because it (a) to do so would exponentially increase the risk of injury, and (b) make the horse's recovery that much longer (if the jockey "wraps him up" when the race is won, the horse might be able to race again in 10 days versus a month to six weeks if the horse is ridden to exhaustion chasing a meaningless time - I can remember that when Elliot Walden won the Belmont with Victory Gallop, he put up his "day rate" for a horse in his stable to $300+ - that alone is an incentive to race as frequently as possible).

One point about the training, and why horses don't benefit from training like humans; horses carry a "reservoir" of around 30% of their total volume of red blood cells in their spleen, which is released by the fight or flight mechanism (adrenalin). This ability isn't actually "trainable", but it does help to explain why horse races set up the way they do. The longer the horse can "cruise" without going into oxygen debt means more energy saved for the "kick" which carries you clear of your rivals. It also, IMO, explains the high injury rate in racehorses, since, in full "race mode" their muscular system puts out far more power than their tendons/ligaments/bones are used to handling - resulting in a highly increased likelihood of breakdown if they take a funny step, or get bumped, or step in a hole.

The problem is that you can't train to activate that system a little bit, it is an on/off switch, not a gradual release (you'd have to sit on a real racehorse going at full speed to understand), and if you activate the system too often you are going to "sour" the horse and he won't want to run.

Interestingly, Graham Motion, the trainer of Animal Kingdom, trains his horses at Fair Hill in Maryland, and I know he sends the young horses out to trot and canter on the trails in the parkland around the training center as much as he possibly can. I don't know if he has a better or worse injury record than other trainers, but it certainly seems to be working for him in terms of results.

One final point about Tom Ivers - he talks a good game about how trainers should use interval training etc., but at the end of the day Ivers has been in the business for 20-30 years and never won anything better than a claiming race. If results speak louder than words, then Ivers should definitely shut up!

In Horse Racing they cleaned up the corruption.

It's not quite as simple as that: if athletics had half the money that horseracing does, it could set up proper test protocols. Also the testing protocols used in horse racing at the analysis stage are much less stringent than those used in athletics.

I'll give you one example: Dimethyl Sulfoxide (DMSO) is a banned substance in Kentucky, and they haven't had a conviction for it since the drug was put on the banned list as a Class D, despite it being common practice to "jug" horses with DMSO in a saline bag 24 hours before a race. Do you know why they haven't had any convictions? Because the gas chromatography detectors used by the testing labs aren't sensitive enough to detect DMSO in the quantities used (quantities which do have a definite effect on the horse).

PED testing in Horse Racing tests horses and jockeys using Government Parole / Corrections rules. It's nearly evaporated PED use in horse racing and is the model referred to by experts.

With a Doping Tax on ticket sales for Pro and College sports, the same level of PED testing could be brought to NCAA sports, NFL, MLB, T&F, etc. With the number of perfect games and no hitters MLB has become a sham as ridiculous as WWE/MMA/UFC and the BCS/SOS.

"Serious follow-up question: Has anyone experimented with horses doing hill training? If it works for humans who will be racing on the flat, why not for horses?"

Over here in the UK, Horse Racing is obviously huge but one of the major differences compared to the US (and the majority of other top racing/breeding nations) is that the sport is split into 2 'divisions'. "Flat" racing and "National Hunt" racing (the latter is essentially jump racing - races run over distances from 2 to 3 miles - very occasionally further, but not often). It's a fantastic sport - one of the main reasons it's as, if not more popular than Flat racing, is that the best horses come back year on year and race each other. To compete over these distances, the horses are almost exclusively required to be gelded to have the right temperamemt and, as such, have no use for breeding (they are usually bred themselves from the best 12-14 furlong horses on the Flat). Unlike in Flat racing, where the best 3yo's are packed off to the breeding shed so you never see the very best of different generations racing each other.

Anyway - to answer your post. My parents live in the same village as the Champion NH trainer in Somerset. He has a string of about 150 horses, and their day to day work has them running up a huge hill anywhere between 2 and 4 times each (google or youtube 'Ditcheat hill', and you'll probably see photos or footage of them). The trainer readily admits it plays a huge part in the yard's success. The horses are obviously thoroughbreds, but bred to stay further than your average 6, 8 or 10 furlong flat horses

Is it Paul Nichols yard?

See you are a Denman fan - a great horse

Followed Kauto Star for years & he had some great battles against 'the tank'

There is nothing more exciting than watching the horses over fences (especially if you have money riding on it!)

I've never understood with flat horses do they actually peak at 3 years old - seems a bit young

Black Cavier better than Luskin Star was back in the day?

r u a horse wrote:

Really, a horse is just a house with an r instead of a u. Do you really expect a house to run just because you've given it an r and taken its u? Given this logic, I don't find it surprising at all that horses aren't running faster.

But I think that you have failed to account for the fact that faster is just fatter with an s instead of a t. Now, it really isn't all that difficult to get any fatter, is it?

Here is some evidence to back up what you just said - 1973 Grand National

ukathleticscoach wrote:

I've never understood with flat horses do they actually peak at 3 years old - seems a bit young

No they don't - that's why 3-year-olds don't run against older horses early in their 3-year-old year, and why they have "weight for age" scales when they do later on.

Thoroughbreds don't mature until around 5 or 6 years old.

The "Classic" races are important precisely because they are restricted to a particular year - they let you sort out which are the best horses in a crop, and then you can compare them against the older generations later in the year.

Steeplechasing (it's not called National Hunt any more - not very PC) is more about jumping ability, which is why you see so many Selle Francais horses winning races - on the flat against a Thoroughbred they'd be blown out of the water, but they jump so powerfully and quickly that it gives them a real advantage.

I've read, somewhere in a book, that horse racing times aren't improving because of diminished returns with selective breeding.

We've been selectively breeding horses for so long that we've arrived at a sort of maximum "thoroughness", so that there isn't room for the next generation to improve.

It would be as if we bred the Ethiopian national champions every generation for what, 500 years, at that point we wouldn't see many records resulting from improved physiological conditioning.

I'd also have to guess its the same phenomenon as women's distance records. The records were set using drugs, before the thorough testing came around, and now we're stuck with unattainably fast records that no one can run without illegal help, or at least without the same level of illegal help they got away with a couple decades ago.

hannsen wrote:

They should develop an alter g for the horses so they can run more without getting injured heh. Why dont they have them run in the water? Doing some aerobic development for a 2 minute race has got to be helpful its still the same circulatory system as a person.

These things do exist.

There is an underwater treadmill (or was) at the U of Kentucky. Better equine lab than human performance lab.

The horse version of the alter G has a harness that takes the weight off.

damnnnnnn wrote:

Doping control officers also witness the urine going into the cup and the blood into the vial.

No they don't. The drug testers look away so that blood and urine can be substituted. The testers lie about the cold temperature of the blood/urine samples supplied from bottles. They don't use sworn detectives with 20 years of law enforcement experience, and they don't require yearly financial and character background checks. They use interns, athletic dept employees, USATF employees, high school track coaches, IAAF employees, volunteers who applied online for just one meet, etc. The samples can be substituted by the testers to assist athletes. Testers tip off the athlete's coach, doctors, scientists. Our sport is dirty because dope testing is a charade designed to let dirty athletes thrive.

In Horse Racing they cleaned up the corruption.

You have no idea what you are talking about.

Horse don't do Summer of Malmo (or Summer of Secretariat)type base training.

They are like many high schoolers. They just stand around eating oats for three years and expect to go out and break 2:00!

Total Knob wrote:

Steeplechasing (it's not called National Hunt any more - not very PC) is more about jumping ability, which is why you see so many Selle Francais horses winning races - on the flat against a Thoroughbred they'd be blown out of the water, but they jump so powerfully and quickly that it gives them a real advantage.

Not sure where you read that it's not called National Hunt anymore.

If I am not mistaken the triple crown is a handicap race. That means the horse carries more weight to equal out the field. Makes it tougher to win all three.

As seen on TV! wrote:

If I am not mistaken the triple crown is a handicap race. That means the horse carries more weight to equal out the field. Makes it tougher to win all three.

But you are mistaken so everything that follows the words, "If I am not mistaken", is irrelevant.

Horse Racing has the only effective doping control program. Each state controls the jockeys, trainers, owners, horses, and veteriarians with an iron fist. They must agree beforehand to forfeit their constitutional rights before they can participate in horse racing. With pro and NCAA sports the leagues and federations cheat and tip off athletes and coaches. Just look at MLB with the no hitters and perfect games caused by doped pitchers. Look at T&F with ARs, WRs, NCAA records set every month by doped athletes. Look at how many dopers sneak in urine and blood and dodge detection. That would all go aways if we had college degreed, career state detectives enforce parole/corrections department procedures instituted on pro and NCAA college athletes.

Two things, one of which is likely covered already at least in part. I have a brother at a high-level of the sport.

Thoroughbreds have been breed for blood line and physical characteristics for a very long time, and the generational time is much shorter than humans. Also, horses have been pushed much harder than humans can generally push themselves; one clue being the number of catastrophic breakdowns that result in the death of a horse. In addition, there has been more money in horse racing and breeding for a long time than has been the case in human sports, especially track and field.

Second:

A regular poster on the Track & Field News board is the owner of the winner this year; he lists track and field as his major interest behind only horse racing.

My understanding of the prevalence of no-hitters has been that MLB cracked down on drugs, and with less juiced hitters=better pitching than we became accustomed to the last couple dozen years.The question would be how does pitching the last two years compare with pre-1980 stats.

damnnnnnn wrote:

Horse Racing has the only effective doping control program. Each state controls the jockeys, trainers, owners, horses, and veteriarians with an iron fist. They must agree beforehand to forfeit their constitutional rights before they can participate in horse racing. With pro and NCAA sports the leagues and federations cheat and tip off athletes and coaches. Just look at MLB with the no hitters and perfect games caused by doped pitchers. Look at T&F with ARs, WRs, NCAA records set every month by doped athletes. Look at how many dopers sneak in urine and blood and dodge detection. That would all go aways if we had college degreed, career state detectives enforce parole/corrections department procedures instituted on pro and NCAA college athletes.