Are Racehorses Getting Faster- Part One

[jimbo66]

CtC,

Smarty and Tiznow is a decent debate.  But the depth of the class is not close between the two groups.  Albert won at 10 marks, smashing older horses, Captain Steve won at 10 marks in the richest race in the world, and Fupeg was the derby winner.  

One race in the US is all Giant\'s Causeway ran, but let\'s face it, he won 5 or 6 straight group 1\'s in Europe before the Classic and I think he was best in the classic, but got a bad trip. (Coming from somebody whose only winning ticket that year in the BC was a \"bailout\" win bet on Tiznow).

I am not putting Smarty down, he was very very good.  But the rest of the class stinks.  You talk about Lionheart.  What was his best 3 year old win, beating Snookie\'s Boy at Monmouth.  Gimme a break.  What was TCE\'s best win, beating the \"miler\" Lionheart at 1 1/8 at Keenland, with a nice inside/out trip.  

I understand that you may \"like\" these horses, but their accomplishments don\'t measure up with the class you are pointing to.  (Fupeg, Tiznow, Albert, Captain Steve, Giant\'s Causeway and even Aptitude.

I would say Lionheart, TCE and Birdstone fit with a horse from that class like Red Bullet.  Sometimes good, but inconsistent and not stars.

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

Man I hate FuPig. Everytime I have to search out his record I can\'t remember the correct spelling of his name. What a disaster horse. FuPeg\'s only Grade I win was the Kentucky Derby. Please don\'t talk tomato cans and mention him in the same breath as the 2004 crop:

1997 Grade I wins

FuPig: Kentucky Derby
Red Bullet: Preakness
Commendable: Belmont
Albert the Great: Jockey Club Gold Cup
Tiznow: Breeders Cup Classic (2); Santa Anita Handicap; Super Derby
Captain Steve: Dubai Classic; Donn; Hollywood Futurity

2001 Grade I wins

Smarty Jones: Kentucky Derby; Preakness
Birdstone: Belmont, Travers, Champagne
TCE: Bluegrass
Lion Heart: Haskell, Hollywood Futurity

If you look at these animals you\'ll see the 2004 crop was more brittle but also more accomplished when they went bad. I\'m nearly certain Birdstone\'s Classic was impacted by injury. TCE went bad in the JCGC. Lion Heart in the Travers. Between them, they\'d cleaned up the major races to the point of their departure from the scene The big four of 2004 where the who\'s who of the crop. They accomplished more in a shorter period of time. Perhaps that was the problem. If some aren\'t able to see the ability in these four horses thats not all bad.

Captain Steve beat a filly in the Dubai World Cup and was life and death to do it.

I\'m done debating this. Its all theoretical anyway.

CtC



Post Edited (11-19-04 13:43)

jimbo,

I enjoy your posts about the \"quality\" of fields and crops. There is so much focus on numbers these days, the importance and skill of measuring quality often gets lost.

[jimbo66]

CH,

Thanks.  It is a tough balance between raw \"number power\" and \"quality\" in fields and crops.  

I didn\'t look it up, but I am guessing that Jerry would tell us that this year\'s 3 year old class is many lengths faster than FuPeg, Albert, Tiznow, Giant\'s Causeway and that class.  

Maybe, but to me, they beat older horses, did so convincingly, and to me they ran in better competition.  

Then again, at 37 years old, I hate to take the \"old timer\" side of the argument, like my grandfather who thought nobody was better than Ruth and my father who still thinks Bonds coudln\'t hold Mantle\'s jock.....

[TGJB]

Exactly. And those arguments will go on forever in barrooms, because there is no science involved, or even attempted. I actually made a New Year\'s resolution one year never to have one of those again in my life.

One of the things about this whole discussion which amazes me is this-- as I made clear in the original articles, even at the rate of improvement I am showing in the figures, thoroughbred performances have improved LESS than those of either human athletes or standardbreds over the same period. And it\'s pretty astonishing that some of you guys would think all the developments I\'ve detailed several times now would cause NO improvement.

Ultimately, the only way you can compare ballplayers is in terms of how each stacked up against other players of the era they each played in. And you can do that with horses, too, as you guys have-- but it\'s a different discussion.

TGJB,

I don\'t have a problem with your view that horses are improving. I have a problem with your rate of improvement - especially in the last few years.

I\'d rather not rehash all the reasons because I\'d be violating a recent promise to you.

However, IMHO there are also very strong reasons why humans have made great progress that are not applicable to horses. In fact, the exact opposite process has been at work in horseracing.

[TGJB]

I did read your other post, which was the most serious of any here on the subject, and most interesting. But let\'s take figures out of the discussion-- drugs, improved nutrition, selective breeding for a marketplace don\'t figure to improve performance, keeping in mind that human and other equine athletes have improved?

By the way, the foal crop data I saw was pretty recent-- I would like to see how much bigger it got after the 70\'s. And keep in mind that when it shrunk again, it was the TOP 70% or so that they kept breeding-- the weak were culled out, as the Darwinian marketplace demands.

TGJB,

I am much more inclined to believe that the horses of 70s forward are WAY better than the earlier decades because I believe I can actually see differences in stride, extension late in the race, appearance etc.... when I watch old races.  Yet when I go to the track these day, I still think Housebuster, Easy Goer, Seattle Slew, Secretariat and a few others were among the most impressive looking animals I have ever seen. I just don\'t see a difference. I see a big difference among humans.    

I am inclined to believe that nutrition, selective breeding etc... are a positive, but they were probably offset to some degree by so many horses going overseas. The quality was spread out.  

I am have no strong opinion on the drug factor. If it\'s as prevalent as some think and it\'s a relatively new phenomenon at the very top levels of racing, there\'s no way to deny the impact. At the claiming level, I think it has almost certainly been a factor for quite awhile and may be getting worse. I focus more on the top. I sort of discount this a little when making handicapping  comparisons. If \"The Bid\" was juiced they\'d never beat him. :-)

[kev]

Jerry has Del Mar done anything to their track, looking at all their track records, only 1 out of 12 has been broken in the past 16 years. Looking at most track records has been falling in the recent years, not old DMR.
For ex. record for 6.5 is 1:13.3 (1988) and in 2003 the fastest was 1:15.2, 9.0F TR 1:46.0 (1979), 2003 1:50.2.....anything they have done to that track to slow it down big time??

[TGJB]

Don\'t know. But I do know there have been some damn fast grass races out there over the last few years (some by Special Ring), and it\'s hard to believe just the dirt horses wouldn\'t be fast, everything else aside.

[Michael D.]

\"don\'t know\"  i must have read that response wrong. did you just say that you don\'t know if one of the top three or four tracks in the country is slower than it used to be?? your #\'s are getting faster than any professional in the biz can even imagine, your reason is that race tracks are slower today than they used to be, and a guy asks you if one of the major tracks in the country is slower than it used to be, and your answer is \"don\'t know\" ? what am i missing here? please, somebody help me.



Post Edited (11-20-04 04:03)

[TGJB]

Michael, NO ONE can help you if you don\'t get what I have said on this subject, at tremendous length.

 Kev didn\'t ask me whether it is slower, he asked me about what was done to the track. I know tracks are slower, as I have said a few dozen times, for all the reasons that enable me to decide on a daily basis whether tracks are faster or slower than they were the day before, and faster or slower than a track 100 miles away. Do you think I need to get cushion depth, soil composition percentages and hourly moisture content readings to do track speeds? Those are the primary things that affect track speed, and the various combinations of these things produce an almost unlimited number of outcomes-- but you MEASURE track speed by seeing how fast the horses ran over it, compared to how they ran over that and other tracks in previous starts. According to the head of Math at R.P.I. (who, by the way, used to play guitar for Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen), the technical term for what we do is regression analysis.

 That\'s what I do for a living, and there is no one who ever lived who has done it for as many racing days, or circuits, or faced as many varying conditions, or probably examined these questions as closely as I have-- if you haven\'t already done so, check out the audio-visual \"Changing Track Speeds\" on this site. It is ground breaking stuff-- you show me where anyone else has tried to tie science in with speed figures. You will see a quote in there from Dr. Mick Peterson, who is one of the scientists who have studied racing surfaces, saying he thinks that the way we measure track speed is a better way to do it than any purely physical measurements of the properties of the tracks. Just as the eminent scientist who wrote the Scientific American piece quoted in \"Are Racehorses Getting Faster\" said that accurate performance figures are the best way to compare generations.

Science, or as close as we can come to it. Not, \"I knew John Kennedy, and Smarty Jones is no John Kennedy\".

[miff]

JB,

You got it wrong.The saying goes\"I knew Secretaiat and Smarty Jones is no Secretariat\"

Incidentally, it seems convenient to quote what DR. Mick Peterson \"thinks.\" Very scientific!!

lastly, what Scientist \"certified\" that your performance figures are so accurate that they can be considered totally reliable to back your OPINION that horses are getting faster.

Kev asked a specific question about DEl MAR track records.Your theory that horses are ten lenghts faster has more holes that swiss cheese in this instance. Where are the NEW track records at DEL MAR to support your theory?

[TGJB]

I give up.

[Frank]

I knew it. We win.

Frank