Jim,
Those are good questions and I’ll try to give them the thoughtful answers they deserve. The notion that sprint times have gotten drastically better than route times is perhaps possible because of the recent obsession with breeding for speed. However a lot of “common sense” notions don’t hold up when subjected to research. To anyone not taught differenty it’s “very apparent” that the world is flat and was commonly believed until somebody sailed past the horizon and didn’t fall off.
That’s why we go to all the time and expense to do research. Just because more sprint records seem to be broken recently than route records can have other explanations. There are more sprints than routes being written so of course there are more chances for sprinters to break records. This is because trainers are less interested in routes, but this may be caused by the false belief many of them have that routes are harder on their horses than sprints, when in fact the faster intense pace of a sprint may be more likely to cause injuries, so lack of staying ability may not be the explanation for the loss of interest in distance races. Besides records are broken by the freakish exceptions which are not always good representatives of the population as a whole. We statisticians call then “outliers” and prefer to compare populations by taking the means or medians and then see if the differences are just caused by normal variability (standard deviations), or are really significant. I’d like to see that kind of study.
The notion that horses have “evolved” dramatically in the last 2 or 3 decades has to be examined carefully. When most people hear the word evolution they think about the huge changes that typically take thousands or millions of years to occur. The effects of selective breeding in a shorter period of time are much less extreme. Yes they have been breeding for sprint speed but I seriously doubt horse breeders, who are still using the traditional philosophy of “just breed the best to the best and hope for the best”, would suddenly be producing much faster sprinters than they were able to for the couple of centuries that preceded. I don’t think the gene pool is that drastically different. I think of the extent of inbreeding, or the lack of it is a factor, but that’s a little too lengthy a topic to get into in one post. Ask me about that later. If horses are indeed faster, I think it has more to do with drugs than genetics. Chemistry has obviously improved over the last few years. If anything drugs are more likely to work by warding off fatigue that would help routers rather than the speed of sprinters.
Even if sprinters were faster, there is considerable overlap in the factors that make a horse good at any distance so, again, a drastic improvement in sprinters over routers is unlikely.
Plus if sprinters were getting faster, the sprint pars would reflect that and the equivalent times for routes could be adjusted to reflect that, and equivalence would be maintained.
I think the most important point is that even if sprinters are getting faster than routers, how can it be to the extent that a poor 8th place finish in a sprint is a better performance than a big win in a route at a similar class level. Especially when the “sprinter”, Imperialism, is not really good at 6 panels and the route winner loves the 10-furlong distance, to give Imperialism the better figure is especially absurd. Maybe the 8th place winner in a race of Thoroughbreds is a better runner than the winner in a race of Clydesdales but we’re talking about the same species here.
As far as how I feel about Jerry’s theory that horses, all horses, are getting faster, I am of 2 minds here. It is possible due to drugs. On the other hand, I think that sometimes Jerry gives a slightly inflated figure, as in the Gold Cup, due to underestimation of the effects of pace. I can hear you all already, “ Oh no, now Class is going to chime into this” LOL. Seriously, the effect of speed, like wind, is exponential. KE = ½ MV squared. Kinetic Energy = Mass x Velocity squared. That’s why all attempts to quantify it linearly are doomed to failure. That means that slight deviations from level pace (1 sec or so) have little affect either way, and Jerry is correct in ignoring it. Wide deviations, like this year’s Derby, are devastating and the “hot pace” designation tells you those close to it are probably screwed. Sometimes we have a middle ground where the pace is very fast, though not insane, but yet faster than some horses used to make the figure are acustomed to. I think in the Gold Cup, Flower Alley, Lava Man and the rabbit bombed and had no part in the determination. However, Suave and Sun King ran significantly faster early than in their top efforts but still were givin credit for close to their tops. I think this may have inflated the final figure. Maybe not a lot, but since figures influence future figures, if this happens often enough, over the years the figures float upwards. Just a possible explanation, like the drug theory. In any case, I don\'t think it\'s genetic.
Bob
