Casino Drive impresses by winning the Peter Pan in just his second start and will try to win the Belmont in his third. The pedigree says yes but once again I smell a reckless owner.
Big Brown wins the Kentucky Derby in his fourth and will try to win the Triple Crown undefeated in six, Seattle Slew did it in nine starts. Is it reckless? Could very well be.
Eight Belles dies, at the hands of a reckless owner, trying to win the Kentucky Derby coming off wins in the Fantasy and Honeybee Stakes, two widely recognized Derby preps.
Are fast Beyers all that count? Not according to Beyer in this column he wrote last year .
So why do fillies appear so rarely in the U.S. Triple Crown races? Many years
ago I talked with the late trainer Angel Penna -- who twice won the Arc de
Triomphe with fillies -- about gender in thoroughbred racing. His explanation
was a revelation. Just as with adolescent boys and girls, Penna said, young
horses develop at different rates. As 2-year-olds, colts and fillies are
relatively equal in strength. But by the spring of their 3-year-old year, the
colts have spurted ahead in their development. The fillies don't catch up until
the fall. Penna's theory has held true over the years. Female
racehorses can beat males late in their 3-year-old season or when they are
older
Didn't anybody learn anything from last week?
The lesson is that ignoring historical convention can be dangerous.
A breakdown in the 2006 Preakness followed by another in the 2008 Derby. If there is another breakdown in the Belmont, we might or might not have a Triple Crown winner but we will have a macabre Triple Crown of another sort.
Are we courting disaster here again with Casino Drive by asking a horse to run a mile and a half in his third start?
The answer is yes.
3 comments:
Oh dear, do I ever agree with you. In Time magazine there is a short article on horse racing and it is very detrimental, it makes me so sad because I love the tracks.
I question your logic. I think you are ignoring the breeding here. This is clearly a distance horse, of which 1.5 miles will not be a problem. Tomcito, a horse also bred for distance ran 1.5 miles in Peru early on his career. Casino Drive has been properly rested between starts. He is a thoroughbred , and like it or not, thoroughbred horses run, just as sled dogs pull sleds.
Ah Spa,
You are always right to question my logic but either the game or the horses have changed so much that I don't get it anymore.
John S over on Railbird today puts it much better than I can.
Has the game turned so far upside down that a horse off a single maiden score in Japan and one subsequent posted work can win the Peter Pan for fun? Are you kidding me? I don't give a damn who his dam is. It was incredible enough to watch Big Brown win the Derby off three starts -- one on the turf, one scheduled for but off the turf, one in the Florida Derby -- from the 20 hole, no less. How much money is burned by good handicappers doing nothing more innocent than applying years and years of foundation knowledge about how horses need to be prepared for demanding objectives? What of trainers, say, Shug McGaughey or Neil Howard, who have been bringing their horses along "the right way," and now watch these super freaks just laugh in the face of methodical paths to maturity and success? I'm not sure how big a fan I am of this new horse racing or even understand it. All we talk about is the weakening of the breed, but these horses sure don't look weak to me. They look stronger and more talented than anything we've ever seen. There is a theory floating around that in "the old days," the great horses routinely pummeled the rest of the mediocre ones, and that now all the horses are good and that they break down more because the competition has become so fierce, it's much harder to win a horse race than it used to be. I'm starting to believe there is truth to this, that the new breed is not only more infirm from drug histories and poor breeding strategies but also much faster and talented because of those same strategies.
P.S. -- A horse broke down in the stretch at Hollywood yesterday. Just loosely keeping score.
- Posted by: John S. at May 11, 2008 09:34 AM
http://www.jessicachapel.com/railbird/archives/001807place_in_history.html
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