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Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, 6th October 2019
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Horses may or may not be faster, impossible to say.
The aim is to win the race, nor to go fast.
You will always get new records, but as mentioned above records arise from fast ground and favourable wind.
One factor that makes it difficult to break records now is previously races were hand timed, and it could be 3/4 second before the hand timer knew the horses are moving.
Now the electronic timer afaik starts when the button is pushed to operate the stalls. In other words, modern horses have to be 3/4 second better before they are on a par with earlier timings.
St Jovite's Irish Derby "record" time is wrong by about one second. Will the authorities correct it? They would plough up The Curragh before they would correct it.
In the USA timing is different again.
Timing does not start when the starter presses the button.
Timing starts when the horses have covered a distance and pass through a timing beam, which could be 50 yards after the start.
More horses are bred now than decades ago, but imo the majority are poorly bred.
Mares are bred to the sires whose foals and yearlings will make the most money at the sales.
An example of this is the Australian wonder racemare Winx, winner of her last 33 races, now retired.
What sire was chosen for her first foal? I Am Invincible, Australia's most expensive sire at a covering fee of AUD 247,500.
Billionaires will bid big money for the foal/yearling, if only to be able to boast that they have the first foal from Winx.
If things pan out as they almost always do the foal will be moderate to useless.
Years ago the wealthy who could afford horses had their own breeding studs and pedigree advisers.
I do go on a bit.
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The Tetrarch wrote: »Horses may or may not be faster, impossible to say.
The aim is to win the race, nor to go fast.
You will always get new records, but as mentioned above records arise from fast ground and favourable wind.
One factor that makes it difficult to break records now is previously races were hand timed, and it could be 3/4 second before the hand timer knew the horses are moving.
Now the electronic timer afaik starts when the button is pushed to operate the stalls. In other words, modern horses have to be 3/4 second better before they are on a par with earlier timings.
St Jovite's Irish Derby "record" time is wrong by about one second. Will the authorities correct it? They would plough up The Curragh before they would correct it.
In the USA timing is different again.
Timing does not start when the starter presses the button.
Timing starts when the horses have covered a distance and pass through a timing beam, which could be 50 yards after the start.
More horses are bred now than decades ago, but imo the majority are poorly bred.
Mares are bred to the sires whose foals and yearlings will make the most money at the sales.
An example of this is the Australian wonder racemare Winx, winner of her last 33 races, now retired.
What sire was chosen for her first foal? I Am Invincible, Australia's most expensive sire at a covering fee of AUD 247,500.
Billionaires will bid big money for the foal/yearling, if only to be able to boast that they have the first foal from Winx.
If things pan out as they almost always do the foal will be moderate to useless.
Years ago the wealthy who could afford horses had their own breeding studs and pedigree advisers.
I do go on a bit.
There are a number of factors that blur the answer to the simple question of are horses getting faster.
Trainers have access to better everything nowadays in comparison to a few decades ago. More all weather gallops mean that horses aren't missing vital exercise, better understanding of nutrition means better foodstuffs for building up a horse to their maximum potential. Better legal and illegal drug treatments should be boosting the athletic ability of horses, as should the much better scanning technology available to analyse the physique of the horses.
Foals are now genetically tested to see what distance they will be most suited too.
Everything is in place now to allow horses to perform substantially better than they did years ago. The huge expansion in the amount of horses in training and in racing internationally may have dropped the average ability level of horses. It has certainly made the big races less competitive and less important.
I have to say though that there seems to be fewer OR 130 horses about nowadays than previously.0 -
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