weight for age

[Anonymous]

Pinza, having posted the exceptions, it would be superfluous to post the non-exceptions.

I suggest you go onto the tbheritage site, click on portraits, and have a look for yourself at the 100s of photos on display.

Then compare with photos of modern, ie last 50 years or so, flat racers and see the difference.

It’s particularly striking in the American throughbred, the pre-1950 brigade seem like a completely different species from the the heavily-muscled champions of today.

Whether these changes are a good thing is, of course, another matter.

I’ve seen plenty of photos of pre-1900 stallions and mares, but don’t recognise any appreciably different trend, acceptable deviations from the norm excepted. You’d need to give me

specific examples

to convince me that you have an argument.

We’re talking (or so I thought) about European thoroughbred horses, which don’t seem to my eye to have changed their looks since photography (and photo-real painting) came in during the 1870’s. I’m not sure what your evidence might point to in pre-1960’s American stallions – again, you’d have to offer me specific examples on which to comment, because I haven’t spotted anything myself.

Of course training (and drug) regimes in the States may temporarily affect the muscularity and appearance of the racing thoroughbred, but once they get to stud I suspect that even in the USA the plain old 18th-19th century English Thoroughbred look reasserts itself.

[Author]

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