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No one considers Bernadini one of the greatest ever. Where did you get that from?
He was probably the best 3yo colt in the US that year (Barbaro notwithstanding). No more no less.Btw, he wasn’t retired due to injury. He was favourite for the BC Classic, but got beaten by Invasor. He was retired because he was a top 3yo son of AP Indy and Sheik Mo couldn’t wait to get him covering mares.
It’s funny, a lot of the things Europeans complain about US racing, the Americans complain about in reverse. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard Americans dismiss European racing as "they canter around for a mile, then sprint the last quarter… why don’t they just have 2f sprints?". I think each of those attitides displays a lack of understanding and appreciation for the other.
American racing is about speed, and always has been, and not just the sprints, but even at classic distance the perfect horse is the horse that can sustain their speed over a distance of ground. Just look at Secretariat’s Belmont victory, he goes out in blazing fast fractions and sustains that for a whole 12f. You have to admit that is an amazing feat. I suppose you could dismiss it as wasteful, he was 30 lengths in front, why not ease up and canter home? But that’s not what American racing is about, he had a clock to beat.
There are times when you wonder about their obsession with the clock, if they wouldn’t be better off just running time trials. But speed and time are a large part of how they measure a horse.There’s not much variation in courses. I admit that that can be a bit boring. But that’s just the way it is.
A lot of the "problems" with US racing, small fields, short distances, drugs, etc can be chalked up to trainers and owners. They have a lot more power than their counterparts in Uk and Ireland. They like small fields, it’s easier to run in the money. They like short distances, because it’s easier to train a horse to go 6f than it is to go 1m4f, less time consuming conditioning to build stamina. You basically train sprinters by sprinting them. It’s also easier to race back in a shorter period of time off a shorter distance, less recovery time. They run on drugs like lasix and bute because the former means you can race a bleeder and therefore not lose your investment and the latter means you can run a sore horse that would otherwise need time off and not be producing. Those are both things owners and trainers want. Don’t kid yourself that owners and trainers in the UK and Ireland wouldn’t run on either of those drugs if they were available. They just don’t get to call the shots to the degree they can in the US.
The attrition rate is higher. That’s a combo of an emphasis on speed and racing on a surface, dirt, that is incredibly tiring. A tired horse going flat out is more susceptible to break down. Still, the attrition rate is less than half that of NH racing, which most punters in the British Isles seem to be able to live with. In fact I’ve seen studies that have the fatality rate for Bumpers as higher than dirt racing.
US racing does offer more information to the punter regarding past performances and timed workouts etc. The former can give you a fairly accurate idea of how a horse tends to run by just looking at numbers on paper, without having have had to see the horse run with your own two eyes. I think timed workouts though have to be taken with a certain grain of salt. For one they are still hand timed in this day and age (why they can’t use chips in saddle cloths like they do in HK and Japan I find strange, this is 2009 after all, when even a local showjumping competition at some village fair can be timed to one hundredth of a second electronically). Plus, unless you actually saw the workout you have no idea how hard the horse was running, whether they were in full flight when the clock was started, how well they galloped out afterwards, or on what part of the track they were galloping on, in the middle of the track or close to the rail, all can make a huge difference. Not to mention that the clockers can, and do, get horses mixed up, with so many going around the track each morning. or if an unscrupulous trainer calls out the name of different horse.
Have to keep in mind too that a full book of mares back in the old days was 40 mares. Nowadays 150+ is not unusual. That, I’m sure, takes it’s toll.
I believe 1961 Kentucky Derby and Preakness hero Carry Back was the last classic winner of normal fertility to do this. He covered a full book of mares before his last season on the track (1963).
He was a real ‘iron horse’ of the kind you just don’t see these days, 16 runs as a 3-y-o, 61 in all.
Not to mention 21 times as a 2yo!!
Only ran 6 times in ’63 after covering mares, but still managed to finish in the money 4 times.
Tough old horse.The breeding season in the northern hemisphere is from Feb to early June. In the southern hemisphere from Sep to Dec. Given that most top stallions these days shuttle then there is no room for racing.
But even if a horse didn’t shuttle, it’s a hard ask to expect for them to combine duties. Remember when George Washington was put back in training and the comments from O’Brien about how he was basically on "Five legs" for the first month or so? Their minds are elsewhere, and they also get heavier and develop stallion musculature (big cresty necks etc) which are is not neccesarily the prefered body type for a racehorse. On top of that, it would take a couple of months to get a horse ready to race, so if he finished covering mares in June, he wouldn’t ready to race till Aug, maybe even Sept, so what would be the point.
But it has been done in the past. The US Triple Crown winner Assault was raced and bred. However he had incredibly low fertility so he only covered a small number of mares in the early part of the year just to see if they would take and then he went training when invariably none of them were found in foal. He did that till he was 6 or 7yo, but he had the benefit of year round racing so he could race up till Dec, even in Jan then cover mares in Feb.I, as much as the next man, would love to see horses race at 4yo and beyond. However, was not the ideal of 3yo Classic races, when they were introduced 200+ years ago, to determine who the top 3yo stallions were so they could be sent off to stud and get an early start on their breeding careers, all for the betterment of the Thoroughbred as a breed?
Granted, with huge book sizes nowadays, and no lack of stallions, the whole "betterment of the breed" reason is no longer really valid (except in the case of a fillies, like Zarkava, because of their limited offspring). But the concept of young horses retiring to stud is a couple of centuries old.WFA races are in essence level weights. You give the 3yo an allowance to level the playing field, and likewise with fillies and mares. Now, one could argue that the scale could be tinkered with a bit, and that maybe the 3yo gets a little too much, esp at the end of the season when they are almost 4yos. The 8lb allowance 3yo colts get in the Arc is too much in my opinion. I think the 5lbs the Americans give is fairer.
Hmmm, looks like Sheik Mo won the race…. http://www.darley.co.uk/stallions/our-s … s/pedigree
Racing Post is still saying Irish National Stud is favourite to stand him. So either Darley are incredibly optimistic or the Racing Post is not on the ball.
Believe these horses wouldn’t be true QHs but ‘apprendix Quarter Horses’ bred purely for racing as opposed to the reining / show lines.
Yes, the foals from a TBxQH cross go into the "Appendix" Registry. However, if they excel on the track (or in any of the other disciplines like Reining, Cutting, or even in the show ring) they can then be ROMed (register of merit) into the main studbook. An Appendix can arise from a QHxTB cross, or a QHxAppendix cross. One parent must be a main studbook QH.
There are quite a few racing QHs that are 7/8ths TB, even more. Dash for Cash himself was 15/16ths. He was out of a TB mare and as such was an Appendix, but was ROMed after his successful career on the track. He was the result of several generations of Appendix crosses that received their ROM on the track.
Here’s his pedigree… http://www.allbreedpedigree.com/dash+for+cashHe is also the sire of McDynamo, top jumps horse in the states in the last decade.
Known as a turf sire, but his three biggest horses were actually dirt runners, Barbaro, Dynever and Perfect Drift, though in fairness Barbaro was probably equally good on grass.He was one of the few stallions at Three Chimneys that wasn’t galloped for exercise, because he was too dangerous. Wears a head collar with a chain stitched into it, after he removed a finger or two from one of the grooms. His bad temperament is legendary.
Disagree that O’Brien sends horses to the BC just for the prize money. It’s the prestige and stud value. A win in the BC Classic opens up another world for a stallion and the chance to stand in Kentucky.
Coolmore, and many others, don’t bother sending horses to Dubai, with obscene amounts of money on the table. Likewise the Japan Cup is often is skipped.If it was all about prize money then the Derby Italiano would be drawing better fields than the Guineas, St James etc etc.
Yeah, there is huge grumblings among US racing fans that the Classic is a watered down Turf this year. Most can’t wait for it to get back on Dirt next year.
Gio Ponti in the Classic makes sense, he is true 10f horse. His lack of stamina at 12f was very apparent this last weekend in the J. Hirsch at Belmont. He also wouldn’t have the brilliance to win the BC Mile.
Very well put, Adrian.
It’s such a shame that we have to travel halfway across the world to compete in such a prestigious event.
Why we don’t stage an end of season championship event, showcasing a variety of our greatest talent, I don’t know.
We have all this talk about promoting racing. The difference is America acts.
Is Arc weekend not a European championship event, more or less?
The only thing it lacks is a top Mile race. You have the premier sprint, the premier end of season fillies/mare race in the Opera, premier middle distance race in the Arc, premier stayers race in the Cadran.Incidently, I dont think Coolmore ran pacemakers in the English Derby. I just think Golden Sword went from the front as he had done so previously.
I agree. But I think he would be good as a pacemaker, as the field wouldn’t want to ignore him and let him establish a massive 20 length lead. Having a horse with a legit chance of springing an upset means he ends up having the effect he was intended to create… a strong pace.
The likes of Set Sail… why would anyone pay any attention to him, you know he’s going to blow up after 9f.Isn’t the point of a pacemaker to set the pace for the stable mate who lacks turn of foot and is liable to be out kicked in the final furlong? So shouldn’t the stablemate be ridden closer to the pacemaker…. i.e like Yeats yesterday and his pacemaker.
Watching those pacemakers racing off into silly leads with the field ignoring them makes you wonder what the point is.
I agree that a better strategy would be a pacemaker that is an actual threat, that has a possibility of stealing the race off the front, i.e like Golden Sword, or to use a couple recent American examples of the past couple of years, Precious Passion in the UN Handicap and The Tin Man in the Arlington Million. Not that either of the latter was a pacemaker, but they were allowed to establish big leads (farcical in the case of PP) and couldn’t be reeled in.Bud, you do realise they have jump racing in the States? Obviously nowhere near on the scale of what you see in Ireland, Gb and France, or with the quality of animals and level of professionalism, but it does have a loyal and devoted following, mostly in the mid-Atlantic region.
There was a big midsummer jumps race yesterday at Saratoga, the Turf Writers Handicap, 2m3f over National fences (a type of plastic brush fence) for $100k.You can watch replays of many US jumps meets here… http://www.nationalsteeplechase.com/vid … chive.html
Zenyatta did carry 129lbs in the Vanity, giving away a stone to the rest of the field.
But yes it is rare to see horses carry more than 9st in US racing.When Curlin carried 9-6 in that warm up race in Dubai a year ago, it was considered a BIG deal in the US. There were all sorts of worries that his back would break in two from the hefty impost.
