Thread: Eight Belles
View Single Post
Old 05-04-2008, 01:06 PM   #15 (permalink)
billethius
All Star Reserve
 
billethius's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 805
Quote:
Originally Posted by kq76 View Post
Kind of like pitbull fighting, but for rich white people.
Go out to a local track someday - I think you'll be surprised by the wide variety of people that are there. It's certainly not just for rich white people.

As for the filly, medication is certainly an issue, but it's probably not the main one. Here's what I posted over on FOFC:

Quote:
Originally Posted by me
Drugs are certainly part of it, but a much bigger part is the North American breeding practices of breeding purely for speed at the expense of durability.

I read an interesting article a year ago or so that put forth the theory that another contributing factor was the money involved in the breeding industry now. Since fast horses are worth so much at stud, they're often retired after very few races. Where in the past a good horse would race through his 5 year old season (at least) and the most durable horses would be the ones to make the most money since they'd be able to run consistent races more often - now horses horses are retired so early that durability rarely enters into the equation and the ones with problems aren't weeded out f the breeding pool.

Last edited by billethius : 05-04-2008 at 01:08 PM.
billethius is offline   Reply With Quote