Fragile Breed Begs for Rankings

I diverge briefly today from my narrow focus on small time horse ownership. I feel fellow bloggers like Alan, Patrick, Jessica, Ruben & Jonathan do a much better job of analysis than I can, yet since Patrick and the Thoroughbred Bloggers Alliance have overcome my initial skepticism over rankings, I wanted to pile on a bit.

Bill Finley offers up some rather ill-informed writing on racing yesterday, and yet I agree with his key premise: the breed is too fragile. I'll leave the "ill informed" portion of my critique, particularly with regard to his analogy between the horse and the NFL running back, for another post.

But make no mistake, the breed is fragile. How this happened and what to do about it is another matter. I believe it has much less to do with the trainers and more to do with breeding. My position is that, at the margin, a trainer can likely get slightly more from a lightly raced horse on key race days. Given that this game is one of inches, there is incentive to do so.

Breeders have lit the path to fragility by the traits they seek....Longevity, not among them. This leads trainers to run even less as experience with the evolved (read: more fragile) breed reinforces this notion as more fragile horses are more likely to be injured training and racing.

Why do they breed more fragile horses, then? For a flash in the pan, these horses perform at a higher level, even if the chance of a horse so bred competing in many races for many years is quite low. There are also exceptions, of course. The Poisson distribution has shifted, not to say that a few horses can't still fall somewhere in the "spectacular" range of the z-scale. [someone with actual knowledge of statistics should correct my likely incorrect nomenclature, here]

Another aspect of the fragile breed issue that is often ignored is the role of science and equine medicine. We are far more able to detect minute problems in todays horses than those of 20, 50 and 100 years ago. The value of breeding rights today dictate that little risk be taken, when in years past owners and trainers might be oblivious to risks such as Afleet Alex's avascular necrosis problem, that was "almost impossible to see."

What's the solution? I don't know precisely, but one can not dictate to owners and trainers to run their horses more. Nor can breeders be ordered to value stamina and longevity. What seems to be the best solution is one developed and sponsored by Patrick over at Pulling Hair. Awarding Horse of the Year honors based on a system that rewards activity and not just a couple of big wins would go a long way. If Patrick's system was subscribed to rather than the current writer based regime, the owners, trainers, and breeder's would eventually come along. If the incentive is there, breeders will breed for those traits and owners and trainers will run accordingly.