Today in my state in Australia we had a 10yo mare win at her 136th start, bringing her record to 136-11:13:18 and two days ago we had a 12yo gelding have his 141st start in which he ran 3rd and brought his record up to 141-49:29:11Kelly Haggerty wrote: ↑8 months ago We used to get horses off of the Chicago or Ky circuit that were 5-8 years old, retrain them to be jumpers, and jump them over 4ft fences for another 10 years. That certainly isn't today's horse. I'd love to see some of the heavier EU horses mixed in, but the babies won't be early or quick and I don't know if the industry could get it together to write the races and put incentives in place.
They are both USA blood mixed 1/2 or 3/4 with Australian or New Zealand pedigree. Both are sprinters. Both are clear of any inbreeding in the first 3 generations. Northern Dancer is there 4 and 5 back, but that's pretty much every horse on the planet I swear. Point being that bringing in a tonne of Australian or Euro blood would potentially have an immediate effect in terms of soundness. If Australia's drug rules were adopted, which is withholding times for all drugs that must be observed and NO treatment of any kind for one clear day prior to racing (e.g. if they are running Saturday then they can't be treated with anything beyond Thursday at 11:59pm) that would probably also reduce fatalities. Although I don't think it would have in this particular case (I'm pointing the finger at her pedigree for this one).
Australia has also in recent times adopted the practice of taking a lot of time with babies. They will be broken in at 2 but might not actually race until 3 or 4. The time between is divided between spelling, pre-training and being at the actual racing stable doing barrier trials and working in company etc. The rise of pre-training has been a bit of a phenomenon. Owners pay a lower rate for the horse to do their slow preparation work out on a farm, away from the main training centers. It is a low pressure environment, usually with large boxes and/or yards or paddocks. In the decade I've been riding in races it has been a very noticeable shift.
When I started out they were pushing 2yos as hard as possible to get them going as soon as possible (which does still happen) and I was riding a lot of nutcase horses who had ended up with the trainer I was riding for because they'd been with a big time trainer and been cooked in the head, or had soundness problems that would never have happened if they weren't rushed. There's still some horses going around that are nuttier than squirrel poop but they are a much rarer breed these days. And of course we still have racing fatalities. We had 3 the same day as Maple Leaf Mel even, but that was very much unusual and 2 of them were heart attacks with no prior history or symptoms. But mostly our fatalities stay WELL under 0.1% of the 170,000-180,000 starts our roughly 35k actively racing horse population have per year.
So its possible for the US to clean up its industry and do right by its horses. Will it do it? I have my doubts, and wouldn't be shocked to see US racing dead or nearly dead by next decade. There would need to be a strong national body or coalition to push for change, and the states and various racing authorities would all have to cooperate.
