Where have all the good horses gone?

The horse racing industry is currently in a rut. There is an unfortunate irony playing out as a result of irresistible amounts of money being offered for breeding rights and young racing prospects.

The unfortunate irony is that the breeding of the racing elite is being more and more refined.

The best half dozen out of every season of thoroughbreds stand at stud to pass on their winning attributes. But the racing is suffering.

Our best horses are being retired too early, often after less than 10 starts. We don’t get to enjoy what one could be forgiven for thinking is their purpose for being bred, their racing ability.

Our racing is lacking a tremendous amount of top quality depth as a result. If there are 4-6 of the best horses of each crop retired after their three-year-old season then we are missing 15-25 of our very best horses in the realm of the open age.

Think of Pierro, All Too Hard, Zoustar, Shamus Award, Hallowed Crown, Shooting To Win, Capitalist and now Flying Artie and Extreme Choice, to name but a few.

The problems as I see them are multiple. We are breeding for early runners. This could be due to the prestige of the early classics, more likely though I think it is the pursuit of the quick return.

Purchase prices and training fees are high and a quick return is hard to resist. With this in mind, when a breeding proposition wins a two-year-old or three-year-old classic they often can only diminish their stallion prospects by racing on.

Criterion was a strong two-year-old and was one of the top three-year-olds of his crop winning the Rosehill Guineas, the AJC Derby, as well as a second in the Australian Guineas. Criterion is by Sebring, a Triple Crown winning two-year-old, so he’s bred for speed and displayed stamina.

He was, given the millions at stud, ‘boldly’ raced on beyond his three-year-old.

In his subsequent racing seasons he won the $4 million Queen Elizabeth, ran second in the Cox Plate, third in a Melbourne Cup and took on the world’s best in Europe, running admirably.

Despite all of these wonderful performances did he improve his stud value? I doubt it. He won a lot of prizemoney but he also missed out on two breeding seasons. The move did probably pay off financially but it also carried significant risk.

More importantly though, Criterion took his owners on the ride of a lifetime as well as significantly increasing the interest of many of the calendar’s best races for millions of racing fans.

Another curious phenomena that I’ve observed is one without an obvious cause.

Horses are being raced more and more sparingly, especially as two-year-olds. The two-year-old racing season revolves around the Golden Slipper. Every early racing two-year-old have connections dreaming of Slipper glory.

In years gone by, many horses had had seven or eight starts heading into the Golden Slipper. These days most runners have had three or four starts heading into the main event.

What this means is that in all of those lead-up races most horses are having their second or third run, meaning most of them are far less interesting than they used to be as we don’t know the horses. Getting to know the horses is one of the great joys of following horse racing, which is why I see this as a significant problem.

So, we are breeding to produce early runners, we are barely racing them when they are young, and we are retiring the best of them before they reach their peak age. This ironic little conundrum doesn’t just make me wonder if we are missing the point; it makes me certain we are.

People’s interest is being sustained by an innate love of horse racing, as well as the fact that backing a winner pays the same whether they are the fastest horse in a crack field or one of the slowest in a maiden handicap. The industry must not take this loyalty for granted because it won’t last forever.

The breeding industry cannot keep growing at the expense of the racing industry. Breeding is there to serve racing, not the other way around.

On a side yet related note, what has been fantastic for the industry has been the arrival of the European imports. I was at first cynical about their involvement, partly because of that unknown factor that I touched on earlier. Not only have these imported gallopers increased the overall standard, they also come here to race. A lot of them are geldings, and expensive ones at that, and so are committed to racing.

Horse racing at its best is about getting to know the horses and watching them run their hearts out. It’s about knowing different horses in different contexts and having them meet each other to race. Without a booming breeding industry, the racing will do fine. Without a successful racing industry, the breeding industry dies.