Fed Biz off the Derby trail

[Clip-Clop]

Originally Posted by King Glorious

I feel like that points to the fact that the horses would indeed do better with more activity. The horses are trained to be at their peak for the Derby and so coming back in the Preakness, they are still at that high state of readiness. What it seems like we end up seeing is that the horses make it through the Derby and then come back to run in the Preakness and/or Belmont and do well in a lot of cases but it comes with a price. Often, that price is that they end up the worse for the wear and either are retired or end up missing the rest of the season. Sure, we get some that make it through and continue to thrive like Lookin at Lucky or Shackleford, to name a couple of recent examples. But it seems like we get more examples like Animal Kingdom and Nehro. It just seems to me that when horses were running more complete 2yo seasons, there were more horses that lasted through their 3yo seasons and when the trend started slanting to "less is better", with horses running only 1-3 times as 2yos and having races spaced out 6-8 weeks apart, the number of injuries has increased.

I agree, it is (would be) nice to see more horses with 15-20 races on the yearly stats and it would likely keep them fitter for longer. Sadly, I do not think this fits in with the business side of the game.