are today's racehorses more fragile?

Question

DeputyMinister baby if you get a 5th season your lucky

like you will never see another Kelsoe

Answer 1

They are pushed harder and harder each year and they are raced sooner and younger.
A horse should really be three before you are racing them. It is very hard on young joints to run them as hard and often as they do and it shows in the length of the horses career.
At smaller tracks where they are not run so hard all the time many horses race for 5-8 years. But when they are so popular and they are such a huge expense to breed you have to run them to make up the stud fee price. The race purses are huge and they run them hard and retire them young.

Answer 2

There really is no empirical data to suggest that today's racehorses are "more fragile" (I'm going to assume you mean than horses from 50 years ago or so, comments like this generally look back on the "golden age" of the 50s-60s, etc.).
To begin with, you really need to define what you mean by 'more fragile'. Do the horses suffer more injuries or do we have better medical diagnostic equipment that we detect more minor injuries that a horse used to race with? Do the horses retire more from injuries now because they can't continue racing or because they are worth more money as breeding prospects? Do they carry less weight because they are incapable of carrying weight or because trainers know that they can ship across country on a plane for a different race that offers a weight break? Do horses run less often because they are incapable of running every week or because they are earning millions of dollars by running in four select races a year (and even at the claiming level where horses tend to race quite regularly they can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars through their careers).

This doesn't even begin to take into account the booming sales market that was almost non-existant 50 years ago, the changing track surfaces, the use of supplements (both then and now) as well as legal and illegal drug use and testing, etc. Until there is a scientific study that can take all these factors into account there really won't be an answer to your question other than the anecdotal.

ETA: regarding the post above, I don't believe that racing two year olds is really the demon. Champions from the past often started in 2-4f maiden races in March & April and went on to have long successful careers. One difference between then and now is the distance 2yos are asked to run, prior to the Breeder's Cup the traditional 'championship' distance for 2yos was 1mile and almost all major 2yo stakes races were sprints. Now many of the Breeder's Cup preps are 1 1/16 miles (and the preps for those races are 1 mile). This is important because asking young horses for short bursts of speed early on can actually strengthen bones (it causes microfractures that heal as thicker bone) but when you overstress a baby and put them into severe oxygen debt (as you would asking them to run too far as opposed to too fast) they can suffer more serious injuries both to bone and soft tissue. Again though, this is just one of the many factors that has changed over the past 50 years.

Answer 3

The jury is out on whether horses are more fragile or not but training of thoroughbred horses is certainly differant than it used to be. Check out Man O'War's race record as to how often he used to compete.

Answer 4

i think so, they tend to breed horses with more muscle and less bone density, therfore you get a fragile horse with strong muscles but with weak bones

Answer 5

no they're not.
ppl just need to get the right studs.
not many have been tho