Healthcare Matters

“Breed the best to the best and hope for the best” is a common phrase around horse racing. Here’s another: “Great horses are born –they are not made.” Well, regardless of what happens at tomorrow’s Belmont, I’ll Have Another (IHA) seems set to disprove it all.

Peter Keating wrote a marvelous article drawing attention to a money-ball-like-shift in horse racing philosophy. There are a growing number of “horse people,” including IHA’s trainers, who are proving that conditioning, not breeding, is the new path forward.

It’s a fact that modern breeding programs have been producing horses that aren’t much faster than they were 50 years ago. The horses are more fragile and frankly, from an ROI perspective, they’re not good investments for their owners. “Two-year-olds that sprint one furlong in 10 seconds bring hundreds of thousands of dollars [at sale], but they’ll never in their lives be asked to run that fast again,” says Bill Pressey, founder of ThoroEdge, a company that seeks to optimize equine performance. “The Kentucky Derby lasts over 120 seconds. Stamina wins that kind of race — the ability to hold 95 percent of top speed for long periods of time.”

What everyone is learning is that speed is overvalued and that stamina wins the classic races. Here’s some more horse sense:

• Harness racing has improved its 1 mile race times by 12 seconds in the past 70 years, while thoroughbreds are only 2 seconds faster at the 1.25 mile Kentucky Derby distance. Trotters and pacers train for stamina.

• Doug O’Neill (IHA’s trainer) regularly breezes his horse at distances other top contenders have never even been trained.

• IHA has completed dozens of miles at 2:00 pace or a bit faster in the past 6 weeks, while all others continue to gallop at 2:15-2:30 paces.

• Lots of Triple Crown contenders win the Derby and the Preakness. All but 11 have fallen short in the Belmont.  IHA is a prohibitive favorite in tomorrow’s race.

When he first climbed aboard I’ll Have Another for a workout at Hollywood Park, Gutierrez was star-struck. “I tried to compare him to horses I had ridden in the past, but I wasn’t able to,” he said. “He was so professional with the way he moves. He was like an expensive sports car with a lot of gears. Every time you switch gears to go faster, he’ll just give it to you. Not many horses can do that.”

Ironically, even Gutierrez’s remarks seem to place the emphasis on pedigree when the reason his mount is the prohibitive favorite tomorrow is superior conditioning. Unlike so many expensive thoroughbreds, IHA isn’t a pampered athlete. Relative to his peers, he’s a top conditioned performer that trains continuously.

“The best way to end up a millionaire in the horse business is to start out as a billionaire!” While funny, that sentiment doesn’t serve the sport well. If IHA wins tomorrow, we’re going to see a new wave in equine conditioning science become all the rage –and that should be a good thing for horse racing.

—Tom Finn