Do you think we'll ever have another Man O' War, Secretariat, Go for Wand etc. ?

Question

Do you think we'll ever have another Man O' War, Secretariat, Go for Wand etc. ?

Answer 1

Yes we will.  Horseracing has some issues that need to be resolved.  The breeding policies have to change also. With some key reforms we will see horseracing headed in the right direction.   Educate yourself and get involved for the safety of these animals.  The media stirs up the uninformed with their spin and before you know it the few are the loudest. If we get the informed involved changes can be made and we will be the voice that people hear and understand.

http://www.saferhorseracing.com/index.ht...

Answer 2

Well,, yes in a way we have already .. look at some of the great horses in the past 20 yrs,, we have had some Greats John Henry , Affirmed, etc

It is hard to compare yesteryears from today !!

good question

Answer 3

The way the industry is headed right now, I think NOT. The Thoroughbred has gone from being a tough, strong, durable breed to one of the most fragile creatures in existance, and the constant over and inbreeding we keep seeing ( which produces horses like Eight Bells and Big Brown) has caused the gene pool to shrink to less than half its former size. As the bloodlines become more and more concentrated, the presence of preventable, hereditary defects, ( such as the stout body and superfine, thin, inherently weak bone structure that Eight Belles had, and which Ruffian, Barbaro, Go for Wand, and several others have had as well) is going to increase rapidly. The TB is a breed which is in DIRE NEED of an infusion of fresh genes and bloodlines from somewhere- and I just don't see that happening any time soon.

The simple truth is that today's racehorses are much more fragile and bred for much shorter careers than their predecessors were. One of the reasons we had Man O'War was because conditions in the racing world were very different then than they are now. The horses were stronger and healthier- and they ran without the benefit of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. Lasix didn't exist back then, either- and there was no need for it to, because the condition it is used to treat didn't exist either. EIPH is a problem which has largely come about in the last 30 years or so- it didn't exist when I was a child growing up. The reason this problem exists is largely due to poor genetics- horses which have the condition are being bred to other horses which have it or are carriers of it, and it keeps getting passed down from one generation to the next.  Likewise, no one used steroids on their horses until the current time- indeed, in most cases they were forbidden. Secretariat didn't race on drugs, and neither did Man O' War. Both these horses were natural athletes, and it never occured to anyone to give them anything unless they were ill ( Man O'War had a tendency to wolf his feed down unchewed, especially when he was first in training, and from time to time, his trainer, Feustel, had to give him colic medicine for belly aches) or injured in some way.

No, I think it will be a long time before we see a horse of that caliber again, if indeed we ever do. It's sad, I know, but there's not much that can be done about it.

Answer 4

No, I don't think so. . . .More and more tracks are going with poly-tracks. . . .that rubberized material they put down for the safety of the horses and jockeys. . . .It's great, but it takes some of the speed away.

Answer 5

YES

Answer 6

no not with the greed the owners have now days they tend to retire the good horses at to early of an age we never get a chance  to see how a great some of these horses really could have been.