Why are so many horses overfed as yearlings?

Question

Could this have played a role in Ruffians, Eight Belles and Go For Wand's accidents. I've read the book about Ruffian by Jane Schwartz dunno if there's one about Go for wand or not but she seemed to have a decent up bringing at Claiborne farm.

Answer 1

Why are you even asking about it

They broke down..  

Just like others do ,,

Filly's. mares, They  are race horse's ,

They break down, They were all cared for.  And their up brining had nothing do with it,

Please stop kicking the dead horse.



Did you know that Winning Colors,Just died she was a filly that won the Kentucky Derby "" she Did NOT break down at the track she was a broodmare

So their You have it  ! See they can do it and still live,

Why do you think they are over fed? Please edit

I would like to know where or how made you think that?

Answer 2

Starlight 1 very eloquently addressed some of the issues with weight in general and the commercial yearling market.  However, with regards to the specific horses you cite, e.g., Ruffian, Go For Wand and Eight Belles, I don't think weight would have been a factor in unsoundness for either Ruffian or Go For Wand, because both of these fillies were homebreds and neither ever went through an auction ring.  

FWIW, Ruffian's sire, Reviewer, was not a terribly sound horse, although he was a very fast one.  I believe that any weakness that came through to Ruffian came from Reviewer, not from her dam Shenanigans.  Shenanigans' other foals, most notably the stallion Icecapade, who sired Breeder's Cup Classic winner Wild Again, were reasonably sound.  I believe that Reviewer was the source of any unsoundness in Ruffian's genetic makeup, not Shenanigans.

Go For Wand was produced by Obeah, who foaled a bunch of offspring that made it to the races and were sound, most notably the Northern Dancer gelding Black Powder, who started a mind-numbing 118 times.  I'm inclined to believe that Go For Wand's breakdown was just terrible, terrible bad luck, perhaps a bad step on the track.  Such things do happen, much as we wish that all breakdowns could be explained in retrospect, if not anticipated and prevented.

With regard to Eight Belles, her injury is so bizarre as to defy analysis, IMO.  She broke down in both forelegs while pulling up AFTER the race.  I don't know what to think about that.  It's true she was an exceptionally large filly, and it's also true that horses are most prone to break down when they're tired, and she had to be tired after the effort she put forth.  But I would reluctantly leave her out of any discussion of breakdowns that occur during a race, because I believe that in her case the situation was different.

Answer 3

I agree somewhat with both the other 2 posts on this issue but there are far more significant causes of breakdowns in this game (and those 3 great race fillies), than overfeeding.  Any good trainer can and will condition a fat horse gradually enough to avoid damaging it.  The heaviest abuse in that respect occurs in 2 yr old in training sales, where fat babies are pushed too early, too fast in order to impress buyers and bring top $.  

Also, I've always thought that the force with which Ruffian hit the gate at the break that day undoubtedly contributed to her demise.  If you've ever watched the slow motion head-on replay, you know what I mean.

Barbaro also - I understand why they re-loaded him after he false broke, but it was a recipe for disaster.  

Ruffian and Go For Wand were engaged in a fight to the death when they broke down, and the grey filly was exhausted from giving her life.  Horses like them, that love winning so much they won't give up - are much more apt to suffer a catastrophic injury, regardless of any other factors.   I've trained racehorses for 30 years and have always opposed racing 2 yr olds, but as the other poster said, economics rules that aspect of the sport.  QH racing is an even bigger abuser here, along with inbreeding & overbreeding(thanks to AI) , on a scale the TB people have never even come close to.  The biggest contributor is probably drug use - both legal and illegal, that helps mask injuries and squeeze more races out of horses in order to fill racing cards.  Without it, racing would die out. That's a fact.  

On the other hand - I'm not one to cry about how much better racing was in the old days.  Those horses ran every week(sometimes several days in a row - which some cheap fair horses still do, by the way), traveled by train, ran on concrete surfaces, were heavily abused with drugs(yes, they were), were plugged in( reputable witnesses have testified that Seabiscuit was one of the best machine horses ever), bled and limped and broke down(Black Gold, Lamb Chop, etc), even in the old days.  The bottom line is - it's not a game for the faint of heart and greed will always supercede common sense and compassion with some owners and trainers.  It creates alot of alcoholics and drug addicted people too - whether their horses break down or not.  

Answer 4

The answer is simple, Doglover. Fat is the best color- and it sells, and the breeders and owners of these young racehorses know this. On top of this, the bloodstock agents and the trainers they represent will not buy horses which are thin, underdeveloped, or sickly looking at the sales. Overfeeding as a yearling very definitely played a role in Ruffian's and Eight Belles's breakdowns and deaths-both of those fillies were WAY TOO TALL for their ages and genders when they died, and overfeeding as a yearling no doubt contributed to this in no small way. If you have read Jane Schwartz's novel about Ruffian's life ( which I also have read) then you surely must have realized that it took her trainer, Whiteley, many months of hard work and careful conditioning just to get the sales fat off of the filly so she could race as a 2 year old. Otherwise, the only alternative would have been to run her in the condition she was in, and risk her breaking down and never having any kind of career at all. Overfeeding leads to overgrowth and over development, and can contribute to or cause conditions such as epiphysitis. This inflammation of the ends of the long bones in the legs weakens the joints, and it makes the bones much more likely to break under the stress of racing or hard work. Add this to poor genetics ( both Ruffian and Eight Bells were products of the Native Dancer family, which is notorious for producing horses which break down early and easily, after only a few races) and you have a recipe for a disaster. In a sense, both Eight Belles and Ruffian outgrew their own skeletons by the time they reached their third birthdays. This was tragic, and totally preventable, but it's a trend which is very common in the TB breeding industry, and it will continue as long as there is so much pressure on the breeders and owners to turn a profit and recoup the enormous costs involved in production of these young horses. It's that pressure which is what's driving the need to start these horses in training at younger and younger ages- and one of the tragic consequences of this is that these animals break down and die at alarming rates. This is as true today as it was thirty years ago- and perhaps even more so.

I have never seen any type of book about Go for Wand's life and career, though I would imagine it was similar to Ruffian's and Eight Belles's in a lot of ways. I watched Ruffian's ill fated match race and saw her break down and die when I was just eleven years old- and I hope that I never will see anything like that again. If I close my eyes and let my mind wander a bit, I can still HEAR the sound of the announcer screaming " Ruffian has broken down" over and over like a litany. It's not a pleasant experience- and it has been well over 30 years since that terrible day. I am one of a small few which holds the belief that Ruffian should NEVER have left that track ALIVE- because the technology and know how needed to save her simply didn't exist at that time, and it wouldn't for another 25 years or so. I can understand that the men who worked with her had good intentions, and that they loved her dearly, but in the end they only ended up prolonging her agony. There's a saying about good intentions- the road to h**l is often paved with them. In Ruffian's case, tragically, that proved to be more than accurate. She deserved far better than what she got- and in some ways, I consider the price which her human connections paid to have been a form of poetic justice. Her groom, Dan Williams, paid the biggest price of anyone, though, and I would not have wished what happened to him on anyone else. He loved that filly like she was his own daughter- and he NEVER got over the loss. Within 2 years of her death, he was gone too- of acute alcoholic poisoning !! Whiteley had his reputation damaged- he was blamed for the filly's death for years afterwords. Larry Jones, Eight Belles' trainer, and Michael Matz, Barbaro's trainer, have both been exceedingly lucky not to have met Whiteley's fate- they easily could have.

Did Ruffian die in vain? I think the answer to that question is a resounding yes. Not much has changed in racing since that awful day in July of '75. Horses have come and gone, and while the technology has improved somewhat, we are still DECADES away from really becoming able to save horses which break down and suffer catastrophic injuries, whether on the track or off of it. Meanwhile, the industry is making errors and blunders which are going to impact it in a negative way for generations to come. The Thoroughbred as a breed has been overbred and inbred so much that the gene pool has shrunk dramatically- it's now about a third of what it once was. As the bloodlines become more and more concentrated, the incidence of preventable, hereditary defects is rising- and the horses are paying the price with their lives in a lot of cases.One can only spin the genetic wheel in the same direction just so many times without dire consequences for all involved, and I think this is what's happening in the industry now. Racing and breeding are under pressure from other quarters as well, especially as new, less bloodthirsty forms of entertainment have emerged and become popular, such as video gaming, for example. Economics are playing a big role as well, simply because it costs so much to produce and raise a young horse to racing age- and there is no guarantee that those costs can be recouped. The animal rights groups want to see two year old racing banned outright, a position I can support- with some reservations, naturally. I too have long held the belief that the minimum age for racing needs to be raised, simply because doing so would save the lives of a lot of horses, not to mention a more than a few people, as well. One of the reasons these animals break down and die so young is because they are BABIES, not adult animals. We wouldn't ask a human child to do what we demand of a young racehorse, simply because it would kill the kid. Why can't we take that idea and apply it elsewhere, to the racing business? We'd all be better off, and there would be fewer deaths and tragedies.

Enough said.