Why do mares in foal run faster?

Question

Tonight I backed a horse called Smart ***.It won at 7/1 in a photofinish.I found out after she was in foal.Why is it not compulsary for the trainer to tell you this?

Answer 1

they dont run faster,but they do stay the distance better.simply because of the change of hormones in the body.a trainer is not obliged to inform the public about this ,although not all mares will respond the same.the trainer would have told the owner(if they did not allready know) but please remember that the trainers resposibilities are to the horse and then the owner,the public have no say as they do not pay the bills and are on the outside looking in.

Answer 2

It's not very common for a mare to be raced while she's in foal.  In general, if she's a stakes-quality mare, the owner probably doesn't want to risk the mare losing the pregnancy by putting her back into training after being pronounced in foal.  

A couple of years back, there was a filly that left the track to be bred to Storm Cat, then was brought back to the track after being pronounced in foal to him.  If I remember correctly, she made one start after that, but then the Storm Cat syndicate manager or someone in the Overbrook management chain told the owner that the live foal guarantee would be voided if the filly continued to race.  So she was whisked off to the farm for good after that.

Racetracks aren't a very good environment for a pregnant mare.  The constant coming-and-going of horses on the backstretch, and the influx of two-year-olds off training centers, means that there's a lot of respiratory viruses going around.  Some of these can cause a mare to abort her fetus.  From that standpoint, it's just not a good idea to have a pregnant mare in that environment.

Answer 3

it should be compulsory, but then im not convinced its a good idea to put a mare in foal through such strenuous exercise...

sounds like a bit of a money orientated owner to be honest...

well done for winning though :) !!

Answer 4

It is not compulsory at the moment becasue that is the way it is!  I know a lot of in foal mares seem to run well, but don't forget the countless mares who are in foal that run badly - you never hear about those!

The following article was published last month in the Racing Post -  it goes someway to try to explain the theories behind running in foal mares:

Horse Racing: Stopping mares' cycle may be key to improvement

BLOODSTOCK DESK

Published: 06/07/2007 (Sport) By Rachel Pagones

DO FILLIES and mares run better when pregnant? The thesis that they do, most recently raised by Racing Post columnist Alan Sweetman last month and fiercely discussed in online forums, was given more support on Wednesday when Redstone Dancer won the Group 3 Irish Stallion Farms EBF Brownstown Stakes.

In foal to Refuse To Bend, the five-year-old returned 4-1 when recording her first stakes win, leaving three previous black-type winners in her wake.

The answer is clearly significant to punters, to whom racing is obliged to supply such minutiae as whether the horse is wearing a tongue-tie, as Enid Ormerod pointed out in Wednesday's Chatroom. But trainers and owners may also want to take note, according to Professor Twink Allen of the Equine Fertility Unit in Newmarket.

That is because the answer is yes, fillies and mares do have a racing advantage when pregnant. "Progesterone is a mildly anabolic hormone. That means it builds muscle, it builds condition, it makes you feel good and it builds appetite," says Allen. "And progesterone is the dominant hormone of pregnancy."

Further anecdotal evidence of pregnancy's benefits is provided by Silence Is Golden's short-head second in the 2004 Group 1 Nassau Stakes. The race was run on July 31, and the mare, just a week shy of the 150-day pregnancy limit imposed by the rules of racing, would have been handicapped by about 15lb of foetus and foetal fluid, according to Allen. Yet she recorded by far the highest RPR of her career, 115, eight months before giving birth to a filly by Medicean.

Although Silence Is Golden's pregnancy was well advanced, she would not have had an advantage over a mare who was running earlier in her pregnancy, says Allen. "I don't think we have any evidence that more progesterone is better. The benefit is that it is constant."

The performance benefits of pregnancy are more subtle than those obtained by injecting horses with anabolic steroids - a banned practice. "As an anabolic agent it's mild compared to agents we inject," says Allen.

That is not to say the effects are insignificant, though. "All mares are cycling quietly during the summer months, but mostly they don't show it," says Allen. With cycling come the ups and downs well known to trainers, but a pregnant mare is not subject to these swings.

Research that Allen's team has done at the EFU suggests that a mare does not have to be pregnant to enjoy the benefits of not cycling.

While trying to find what causes a mare's uterus to recognise that it is pregnant, they infused a group of mares with a preparation containing estrogen in an oil solution, and found that nearly all the mares went into dioestrus, or a period of not cycling.

They then performed a control test, using a coconut oil medium without the estrogen. To their surprise, 90 per cent of the mares again went into dioestrus. Other types of vegetable oil proved to have the same effect. However, mineral oil, which is not plant-based, did not cause dioestrus; nor did estrogen in mineral oil, indicating that estrogen was not the active agent.

Allen and others have also found that placing a small plastic or glass ball, smaller than a ping-pong ball, into the uterus puts a stop on cycling. Although they do not know why it works, the technique is already used in various sport and performance mares, says Allen.

One theory for why the balls work is that simple physical movement causes maternal recognition of pregnancy. "In a normal pregnant animal, the embryo is moving around the uterus all the time for the first 17 days," says Allen.

He adds: "The bottom line is, it is very easy to kick a mare into prolonged dioestrus. If I was a trainer of fillies, I would want to take advantage of that."

By the way, there are strict rules on how long a mare can carry on running once she is in foal.  I think it is about 100 days.

Answer 5

There might be hormonal advantages to it but most mares of any value would not be raced while in foal. Racing is strenuous exercise and while mares can be gently ridden well into a pregnancy without doing harm, racing is definitely not gentle riding.

Answer 6

Basically its down to nature - survival. The idea is that she can more readily escape predators in the wild. They give us season dates for greyhounds so no reason not to give same for filly's and mares...however, with blinkers, tongue straps,cheeckpieces, etc you will soon be getting information overload. Years ago there was a similar call to be told when horses wore blinkers for the first time as it was perceived that they nearly always won...in reality they don't and sometimes they have an adverse effect.

Yes I did Smart *** as well, but the night before Cute *** lost so I suppose it is better to be smart than cute!!!!

Answer 7

you'd run like h**l if you had been sha**ed by one of them big things