Why do some thoroughbreds start to race so young (2 YO)? and why is it only 3 year olds can run in the derby?

Question

Why do some thoroughbreds start to race so young (2 YO)? and why is it only 3 year olds can run in the derby?

Answer 1

some horses develop faster than others and almost all derby winners ran as a 2yo

Answer 2

because of the greed of the owners, for the horse to make money for them,, and exception would be Barbaro's owners.

Horses are quite expensive, to buy, to stable, to train, etc,,

so the sooner they start making money by winning the better

Answer 3

Because owners/trainers are greedy. They don't mind thrashing their horses as a 2yr old so they can go to stud with "form on the board" so to speak. My favourite racehorse, Gold edition, (Australian horse) raced as a 2 and 3 yr old earning almost 4 million in prize money although she is being retired at 4. She could have raced on for years and years if they weren't so greedy.

The derby would be very taxing for a 2yr old. Racing in general is taxing for a horse so young.

Answer 4

Ashlee, I am going to start by saying that I beg to differ with Newmarket's opinion- young Thoroughbreds are NOT 90% grown at two years of age- that is NONSENSE !!! If that were true, then why did Ruffian break down at age 3 in the Match? Why did Go for Wand break down at age 3 in the Breeders Cup at Belmont ( the same place where Ruffian had broken down 25 years earlier, and nearly in the same spot on the track) and have to be euthanized on the track in front of the stands, which were packed with thousands of people that day? How come Barbaro broke down in the Preakness a couple of years ago? The reason is the same in all these cases. The horses were young babies whose bones were still soft and still growing, and these animals were not fully mature yet. Thoroughbreds DON'T mature or grow faster than other breeds, contrary to popular myths- in fact, they actually mature MORE SLOWLY, because of the high percentage of Arabian blood and genes which all modern Thoroughbreds have in their ancestries. Arabs are horses which are normally not mature until they are 6 or 7 years old, and since the Thoroughbred was developed from and evolved out of the Arabian breed, it makes sense and is logical that THEY would mature later as well. Added to this is that all modern Thoroughbreds are inbred, at least to some degree, which means that the gene pool is shinking. Bloodlines are becoming more and more concentrated, which in turn means that defects, such as weak bone structures in some families and lines, are becoming more common as well. This has had disasterous impacts on the sport and on the breeding industry as a whole, because it makes these horses much more vulnerable to serious and life threatening injuries like the ones which KILLED both Ruffian and Go for Wand, than they otherwise might have been.

With this said, the main reason young horses are raced at age 2 is because of economic pressures and greed. Consider this: when it costs owners and breeders as much as a quarter or half a million dollars just to get a foal on the ground, there is enormous pressure on them to get a return on that investment ( and this is what most young racehorses are considered to be, commodities and investments- the fact that they are flesh and blood creatures doesn't enter into decisions which are made about them, unless they happen to get hurt or win big) as soon as possible. This means that as soon as there is any chance of the horse earning anything on the track, the animal will be sent for training, and will be entered in as many races as possible in order to recoup some of the cost of breeding and training it. The sad reality is that there are upwards of a million or more foals born in the US alone every year, and of those, less than one tenth of one percent ever make it on the track, and even fewer ( about half a percent) ever become stakes winners or become famous the way Barbaro, Secretariat, Ruffian, and Go for Wand all did. What happens to all these horses that can't make it? Some of them get sold as riding horses, some of them go to stud, and, at least until recently, the great majority of them were sent to auctions to be sold for slaughter or turned into leather or glue. There have even been a few famous horses who met this fate- Ferdinand was one of these. He was sold for slaughter not long after his retirement from the track because of injuries, and no, no effort was made to rescue him.

Now that slaughter is illegal in the US, my thinking is that a lot of these overbred, inbred, injured, and insane ex-racehorses are going to get abandoned or left to die of disease or starvation in small feedlots somewhere, or they will be loaded onto trucks and shipped to Canada and Mexico for slaughter, because it's still legal there. There are only so many times that a young ex-racer can be run through a sale before too many people will get to recognize it. Once that happens, the animal's chances of finding a safe permanent home drop dramatically, and the end result will be that the horse is usually sent to slaughter. It costs enormous amounts of money to feed, train, and care for horses, both on and off the track, and this is another reason why horses are raced too young. Horses which stand around and eat all the time don't earn anything, and the thinking is that they are not worth having.  Young race horses are started under saddle and in training in the fall of their YEARLING year, in most cases- and this is LONG before what is considered to be good management or sound practice in other parts of the horse industry. In virtually every other horse sport, including steeplechasing, horses are normally not started under saddle until they are at LEAST 3, and some don't start until they are 4 or even 5. In light of this, perhaps you can start to see some reasons why we keep seeing tragedies on the track like the ones involving Barbaro and Ruffian. These horses are just too young to race and work hard, and they are sending us a warning that what we as a people are doing is WRONG and needs to stop or be changed. They are paying with their LIVES so that we can have a few minutes of entertainment, and if they were people, horse racing would have been  outlawed long ago as the cruelty that it is. I love racing- don't get me wrong- but as a horse professional, I know that this is a situation which has gotten way out of hand, and it needs to change or be stopped for the good of the sport, because if it isn't, I can predict with some certainty that it may not be around all that much longer in its current form. I think that racing will eventually get legislated and regulated out of existance if something isn't done, and soon.

As for the Triple Crown series being restricted to 3 year olds only, that is just a custom which dates back to when these races were founded, back in the mid 19th century ( yes, they really are that old !!) by the different families and groups involved in the sport. At that time, it was customary for horses to race at age three because they typically were not subjected to the kinds of pressures that today's horses are.  The first Derby was held in 1875, the first Preakness in 1873, and the first Belmont ( which is the oldest of the 3 races, and first one to be founded) in 1869, just 4 years after the end of the Civil War. Initially, these three races were held as separate, unrelated events- it wasn't until after the turn of the last century that someone came up with the idea of combining all three races into a series, with special prizes awarded to the winner. The first Triple Crown was not formally held until 1919, when it was won by Sir Barton. A year later, Sir Barton was entered in a Match race against the great Man O'War, who defeated him easily. This set the stage for other winners who would follow, including such names as War Admiral, Gallant Fox, Omaha, Citation, Assault, Secretariat,Seattle Slew, and Affirmed, the last one.

Hope this answers your questions.

Answer 5

Thoroughbreds have been bred over hundreds of years to develop and mature faster than other breeds.  They are usually about 90% full grown by the age of two so we are able to race them.

Most two year olds are not campaigned very hard - if you look at the best of them, they usually only run 4 or 5 times during their two year old season.

Research has shown that the younger you strat racing a racehorse the better their bones develop.  Horses that start racing at a younger age are less likely to have tendon and bone problems than horses that do not start racing till 4 or 5 (as with jump racehorses).  This is why over the last few years the GB racing authorities have introduced races for three year old National Hunt horses so that they can stregthen their bone density.  In Frnace some horses are already jumping at the age of 3!

The reason that the Derby (and by this I mean ALL Derbys) is open to 3 year olds only is because that is considered to be the optimum age for a thoroughbred.

Answer 6

Most horses are not developed at 2 years old and can break down very easy.