I read the same articles, and had the same thoughts
on this in terms of TB racing. I ask because I have a 2 yr old TB colt,
race bred, and want to do the best for him.
I have a question, I had heard, read, that
Secretariat was 'raised on' steroids, which is one reason he was so muscled-up
at an early age. Is that correct?
I know there were a lot of questions, issues
when he went to the stud barn, in connection with the steroid use. Or was
this vicious rumor?
"....The Kentucky Derby was won by a horse named Old Rosebud in 1914 in
2:03. Horses are still winning that race in about the same times (forget about
Secretariat... he really set a record of 1:59) and I imagine they also are
being trained and fed more scientifically than in 1914..."
There was an interesting article in the Scientific American about this very
thing a few years ago. I don't have my copy of the article, but there are
indexes to that magazine and you could quickly find a copy at almost any
public library. Most articles in Sci. Am. also have a good bibliography to the
primary literature, usually written by the same person.
If my memory serves the gist of the article was that human times in
sporting races have decreased dramatically in the last 100 years, but TB
racing times have not. The conclusion was that the TB gene pool was already
quite optimized for speed so little genetic improvement is possible, horses
are better athletes, and that training of short distance race horses was
already pretty good. All this implies that there was
less room for improved training to make a difference. Human athletes have
benefited greatly from better training partly because genetically we are not
anywhere as good athletes.
My unsupported conclusion is that horses are remarkable athletes. Evolution
appears to have optimized them for speed so that they could run from
predators, at the same time humans were being optimized for larger better
brains. Larger brains meant we would not have to run but could use the tools
and language we were inventing to increase the chances that we would live
to have lots of kids. If you then add to this ~4000 or so years of selective
breeding by people for speed you have the modern horse who is a great athlete,
and the modern human who seems to prefer to be an overweight couch
potatoe.
Ed
Ed & Wendy Hauser 2994 Mittower
Road Victor, MT 59875
