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It really depends on the farm. Yes at the track they are in the stall, 
but many farms have large turnouts for their horses. Several actually 
ride their breeding stallions to keep them in shape (and used to being 
handled).

It is a culling process to be sure. But many are culled out before there 
is any damage. At the 2 year old sales in Ocala (and I suspect 
everywhere else) the horses run a timed furlong. To slow and they don't 
go into racing because they don't have the raw speed necessary to work 
with.

On eventing trainer told me you can pick up many very good horses for 
meat prices after these sales. This was back in the 80's and she said 
that it is amazing how many Secretariat sons were in the dressage, 
hunter/jumper and eventing sports.

There are still horses that have long careers, but they are geldings 
just like in the past. With stallions the economics don't make sense to 
keep racing them pulse stallions tend to slow down at about 4 or 5 which 
isn't a problem with geldings.

On interesting thing is many of the great geldings started on turf and 
then came over to dirt and ran on both through out their career. John 
Henry and Forgo come to mind. John Henry may be a classic example. The 
dirt track was too hard on him when he was young. They moved him to turf 
where he blossomed and then brought him back to dirt at about 5 where he 
cleaned house on both surfaces.

The TB industry is an industry. It's economic model pretty much dictates 
the flow. It takes looking at a lot of horses to find one with potential 
to win a major stakes race. The down side is there is a lot of carnage 
along the way. But given the economics I don't see it changing any time 
soon.

Truman


> It really is a minor point, the most important thing is racing very 
> young, secondarily a confined living style that prevents bone building 
> exercise, with a bunch of stuff contributing.

--

“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things 
and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil 
things, that takes religion.” Steven Weinberg – Nobel Laureate, Physics


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