jasperson
03-25-2010, 11:17 PM
The discussion on the thread about the Blue Grass is no longer a prep race for the derby got me to thinking what have we done to todays tb. Sometime ago I bought a book on training a tb written in1953 by Preston Burch. In it he listed the workouts and races for Assault when he won the triple crown. He started training Jan 21 and ran his first race April 9 which he won. He won the Wood on April 20. He started on 4/30 in the Derby trial and finished 4th in the mud. 5/4 he won the Derby,5/11 he won the Preakness and 6/1 he won the Belmont. He started in 4 major stake races in about 1 mo. He also won the Dwyer on 6/15. Now a trainer wants 5 or 6 weeks to get a horse ready for a major stake race. Assault had several 8f works prior to his 1st start. I just can't believe that todays tb has digressed that much in 50 yrs. Looking at the South American horses they race a lot more times a yr and they stand up to it. I know the standard answer is we are breeding for speed and that is why they can't stand up to training and other including my self have said if we are breeding for speed then where is it? Just take a look at the Derby times Whirlaway won it 2:01 in 1941.