[quote=Inner Dirt;2843466]
Quote:
Originally Posted by cj
Tracks change day to day, year to year, and decade to decade. The increase in awareness for horse safety has slowed racetracks in my opinion. Thus, I think it is tougher for horses to break track records now than it was 40 years ago.
QUOTE]
That is what I would have thought. I only looked up my home tracks from back in the day. Shockingly all the Santa Anita dirt sprint records were set in the 21st century except for the rarely run 3F distance. I thought there should have been quite a few set in the mid 80's when the track had periods of being lighting fast with the strongest speed biases I have ever seen.
On a quick look I could only find the synthetic track sprint records Hollywood Park.
At Delmar all dirt records up to 1 3/16 are 30+ years old except 5 & 5-1/2 those are owned by 2 year olds set in the last 6 years, looks like higher class older horses never ran that distance.
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The fact that horses are still breaking records despite the fact that we know the tracks are deeper now is the argument Jerry Brown uses to make the case that horses are faster now than in the past. Some speed figures suggest they have been getting slower, some faster, and some more or less the same. His say faster. Ragozin says about the same except for what he calls the steroid period where they got faster but have now normalized. Beyer has them generally getting slower.
