Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Sea Biscuit
Pandy: I think you give too much credit to the super bikes as you call them for the faster times. The quality of horses and their breeding has much improved over the last 30/40 years which is the main reason for the faster times.
Besides you cannot stop the advancement of technology. The fact that we are discussing harness racing with each other on an internet forum is testimony to that fact.
Sea Biscuit.
|
I respectfully disagree. Bret Hanover paced in 1:55 in 1965 (time trialed in 153.3), in a wooden sulky. Today's Harmer bike with the best wheels is 7 seconds faster, which would give Bret Hanover a 1:48 mark, which is about right for a horse that won 62 of 68 starts and raced against the likes of Cardigan Bay (losing twice but beat him several times). As you probably know, thoroughbreds have not improved, in fact, the thoroughbred breed has weakened, and there's no logical reason to assume that standardbreds have improved. There isn't a horse racing today that could beat Bret Hanover.
Technology should not have applied to harness racing, the wooden bike should have been declared the standard bike and if it had, the sport would be healthier. You have to understand something, I lived in NY and knew most of the professional gamblers who bet harness racing back in the 70's, big bettors. I'm talking about legendary gamblers. Everyone of them switched to thoroughbreds and stopped betting harness racing within 2-3 years after the introduction of the "modified sulky". With the wooden bikes, harness racing was BY FAR the best gamble a smart gambler could bet his money on. Now thoroughbred racing is. All of these guys won consistently until the bike change, so I'm not throwing around some nonsense here. My Best Bets which appeared in Sports Eye and then on my own sheet showed a flat bet profit of 25% over a 7 year period (at Roosevelt/Yonkers), but as the bikes became faster and faster, it became harder for me to pick the longshot winners that are necessary to show a profit. Fortunately, I have become an expert at picking longshot winners at the flats.
