A little off topic, but the quality of the European turf horses was mentioned.
I don't know enough about the biology and development of horses to know if this is true, but if it is it might say more about the gap between the US and Europe than we realize.
My niece owns a jumper that is a former thoroughbred.
The horse does everything it's supposed to do really well except when it has to do them clockwise.
The horse was examined by someone that "supposedly" could figure out the problem and he said the horses muscles, coordination etc.. were more developed on one side than the other because of its experience as a racehorse always running counter clockwise and it knew it was incapable of executing some things going the other way.
Conversations about horses not being familiar with running the opposite way when they come to the US are fairly common. But I never heard anyone suggest that a horse actually develops its muscles and coordination better on one side than the other because of running the turns one way or the other most of the time.
If that's true, then the gap between European turf horses and US turf horses may be even bigger than we think because they are even more disadvantaged than many think (or at least I thought).
That would also account for some of the horrid races by US based turf horses when they try to challenge the best turf horses going clockwise.
It's almost like the Europeans are beating us with their left hands.
Like I said, I have no idea if this is true, but it seems reasonable and is certainly an interesting theory.
