Quote:
Originally Posted by ronsmac
Trainers are too obsessed with weight. Collected would have had to go into the 130s and trainers just won't do that. In the old days you could have just taken tons of weight off of the 3yos but most jocks in Cali can't make 110 or 112 anymore.
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The shipping revolution is a gigantic part of horse racing's decline.
In racing's heyday, there was very little shipping. Which means you basically had to take the weight assignments. You could go on strike for a race, but that was it.
Had the jockeys gotten heavier way back when, tracks would have just assigned more weight and kept the spreads.
But if you can ship anywhere, there's basically no way that tracks can ask you to carry more than a few pounds more than whatever the jockeys weigh. Which means almost no spread at all, which is deadly to 3 year olds running against older in June.
(Since we just had our big discussion of Holy Bull, I will mention, he was one of many 3 year olds to win the Met Mile on Memorial Day over the years. This was a great race for 3 year olds to run in back in the day, because they would put you in with 108 or 110 or 112 and the best older horses were carrying 126.)
One interesting test is going to be Arrogate in the San Diego Handicap. He ought to be assigned 132 or something. I will bet he gets 125.