Races going much slower ... Hmmmm

Its funny,

I heard over the weekend that the races at Gulfstream were going about 3 seconds slower than the past few years. They said - "it must be the track."

Today on Track Facts Live (stream it Live 9:30 am Sundays www.capitalotb.com )- the same question about Aqueduct. Are the races so much slower at Aqueduct because of the track? Nick Kling hit it on the head - no more steroids in racing. Horses got steroids all the time. A few years ago I wrote to the DRF and asked why, only to find out that it was Legal !!

The best example is to look at baseball players who were on steroids and stopped. Migual Tejada was in the Mitchell Report. Regularly Miggy would hit 35- 40 home runs a season. Last year , what did he have 8 or 12 home runs ?? He doesn't have the power or bat SPEED anymore without the juice. The other example is Jason Giambi , MVP on the juice. Without the juice - he was reduced to a bench player , batted .220 , and was lucky to hit 20 dingers.

When you take away the steroids , you lose speed and power. So without the juice , all these horses must get slower. They now have muscle fatigue , they get tired and don't run as strong in the stretch. You watch , the horse that wins the Derby will have at least 3 prep races , just like the old days, when the Vets didn't win the races.

Here would be an interesting experiment - take the Top 50 Sire list. Next to each sire - list the trainers that trained them and for which years. I bet you will find the trainers that win Grade 1's and the biggest races WON'T be on this list. You will see people absent from this trainer list that have been 25-30 % winning trainers over the last 15 years. Go back 5 years, 10 years and look who were the leaders in the divisions and see what kind of sires they made. The results I think will shock most people. Two of my favorite horses of all time - sterile - Lure and Cigar. Just as steroids made Jose Canseco sterile - many too many horses in big barns, barns with horses all over the country,don't produce sires that reproduce quality offspring.

Just another day inside my mind , aren't you glad you can get back out....