The Euros Have Our Number
The big day is here. Championships on the line. Friday went pretty much as expected, and let's not kid ourselves: the Euros have our number on the turf. They don't just beat us. They flat-out dominate us.
Last night, over dinner at Rodney's on Broadway, the question came up: Why?
Well, I have a few thoughts, and it starts with the way we breed, train, and ultimately market our horses in this country.
American racing is all about dirt. We train dirt horses to race three-wide, outside of competition, and you can see it in everyday training.
Turf is almost an afterthought. We have a handful of facilities, Oklahoma at Saratoga and Fair Hill being a couple of examples, where horses actually have turf courses available to train over. Otherwise, we tend to throw horses on the grass when they can't cut it on the main track.
Think about that for a minute.
We don't exactly breed for turf racing, although in recent years we've introduced more European mares, or mares with turf experience, into our breeding sheds. So why hasn't that translated into a stronger American turf product?
Because of the two-year-old in-training sales.
Therein lies a big part of the problem.
One major sales company conducts its breeze shows over a synthetic surface. The theory, if you want to call it that, is that if you can get a youngster to accelerate like a turf horse over that surface, you might produce the magic number buyers want to see: 9.4 or faster.
Let's be perfectly frank. That has become one of the biggest influences on our current breeding and buying mentality.
The fast horse. The quick horse. The pocket rocket. The one that can dazzle everybody for an eighth of a mile at a two-year-old sale.
The horse that can go five furlongs lightning fast. That is why Turf Sprints have become so popular.
That's the objective.
That fast furlong or quarter-mile has buyers salivating from the time a horse is a yearling until the day it goes through the two-year-old sale. The mindset is simple: What can this horse do for me today? Not six months from now. Not next year. Today.
If you can't get them to the sales, in the minds of some, they aren't worth waiting for.
Now think about horses like Sovereignty and Forever Young. Neither was built to be your typical sale-ring pocket rocket. Physically, perhaps they could have gone through the process, but they were built for something more. Maturity matters. Development matters. And believe me, plenty of immature horses are sent through the equivalent of a grinding boot camp just to produce that one flashy breeze.
We want speed before we've allowed the horse to become a horse.
Then we buy these bullet horses, and the immediate thought is dirt, dirt, and more dirt. Yet we just asked them to demonstrate their speed over a synthetic surface. Square peg, meet round hole.
There's little consideration for allowing the animal to mature into its frame, develop naturally, and become what it was bred to be. And if the dirt experiment doesn't work out? Well, let's throw him on the turf.
Maybe that's where some of these youngsters belonged in the first place. Those synthetically prepped babies might be more comfortable on grass, but too often turf becomes the destination of desperation rather than the intended plan.
Now look across the pond.
The Europeans have their breeze-up sales, too. Only they're breezing on grass, not synthetic or dirt. Their horses are predominantly bred and developed for turf racing. Their preparation is different, too. Large training yards, plenty of room, a more patient approach. Almost Club Med for horses compared with what we're asking some of ours to endure.
American horses trained to be fast from the gate, and three wide at the three-eights pole. Euros are taught to cover up and wait.
They're not being asked to run their eyeballs out from the opening strides. They're allowed to develop, and when they're asked to show their speed, it's often concentrated in that final quarter-mile.
Compare that with American dirt racing, where it's balls to the wall from the time the gates open.
And then somebody wants to argue that European horses are more durable.
That's an idiotic comparison.
They're handled differently, trained differently, and asked to do different things. Bring them over here, put them through our system, and the demands change considerably. You cannot compare durability without considering the environment and the stress placed on these animals.
The Euros crush us on turf because that's what they've been bred, developed, and trained to do. It's not some great mystery. It's a system that produces horses for a particular purpose.
We, on the other hand, have spent years building a system that produces speed for a sales ring.
And then we wonder why we're getting our butts handed to us on the turf at the Breeders' Cup.
There's another interesting wrinkle: Kentucky Downs. The one major all-turf playground in North America, with enormous purses and plenty of money being thrown around. Owners and trainers flock there, and who can blame them? The money is attractive.
But I've said it before: what happens in Franklin, Kentucky, often stays in Franklin, Kentucky.
The form doesn't always travel particularly well outside those rolling hills. The purses attract everybody, including plenty of horses for whom turf might not be the answer. But the possibility of a payday can be a much stronger motivator than common sense.
And that, too, becomes part of the equation.
So we continue to send our horses into these turf championships, and the Europeans continue to show us how it's done.
Yesterday was another great example.
Today, however, it's America's day.
And before everybody starts handing out trophies, there are a few horses being treated like absolute cinches that I wouldn't be so quick to crown. This is the Breeders' Cup. Things have a funny way of reminding you that the race still has to be run.
Historically, I've always enjoyed the Friday program because of the youngsters. We put an enormous amount of work into the European runners, and those races have always been a big part of our process.
But this year, I have a stronger feeling about Saturday.
Maybe it's the matchups. Maybe it's the opportunities. Maybe it's just that feeling you get when you've done the work and are ready to let the chips fall.
The Europeans had their say yesterday.
Today, it's our turn.
Let's Go!!
