View From a Height

Big Brown won the 133rd Preakness Stakes today by 5 1/2 lengths, and it wasn't that close. Coming out of the final turn, Brown showed he had one, possibly two gears that the other horses just don't have. Running three-wide, with Big Brown on the outside, Brown just effortlessly pulled away from the rest of the pack. Jockey Kent Desormeaux looked back with about 1/16 to go, saw little but turf, and slowed the horse up for the rest of the stretch run.

The race isn't on YouTube yet, but you can see the same sort of explosive speed on display at the Florida Derby, the horse's final race before the Kentucky Derby:

In a way, it's a shame that this is Big Brown's year. The field he's racing against isn't the strongest, and you'd really like to see a Triple Crown winner who's tested in all three races. The Belmont may still pose a challenge though: other owners may run long-distance specialists to try to stop history from being made. Nevertheless, Secretariat didn't exactly beat a field of all-stars in any of his races, and 35 years later, is still fairly well thought of.

As for lacrosse, Virginia got by Maryland today 8-7 in the NCAA quarterfinals. The two had split during the regular season, but Virginia, who's been first or second most of the year, won it in overtime this year. Their opponent will probably be Syracuse, who faces Notre Dame, and whom Virginia beat 14-13 in overtime on a neutral field back in March.

The other side of the bracket features perennial representative of evil, Johns Hopkins, and newly-minted representative of evil, Duke. Duke has gone from being the joke of the ACC 10 years ago to being a national powerhouse, and Virginia lost to them twice this year. Best outcome of next Saturday - a U.Va.-Hopkins final. Worst outcome: Duke-Syracuse.

Lacrosse used to have 3 or 4 competitive teams among a field of 8 perennial powerhouses. But lacrosse has been getting more competitive, with all four ACC schools making the field of 16, and every quarterfinalist had a reasonable shot at the title.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 8:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So Friday, before Eight Belles's terrible fate at the Derby, the Wall Street Journal had an article about the pervasive influence of Native Dancer's bloodlines in modern, top-class horse racing.

Native Dancer won everything in sight in 1953, and 1954 before he was retired at age 4 because of, you guessed it, injury-proneness in his feet. (He was also descended from the brilliant but completely unmanageable Hastings, most famous as a great-great-grandsire of Seabuscuit, but also known for stomping a groomsman to death.)

But that success has led breeders to mate Native Dancer's progeny so often that the thoroughbred gene pool has shrunk. And as it shrinks, another trait of the Native Dancer line is becoming more pronounced.

Like hemophilia in the Russian royal family, Native Dancer's line has a tragic flaw. Thanks in part to heavily muscled legs and a violent, herky-jerky running style, Native Dancer and his descendants have had trouble with their feet. Injuries have cut short the careers of several of his most famous kin, most notably Barbaro, a great-great-great-grandson who was injured during the Preakness Stakes and was later put to death.

Overbreeding has exacerbated the problem. "There's a lack of durability right now," says Ric Waldman, the former head of operations for Windfields Farm in Canada, which has bred and raced Native Dancer's descendants.

...

Some believe the success of this line, coupled with the boom in the breeding market, has come with a price. The risk of injury and the prospect of guaranteed millions in the breeding shed have taken many great horses out of the sport at a young age. That's left fewer veteran stars to lure fans to the track.

It's also what happens when a sport's top-level success becomes disconnected from its farm system, so to speak. Eight Belles was, and Big Brown is, descended from Native Dancer, Big Brown on both his sire's and his dam's sides. (The WSJ has also provided a pedigree chart, showing the links back to Native Dancer, and to the other main Royal bloodline, Nasrullah's, which produced Secretariat and Seattle Slew.)

The good news is that breeders are starting to look to foreign bloodlines; interbreeding with them may make horses more robust. The bad news is that it's likely only to be a temporary infusion, until the flaws in whatever new royalty emerges become apparent.

There's also an argument for genetic engineering in crops here. Continued experimentation is the only way to make sure that a crop with a specific weakness, that hasn't manifested itself yet, can be quickly replaced with another, less-vulnerable crop. We live in a world market for seed now, like it or not, and we need to be encouraging, not discouraging, experimentation.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 8:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Six years ago, it was War Emblem.

Two years ago, it was Barbaro.

This year, Big Brown.

Horse racing hasn't had a Triple Crown winner since 1978's Affirmed, and his three-race duel with Alydar. But when your horse comes from the 20th position to win the Kentucky Derby by 4 3/4 lengths with a finishing kick, you know he's got the chops to run the Belmont. The question is, will he fall victim to some sprinter having a career day two weeks from now at Pimlico?

I like horse racing. But I want to love horse racing. Sadly, horse racing's owners have managed to do damage to their sport that baseball owners can only dream of. Sally Jenkins has it half right in today's Washington Post:

But thoroughbred racing is in a moral crisis, and everyone now knows it. Twice since 2006, magnificent animals have suffered catastrophic injuries on live television in Triple Crown races, and there is no explaining that away. Horses are being over-bred and over-raced, until their bodies cannot support their own ambitions, or those of the humans who race them.

The only reason they look over-raced is because they're over-bred. Go take a look at Seabiscuit's record in the back of Laura Hillenbrand's book, and you'll see that horses used to race a schedule that NASCAR drivers would have a hard time with. John Henry (whose history and physique look a lot like Seabiscuit's) ran until he was nine. Secretariat and Bold Ruler at least raced through their four-year-old seasons.

The horses need to race long enough and often enough to develop fans, and the top of the sport can't succeed without the dozens of tracks and thousands of races around the country. But off-track betting has diluted the track atmosphere, and ever-larger takes (er, taxes) have made almost impossible for even a successful horse-picker to come away a winner. The combination has simultaneously killed both the romance and the avarice, and the romance of the avarice.

As for the top stakes races, there's virtually no TV coverage except for the Breeders Cup and the Triple Crown. The other major stakes races barely get a mention, except for perhaps the Wood Memorial and the other races leading up to Derby Day.

Maybe the horse owners should form a league, and spend some of that breeding money on a TV contract. And let their horses get a little more robust.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 12:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)