Them Horses Run Faster These Days

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Len Madeiros

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Or do they?

Something has baffled me for a while now. Obviously humans run faster, both sprinting and at longer distances, which can be put down to better training techniques, diet, "medicines", etc. Horses have also benefitted from the same aid to improvements, but can we conclusively prove that they are running any faster? Are there more course records being set over the same distances?

I know the imponderable that humans don't have to account for is the state of the going and I know that horses and jockeys are more tactical with regards to "pace", but surely horses are actually faster these days. But what in reality, what does that mean? Would it mean, for instance, that Long Run is the best/fastest Gold Cup winner ever because he broke the course record for the distance by over two seconds in 2011?
 
I personally believe that if you transported Arkle in his 8yo state forward around 50 years to the Gold Cup start last month, he would have finished down the field.

However, I also believe that if you had transported him as a 4yo into Mullins' Henderson's or Nicholls' yard, and allowed him to benefit from their training regime, he would have won last month's Gold Cup by a distance.

In a simliar way, Jesse Owens ran 10.3 seconds at the Berlin Olympics. Transport him to the London Olympics in his state that day, and he wouldn't have made the final, he might have recorded 10.2 due to the better track conditions.

But if you were to transport him as a 14yo into the same training setup enjoyed by Bolt or Gatlin, he would have been a medallist.
 
Bar, do you really think the better track conditions would only account for 0.1s? About one metre?

In the 76 years between Jesse Owens's Olympic win and the 2012 games, not only did tracks undergo a series of improvements but there was better understanding of other factors such as diet and nutrition, etc.

I reckon track improvements alone would account for at least 0.2s, possibly as much as 0.3s. That in itself probably wouldn't have got JO into the final but, as you say, take him as a kid and put him through the training and support available to modern athletes and he'd definitely be a finalist. I hesitate to say he'd medal because more youngsters, especially black youngsters, have access to the sport. It may be that someone of Bolt's raw talent, if around in the 1930s, would have been good enough to beat Owens.

The horses are different, I reckon, and I've put forward this argument a number of times on here before.

In evolutionary terms, horses are millions of years ahead of humans. Humans competing in sport is, in the big scheme of things, a new thing. It's only a couple of thousand years old and it's only been taken seriously in the last 100 and only very seriously in the last 50.

Horses have been trained for competition for hundreds of years.

I accept that horses nowadays are trained harder than those of as recent an era as Arkle's. They may be generally fitter but I reckon the top performances of that era are very much on a par with the modern one. The biggest races have always been very competitive. I reckon there's maybe a difference between the average winner of a Monday afternoon run of the mill handicap in 1964 and 2014 but would the winner of the 2014 Derby be significantly better or even fitter than the winner of the 1964 one? I very much doubt it.

Racetracks are probably better looked after nowadays, now that we have vertidraining (on some tracks) and a better understanding of turf management. That might allow for horses letting themselves down more readily than in the old days when the going description of 'hard' wasn't at all uncommon in the summer months.

And since you mention Arkle, I am in no doubt that Arkle would give Desert Orchid at least a stone and a beating over 3m.
 
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I was reading this last week.

https://www.thorograph.com/archive/getting%20faster%20pt%202.htm

My conclusion after reading that is that they are. I've adjusted my class scale a little bit over the years as low grade horses won't be improving as much as top class horses, so the gap should, in theory, be widening.

I think it was Mordin that reckoned the time between a low grade winner of a seller and a GP1 winner was about 4 seconds, but that was over 20 years ago.
 
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I think there are loads of reasons why horse performance hasn't kept pace with human improvement.

Very little change, in real terms, to the type of running surface for horses - improvements in drainage aside, it's still basically grass, as compared to the technological advances made in both athletics surfaces and track shoes over a comparable period.

Different emphasis in training and, to an extent, in competition: human runners are focussed on times where racehorse trainers and jockeys aren't.

Gene-pool limitation in horses: the lack of genetic diversity doesn't lend itself to significant change.

Size differential over time. Human athletes are, almost certainly, bigger today than their counterparts of 30 or 40 years ago, because as a species we are still getting bigger on average. Taller humans = longer stride length, bigger muscles = more power to generate each stride. Horses are the same size or possibly even slightly smaller, especially over jumps, with the emphasis today on faster-maturing horses as compared to the big NH types of previous generations.
 
Desert Orchid said:
Bar, do you really think the better track conditions would only account for 0.1s? About one metre?

In the 76 years between Jesse Owens's Olympic win and the 2012 games, not only did tracks undergo a series of improvements but there was better understanding of other factors such as diet and nutrition, etc.
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Yes, I do, Dessie.

I remember doing a bit of research into it a while ago, and there was a paper (done by the Australian Sports Institute) discussing the effects of various improvements on 100m time. I seem to remember that track conditions and equipment (running blocks and spikes) weren't that big a factor. I can't find the paper.

As you say in your second paragraph, diet/nutrition and more particularly training were more important.
 
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Cruella said:
Size differential over time. Human athletes are, almost certainly, bigger today than their counterparts of 30 or 40 years ago, because as a species we are still getting bigger on average. Taller humans = longer stride length, bigger muscles = more power to generate each stride. Horses are the same size or possibly even slightly smaller, especially over jumps, with the emphasis today on faster-maturing horses as compared to the big NH types of previous generations.
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Good point. This is certainly a factor, Cruella.
 
Surely Derby winners at Epsom can be loosley compared by times allowing for ground conditions. I doubt if the the times from say the 60's are any different to recent years.
 
SlimChance said:
Surely Derby winners at Epsom can be loosley compared by times allowing for ground conditions. I doubt if the the times from say the 60's are any different to recent years.
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That's a good point.

Is Lammtarra the record holder these days, but didn't he beat Bahram's 1935 time?
 
Bar the Bull said:
I personally believe that if you transported Arkle in his 8yo state forward around 50 years to the Gold Cup start last month, he would have finished down the field.

However, I also believe that if you had transported him as a 4yo into Mullins' Henderson's or Nicholls' yard, and allowed him to benefit from their training regime, he would have won last month's Gold Cup by a distance.

In a simliar way, Jesse Owens ran 10.3 seconds at the Berlin Olympics. Transport him to the London Olympics in his state that day, and he wouldn't have made the final, he might have recorded 10.2 due to the better track conditions.

But if you were to transport him as a 14yo into the same training setup enjoyed by Bolt or Gatlin, he would have been a medallist.
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Arkle's Sandown track record over 3 miles still stands does it not ? I suspect even with a 1964 training regime he would have beaten that lot !
 
I'm pretty sure the handicapper Knockroe held the record for a while at some point in the 1970s. I'm also pretty sure he carried 10-0 that day.

Which says it all about times. They're as much due to conditions as the ability of the horse.
 
Ardross said:
Arkle's Sandown track record over 3 miles still stands does it not ? I suspect even with a 1964 training regime he would have beaten that lot !
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There hasn't been a decent 3m chase at Sandown for god knows how long so it's hard to see how this record would be broken?
 
Hamm said:
There hasn't been a decent 3m chase at Sandown for god knows how long so it's hard to see how this record would be broken?
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Desert Orchid ran over the trip a number of times in the late 80s/ early 90s including his defeat of Pegwell Bay in the Gainsborough.

Also both One Man and Kicking King won King George VI Cases when they were switched to Sandown.
 
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Cruella's point makes a lot of sense to me. The human inputs are likely to have improved than the horses themselves.

Jump jockeys are definitely better now than they used to be. Put Ruby on Arkle instead of Pat Taaffe or any other jockey of that era and you'd squeeze another length or two.
 
What Cruella says is logically true. However training methods have changed and improved, so has feed and supplements which is more of a science now. Veterinary intervention, and the use of drugs has developed (including banned substances!). And as Art says top jockeys these days are better than they were say 20+ years ago. Therefore logically horses should be able to run faster for longer, with a pilot who can extract more.

The flip side is there are still some long-standing course records. So there is another factor to consider. My take is that the nature of racecourses have changed. Distances may have been slightly different, and it's rare to see top horses running on lightning fast ground these days.

We try to compare horses from different eras which is just impossible. Would x horse have beaten y horse 30 years apart? We'll never know. Ultimately all we can really do is compare horses to their own generation, and more loosely to the previous and next generations.

There are however two exceptions to that. Ultimately Arkle was the most dominant of all steeplechasers, and Frankel is his flat equivalent. They were both freaks and irrespective of development would be clear best whatever generation they were born into. But once you get below those two it immediately becomes subjective. However, I'm sure there are one or two crazy people who would still argue against Arkle and Frankel being the best! :D
 
I think this comes down to peoples' perceptions, often influenced by what they see on a four sided television.
And remember the sixties was actually a period when things were really quite real, Kennedy, Luther King, movement, the Cuban missile crisis and mass protests.
All people do to show they care now is run a few miles or support a 'cause' on a social networking site.
They actually needed dope back then too. :)

There was surely more consensus of what greatness was in those times than in the current era. The global consciousness was very clear cut, dominated by greatness and in a time when greatness was really allowed to be greatness.
Greatness is measured now which means in the end it becomes very hard to measure for what it actually is - greatness.

Greatness is a climax,.... where the start and middle were to great to comprehend.

When you see something that fit's the criteria, you'll know you've seen it.

I'll be back tomorrow :)
 
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marble said:
I think this comes down to peoples' perceptions, often influenced by what they see on a four sided television.
And remember the sixties was actually a period when things were really quite real, Kennedy, Luther King, movement, the Cuban missile crisis and mass protests.
All people do to show they care now is run a few miles or support a 'cause' on a social networking site.
They actually needed dope back then too. :)

There was surely more consensus of what greatness was in those times than in the current era. The global consciousness was very clear cut, dominated by greatness and in a time when greatness was really allowed to be greatness.
Greatness is measured now which means in the end it becomes very hard to measure for what it actually is - greatness.

Greatness is a climax,.... where the start and middle were to great to comprehend.

When you see something that's fits the criteria, you'll know you've seen it.

I'll be back tomorrow :)
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Great piece, marble.
 
A really good post Marb.

Im not sure that its any different today than it was 50 years ago though. In the case of Frankel I don't know anyone who didn't realise they had witnessed a great when he won his Guineas. The same is true of Arkle. It was blindingly obvious. And that's the point, the greats Stand out in the moment. We talk about Arkle 50 years on and we'll be doing the same with Frankel.

I absolutely agree though. Greatness doesn't need consensus. There is no debate. It just is.
 
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I'm not old enough to remember Mill Reef, Sea Bird or Brigadier Gerard but did any of them have that special definable something that we can think, I wonder if they'll pass it on to their progeny?

There's surely a chance some of Frankel's offspring will inherit that gigantic stride of his. Could we be on the verge of a strain of super horses?
 
Euronymous said:
I'm not old enough to remember Mill Reef, Sea Bird or Brigadier Gerard but did any of them have that special definable something that we can think, I wonder if they'll pass it on to their progeny?

There's surely a chance some of Frankel's offspring will inherit that gigantic stride of his. Could we be on the verge of a strain of super horses?
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I think we wonder about this every time we come across a really good one. Mill Reef and Sea Bird did become top sires but Brigadier Gerard only had one or two top class offspring.
 
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