Barbaro will be spared so he can fetch stud fees

By MURRAY EVANS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Though Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro will never race again, the owners of the powerful colt will spend tens of thousands of dollars while the hind leg he shattered in the Preakness Stakes slowly heals.
Their motivation -- the millions of dollars he is sure to fetch in stud fees -- is one of the many reasons some industry experts believe the modern thoroughbred is more prone to injury.
Barbaro's breakdown Saturday re-ignited the debate that's kicked up in recent years: Are modern training techniques, an obsession with speed and the almighty dollar making thoroughbreds weaker?
Those who think so cite the lack of a Triple Crown winner since 1978 and the gradual drop in the average number of annual starts per horse as evidence.
"Statistically, you can definitely make an argument," said Doug Cauthen, the president of WinStar Farm in Versailles, Ky.
Theories abound
As for reasons why, theories abound.
Some blame modern trainers' obsession with speed over stamina and durability. Others say the economics of the sport drive a tendency to breed horses for looks -- which brings big money in the sales ring -- than the racetrack.
And many believe the lure of millon-dollar stud fees is taking horses off the track much earlier in their careers, making it hard to detect durability.
"They baby them," said Steve Cauthen, who was Triple Crown winner Affirmed's jockey in 1978 and now runs Dreamfield Farms in Verona, Ky. "Obviously, horses that have big stallion potential, they don't want to get him beat."
The average career for an elite racehorse is becoming shorter all the time.
Smarty Jones ran only nine career races, Afleet Alex 12, and neither ran past his 3-year-old season.
By comparison, champion Whirlaway raced nine times as a 3-year-old after winning the Triple Crown in 1941. Secretariat, the 1973 Triple Crown winner, raced 12 times as a 3-year-old and had 21 career starts.
Different way of doing it
"I think we don't breed horses for distance any more and the modern way of training horses is not to run them so closely," said Penny Chenery, who owned Secretariat.
And there's little doubt that some horses are bred with an eye toward how they'll look in the sales ring or future breeding fees rather than their potential on the race track, said the director of sales at Keeneland Race Course in Lexington, Ky., which each September holds the world's largest yearling sale.
"The thoroughbred market has become a commercial marketplace more than a racehorse marketplace," Russell said. "The effort to get these horses physically prepared to race is a lot tougher on them than it was in the '50s."