Jim-- briefly, because I've shot my whole day doing this--

1-- Beter's position is based on an ASSUMPTION about horses staying at the same speed, which is what the use of claiming pars is at heart. This subject came up briefly at the Expo, and if you have the DVD you can see some of his other "reasons", which include that there haven't been any recent triple crown winners-- you could drive a truck through the holes in that one.And by the way, it's unlikely they have spent the time I have thinking about this, and definitely untrue that Andy or anyone else has done as many track days as I have.

2-- I commented on the CD guy in an earlier post in this string. We don't have enough information about CD to have a real conversation about this, as I said.

3-- I've posted many times about the horse/human question, and if you read the series in the archives you'll see a lot of it. I doubt bears are being selectively bred, fed, trained, and drugged to make them run faster-- although if there was purse money in it and you could bet on it, they probably would be. Also, I doubt that size of the foal crop has increased dramatically with bears-- a point I don't think I have brought up before.

It's not that I don't want to pursue the discussion. It's that I don't want to pursue it AGAIN. It took me some research and quite a lot of time to write that "Are Racehorses Getting Faster" stuff the first time-- it would help if everyone read it carefully before bringing up issues I've already addressed.



TGJB