Michael,

"i would like to "focus" on your theory about today's horses running 10f and 12f dirt races ten to twenty lengths faster than they did just ten or fifteen years ago."

Not to nitpick, but it would probably be more accurate to say that on TG, the fastest horses have gotten about SIX lengths faster over the past ten-fifteen years. With Ghostzapper being the best (-6), there were definitely horses running around zero circa 1989. It's not 10-20 lengths.

As "evidence", I vaguely remember someone on this board recently citing a star of yesteryear who ran a "zero" on Rags and it may have been more than 15 years ago. Since Rags' scale is slower than TG (by common acknoledgement) I think what is really being debated is more like five lengths (among the very fastest horses) over __ years (depending on who that Rag zero was) rather than 10-20 lengths over the past 10-15 years.

Even among the past Derby winners over the past 15 years, I think the figure is more like six lengths.

HP