Class, all you have to do is look at the top 3YO horses of the last 4 years to realize its foolhardy to pay big bucks for unproven horses: War Emblem, Funny Cide, Smarty Jones and Alfeet Alex. (I think War Emblem was a homebred til the private sale however) A good horse can come from anywhere if hes got some decent pedigree and those four all did. They paid 3.3 million for Chekov. Does anyone really think a Pulpit colt is gonna get that back? (Crosses fingers on Oratory, who may be a good one.)

classhandicapper Wrote:
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> Personally, all I think we need is for horse
> owners to stop collectively acting like they are
> totally brain dead by dramatically overpaying for
> yearlings and other horses. If the prices for
> horses came down to the point where the economics
> of racing came even close to the economics of
> breeding (or at least racing made some economic
> sense), many would choose racing. That it turn
> would set everything on a virtuous path and
> instead of its current vicious path. However, as
> long as owners as a group insist on being dumber
> than a rock by dramatically overpaying and losing
> massive sums of money, those that hit the lottery
> will cash their winning ticket ASAP. That's what
> the game has become. It's like the lottery.
>
> Someone (outside of breeding certainly) should
> publish stats on just how badly most owners do and
> push it really hard. Maybe it would discourage the
> insanity. In the short term that person would
> probably be hated by a lot of people in the
> industry, but in the long term it might help shift
> the economics in a postive direction for the sport
> as a whole and for the owners themselves. It would
> be massively better for the fans.
>
> I'm going to stop ranting because obviously this
> subject needs a lot of thought. I'm just tired of
> it.