SITTING in the Jockey Rooms in Newmarket last year finishing up our pudding, Sir Mark Prescott and I got to discussing the paintings that hang in the glorious dining room. “Which is your favourite?” I asked him. “That one of Tod Sloan,” he replied, launching into a history lesson of why Sloan was one of his heroes. “He was the first to ride short and in two years changed jockeyship entirely in a way that had the same impact as talkies on the film industry.”

Cut to lunch in The Irish Field staff canteen last week discussing times and speed as we tucked into our soup, the question came to me as to whether racehorses have got faster over the generations and what factors may have influenced that either way? Everything Horse Sense is concerned with may have had a factor: husbandry, riding, tracks, veterinary - all must impact upon the ability of the racehorse to move faster. And breeding of course, the evolution of the racehorse is in the hands of the breeders, it’s a man-made animal to all intents and purposes. Designed to run, as the Mercedes is designed to drive, so is it getting better as time ticks on?

Shorter stirrups

Prescott’s admiration for James Forman “Tod” Sloan derives from the fact he was the first jockey in Britain widely recognised to ride out with short stirrups. Truth be told, African American jockey Willie Simms rode with short stirrups to win at Newmarket two years before Todd, but it is Todd who is credited. Shorter stirrups meant different weight loading on the horse and in turn meant faster times. The modern race position was developed in the United States in the late 19th century, introduced to Britain in 1897 by Sloan, and universally adopted by 1910. According to an article in Science magazine in 2009 this change in riding style corresponds to a dramatic improvement of 5 to 7% in race times in the United States between 1890 and 1900 and in the United Kingdom between 1897 and 1910.

Full potential

When it comes to racing statistics it’s important to call in the speed experts here, including our very own Andy Bate who answers my call on the subject with: “I am not sure whether racehorses are getting faster or not, and even If I did it is probably not something I could back up with data. However, within the calculations I make to create my speed ratings I do think horses are running to a higher rating, especially on the flat. There are several influences which are worth considering, most of which assist the horse reach its full potential rather than making it run faster. The first and likely most important is the training aspect, with trainers evolving to better condition their horses to withstand racing and therefore improve.

“A good example this season is Kyprios, who was brilliantly campaigned by Aidan O’Brien to win all the big staying races in Europe. On his first two appearances of the season at Navan and Leopardstown he performed to a reasonable level before improving from Ascot to Goodwood and then onto the Curragh, clocking a faster time on each occasion and showing more speed at the finish. Some horses run to a high level and never repeat the performance even when presented with the same conditions.

Fully extending

“The second point is jockeyship, quite simply there are more jockeys around now who judge pace. If a horse is ridden efficiently, he or she will run to their optimum, you will see this reflected in a finishing speed % on various websites. Track conditions are also crucial, the better the racing surface the faster the times and that may not always coincide with fast ground. This weekend at Newmarket is a good example as the times were quick on ground described as good, the surface lending itself to the horses fully extending themselves rather than on fast ground where they may not.

“I would also add racing in Britain and Ireland is dominated by the Classics, which are run over a mile and upwards. Hence horses are bred to stretch out in trip rather than be quick, I am no expert on breeding but just the influence of Galileo suggests the importance of stamina. Again, with no expertise attached, US horses are bred to be faster as it suits their racing.”

Bate concludes his analyses by offering the example of horses from another continent being much faster. He uses the example of Royal Ascot this year when Australian sprinter Nature Strip blew away our best sprinters. “It is the fastest speed figure I have clocked for a sprinter. The fastest furlongs he clocked were 10.48 and 10.45, although he slowed to 12.02 through the final furlong. The second, Twilight Calls, was able to match the speed through the fastest furlongs but not sustain the effort to the conclusion of the race.”

Extraneous factors

Also sharing his thoughts with Horse Sense is time and form analyst Simon Rowlands who explained: “My main aim was to show that racehorses now are very likely significantly faster than they were 100 years or so ago. Whether they are significantly faster now than they were 20 or 30 years ago is much more open to debate!”

“The question“Have horses got faster?” is not one I, or anyone else I suspect, is going to be able to answer definitively and with great precision.” Rowlands admits in a recent blog post. “There are a whole lot of horses, bad and good, that have run over the centuries, in countries near and far, and each of them should really be considered. Simultaneously, the overall times they have recorded have been influenced by a multitude of extraneous factors, such as surface speed, alterations to the course, and even the methods used to record times.”

For the sake of his own investigation, Rowlands changes the question to: “Have the times recorded by the winners of some of the world’s greatest races got faster?”

Incomparable Secretariat

Inspired by Mark Denny of Stanford University’s 2008 paper Limits to running speeds in dogs, horses and humans, Rowlands extended the hypothesis. “In what was, overall, a brilliantly geeky and yet appropriately academic treatment of the subject, Denny focused on just three horse races - those of the US Triple Crown - and he seemed rather too ready to accept that speeds had plateaued around the time that the incomparable Secretariat won them all in 1973.”

Strength in statistsics

Not willing to leave it at that, Rowlands lifted the gauntlet, explaining: “Anecdotally, surface speed was faster then than it is now, while what is beyond dispute is that races have sprung up since (notably at the Breeders’ Cup and elsewhere internationally) that have challenged the Triple Crown’s one-time hegemony in this area. There is strength in statistics, and in associated analysis. Just three races, in one country, without controlling for factors such as surface speed and ability (to name but two), will be subject to a lot of variances and to specific context. So, I tried something similar with 10 leading races from around the world instead.”

If you study the tables, graphs and facts of Rowlandss research, they include indexing outcomes by decade. Rowlands evidences that premier races in the 1870s were more than 10% slower than their equivalents 130 years on.

In conclusion Rowlands says: “The answer to the question – “Have the times recorded by the winners of some of the world’s greatest races got faster?” – is “yes”, and it has been so marked until recently that it is also reasonable to conclude that horses, or at least the good ones, have got significantly faster until recently also.”

The next question is what happened recently? But I’ll leave that to Andy and Simon for now.