Evolution of the Standardbred

I'd like to hear the opinions of forum members past and present on their thoughts about the evolution of the breed in both gaits.

In regards to pacers, I personally think we started to go backwards on the world stage in the seventies and the trend has continued, I'm unsure how many current forum members were around when Aust/NZ pacers started going to the US in the sixties and pretty much belted the septics up.

I think our breed has suffered from too many US stallions and the virtual obliteration of the Globe Derby line, people will pull out stats to disprove me I'm sure and I have heard a thousand times how our breed is "catching up".....catching up to our past I suspect.

Would love to hear what others think.

Cheers,
Dan

Adore Me 1.47 Smoken Up 1.48 I think we not far off. Don't know numbers but assuming America have a much larger horse base so bound to be more horses that run quicker so if they breeding twice as many horses they bound to have more good ones albeit it is still not proportionate. Not sure where it was 40 years ago maybe Cardigan Bay a good guide. Was he racing the very best? But still after 40 years it cant have gone backwards too much - M0s been running 1.51

Pretty sure that Cardigan Bay at an advanced age(Not young) raced The mighty Brett Hanover and beat him not long after landing in the USA Breno, Pretty sure he would have raced the best available.

Dan, do you not think that Smoken Up, Blacks A Fake, Adore Me, Beautide, etc. would have been just as competitive in USA as were our best horses of the sixties.
Our champions don't go there these days so we don't get a good comparison on the relative merits of the two hemisphere's best but in my mind, Adore Me's performance at Menangle ranks above anything I have seen from a mare anywhere.
Going back a few years, I am confident Christian Cullen and Popular Alm at their best would have inflicted some pain on the Americans had they been given the chance.

Cardigan Bay Raced against the top US Pacers

Cardigan Bay was taken to the USA at the advanced age of eight, on a "racing lease" to New Jersey reinsman Stanley Dancer and his owners for a payment of $US125,000, even though he had only $US137,000 in earnings up to that point and was "down on the hip" from a severe injury suffered racing in Western Australia years earlier. He won many races in the US and Canada and defeated U.S. Champion Overtrick in one of three races. He was the only horse to defeat the three U.S. Hall of Fame horses of that era: Overtrick, Bret Hanover, and Meadow Skipper.

In 1964, Overtrick and Cardigan Bay engaged in two races: The Dan Patch Pace and the Dan Patch Encore. Cardigan Bay prevailed by the shortest of noses in the Dan Patch, and Overtrick won the Encore. Overtrick also defeated Cardigan Bay in an earlier race in 1964, prevailing by a neck in a mile and a half race.

Perhaps his most famous encounter was with the great Standardbred horse, Bret Hanover, in the Pace of the Century, in 1966. Cardigan Bay, with Stanley Dancer driving, won that race in front of 45,000 spectators at Yonkers Raceway, New York and became only one of two horses (the other being Adios Vic) up to that time to have beaten Bret Hanover. However, in their next encounter, the "Revenge Pace," Bret Hanover reversed that one-two finish. The latter race drew a record crowd for a race in Western New York.[4]

Excellent Noel, Along with Trevor, I fully agree, CC, Poppy and Smoken Up would have lead the Yanks a merry dance, Adore Me's run at Menangle is now my No1 highlight ever, Blacky wasn't really a Mile horse but he would have made up for that sitting in the breeze and grinding his opposition into the dirt, Racing is lot different these days Dan, In the old days we had races run over all distances from 1609 to 2700m at HP but now unfortunately, Racing seems to be more geared for 1609m sprints and another point that I mentioned earlier in the year, What happens when the Kiwi's come to town to compete in the longer distance races???

Quote:

Originally Posted by Richard prior

Excellent Noel, Along with Trevor, I fully agree, CC, Poppy and Smoken Up would have lead the Yanks a merry dance, Adore Me's run at Menangle is now my No1 highlight ever, Blacky wasn't really a Mile horse but he would have made up for that sitting in the breeze and grinding his opposition into the dirt, Racing is lot different these days Dan, In the old days we had races run over all distances from 1609 to 2700m at HP but now unfortunately, Racing seems to be more geared for 1609m sprints and another point that I mentioned earlier in the year, What happens when the Kiwi's come to town to compete in the longer distance races???

8 years since an Aussie bred win in the Hunter Cup. Granted it hasn't attracted the best Aussies consistently but some of the Kiwis to win not exactly the best of their lot either.

Quote:

Originally Posted by eliteblood

Dan, do you not think that Smoken Up, Blacks A Fake, Adore Me, Beautide, etc. would have been just as competitive in USA as were our best horses of the sixties.
Our champions don't go there these days so we don't get a good comparison on the relative merits of the two hemisphere's best but in my mind, Adore Me's performance at Menangle ranks above anything I have seen from a mare anywhere.
Going back a few years, I am confident Christian Cullen and Popular Alm at their best would have inflicted some pain on the Americans had they been given the chance.

Trevor,

as much as I have admired all the horses you mentioned, I do not think any of them would have kicked butt in the states with the possible exception of CC, certainly not like horses as far back as Apmat did.

None of them have half mile track records within cooee of the best North American pacers these days....why? in my humble opinion we were duped into breeding far too many mares to the mostly inferior stallions that were imported with a fast time beside their name ( set after a lifetime of racing mobile miles on mostly much bigger tracks) but people got "conned" and one individual in particular who had a smart business brain made a killing out of importing horses that were inferior in the US and inferior here too but got many, many mares and subsequently hurt our breeding industry.

I mention the half mile track records because I believe records on shorter tracks compared to records on bigger track give an indication of gait quality, and gait quality is ( too me at least) an indication of the evolvement of the breed.

cheers,

Dan.

Thanks Breno, That's spot on mate and exactly what I was getting at,

Quote:

Originally Posted by Danno

Trevor,

as much as I have admired all the horses you mentioned, I do not think any of them would have kicked butt in the states with the possible exception of CC, certainly not like horses as far back as Apmat did.

None of them have half mile track records within cooee of the best North American pacers these days....why? in my humble opinion we were duped into breeding far too many mares to the mostly inferior stallions that were imported with a fast time beside their name ( set after a lifetime of racing mobile miles on mostly much bigger tracks) but people got "conned" and one individual in particular who had a smart business brain made a killing out of importing horses that were inferior in the US and inferior here too but got many, many mares and subsequently hurt our breeding industry.

I mention the half mile track records because I believe records on shorter tracks compared to records on bigger track give an indication of gait quality, and gait quality is ( too me at least) an indication of the evolvement of the breed.

cheers,

Dan.

Dan,

It is a shame that the Globe Derby sireline failed to survive and it is true that we went through a long period of breeding to well marketed average imported stallions. That has changed big time in the last 25 years and we now breed in big numbers to the very same stallions that are popular with the northern hemisphere breeders, horses like Bettors Delight, Art Major, SBSW, Rocknroll Hanover, American Ideal, Mach Three, etc. Logic would suggest that any variance between Northern hemispher horses and southern hemisphere horses must be shrinking under this current scenario.
If you are going to use times as a measure I think it would be more appropriate to compare times run on our world class Menangle track with times run on their best one mile tracks. Our half mile tracks are far from state of the art and the variation in times is likely due more to the track design than differential in the quality of horses.
Beside Apmat and Cardigan Bay, who else is on the list of down under bred horses that kicked butt in the USA.
We should all remember that Cardigan Bay was by the great imported sire Hal Tryax. His first 3 dams were also by imported stallions.

With respect to trotters, the quality of down under bred horses was very ordinary prior to the introduction of frozen semen and shuttle stallions over the last 15 years, (the subsequent improvement has been dramatic). Despite that we have had horses like Lyell Creek and Knight Pistol that have been able to compete respectably with the world's best, and we all know that Maoris Idol would have rattled some cages if taken north to race. In the same way, isolated instances like Apmat, Cardigan Bay and Young Quinn are not a measure of the overall quality of the horse population of their times.