While looking back through all the crap stored in my PC for the 2yo stats that Dan wanted to see, I found this piece from another report produced way back in 1998.
The same old aspects are highlighted here as were highlighted by so many who responded to the 2011 Survey conducted by the HRA Breeding Panel.
Have a read and see if you experience the same sense of deja-vu that I did.

Regards

Jaimie


COMMENT - FILLIES AND MARES

F1 Fillies and mares of any foaling crop provide an average of 50% of the foal product and their racing outcome is far less promising than for colts.
Given that fillies and mares generally are not as fast as colts it follows that there is an inbuilt bias against training and racing fillies and mares against the colts because there are insufficient races. This is a severe disincentive to race 50% of the standardbred product.

F2 The statistical bias against fillies and mares is evident in the following areas:
  • * There are less fillies and mares being named
  • * There are far less fillies and mares starting racing at all ages.
  • * There are far less filly and mare winners at all ages but this is
particularly more evident in two and three year old racing.
F3 38.6% of colts and fillies of the total 1990 foaling crop have so far started in a race.
Of these 16.1% were fillies and mares and 8.1% of such fillies and mares have won a race.
In their two and three year old careers fillies had only 1.8% and 4.0% chance respectively of winning (see Table 1) whilst the colts had almost double the chance.

F4 Given that fillies and mares make up 50% of the breeding product the prospective return to their breeders and owners is generally depressing in all areas including yearling sales.

F5 There is a trend for additional exclusive races for fillies and mares in some States and for fillies or mares to have preferred barrier positions but these trends are not nation wide.

F6 There is a growing shortage of pools of horses to race. If half the industry breeding product is made up of fillies and mares and they are currently trained and raced less and are starved of opportunity it makes sense to provide more opportunities and thereby provide more races at race meetings and greater incentive to trainers and owners to break in and train and race fillies.
It would take some years to put these incentives fully into place and a long term commitment would have to be made.

F7 This report was not given a charter to express any conclusions as to the plight of owners of fillies and mares, however, the percentages are overwhelmingly apparent and deserve the attention given here and which is directed to the attention of Controlling Bodies and Clubs to establish whether more can be done to make training and racing of fillies and mares more worthwhile for their owners and breeders and for the well being of the standardbred industry in general.
In the end result it is the Clubs that will ultimately benefit from an increased variety of programming and a greater selection of horses.