It's hard as both someone who loves horses and loves horseracing to defend this industry right now. Unfortunately in too many ways, it has become an industry. The days when owners and breeders focused on the racing aspect of the sport are in the past.

It wasn't always this way. There was a time when a horse bred for racing actually raced, and raced a lot. They ran on schedules that would break a modern thoroughbred. It wasn't at all unusual for horses to run 10 of more races a year. Alydar had 26 starts in his three year racing career. The legendary Cigar had a career total of 33 starts. Go back further in racing history and the racing schedules were even more rigorous. Count Fleet ran 15 races as a two year old. Geldings clearly would have longer racing careers because they couldn't be bred, but by any standard their careers were impressive. Forego had 57 starts in a six year racing career. John Henry ran an astonishing 83 races in his career.

There was a time when no one would seriously consider retiring a colt after only a few races if they were still physically able to run. Horse breeders understood that only when a stallion matured did you really get a sense of what quality the horse might be. There were plenty of fast young colts that were flashes in the pan, but horses that still won races as five and six year olds - these were the ones you wanted to put your mares to. And champion mares were run as hard as their male counterparts - the filly Kincsem ran 54 races in her three year career, winning all of them.

Nowadays, it's the norm to retire colts at the age of four. Some colts like Big Brown had fewer lifetime starts than some older stallions had in a single season. And it is showing in the horses themselves. Modern thoroughbreds are far more fragile than these earlier bred horses were. The older horses had better bone, more endurance. They were suited for racing careers that would last several years. Some don't even see the point of running fillies at all today since their primary value would be as brood mares, there just to pass on their own bloodlines to the colts they would throw. There were several commentators that questions why Eight Bells was run against the colts in the Derby last year, risking her value as a breeding mare for the small amount she might win as a racer.

The money-end of racing became focused on the breeding aspect of the sport, so horses are often raced just long enough to make a name for themselves before going on to the breeding shed where the real money can be made. A stallion like Big Brown who has such a short racing career even by today's standards, not to mention questions about his long-term soundness now gets $65,000 for each live foal he breeds. A prolific stallion can cover over two hundred mares a season and often can breed into their twenties. We breed babies to get fast babies and wonder why modern race horses are so delicate.

This short attention span in the sport, the demand for youngsters with early speed has cost the sport badly. Fans have lost the chance to root on for favorites over careers that used to span years. We lost the great rivalries, such as the one between Alydar and Affirmed - the greatest champions of their day who raced against one another repeatedly. The Triple Crown became the be all, end all to most casual fans of the sport. Why bother cheering for a horse when that horse will be shuffled off to the breeding shed in just a few months?

I have been around horses all my life and to me there is no creature more perfect than the horse. Watching a horse in full gallop is one of the most glorious sights you will ever see in life. Those of us who put the welfare of the horses first, who want to see and end to the practice of sending excess horses to slaughter, who want to see the quality of a horse judged by more than just its speed as a juvenile have been working towards these changes for a very long time. And though I'll be the last to argue that the industry is doing enough, many good tracks, breeders and trainers are working to make racing better and safer for the horses. The industry has lost it's way and forgotten its roots. I do hope that it can find them again.