A new study has claimed that racehorses are getting faster, despite many in the industry believing that thoroughbreds had reached the limits of their speed.
On Wednesday, the Royal Society Journal published the results of its investigation into winning times over the past 165 years, with the results indicating that the average winning time for a six-furlong race over the past 15 years fell by more than a second.
atrick Sharman, a PhD student at Exeter University and race enthusiast, looked into the times from every single elite race between 1850 and 2012 and found that shorter races have shown a marked increase in speed since 1975 but there was little variation at middle and longer distances.
“My hunch is that we are seeing a genetic change, with breeders focusing on speed rather than endurance,” Sharman told BBC News. “I don’t believe that over the longer distances horses have reached their limit.”
