Looking at How 2-Year-Old Champions Do As Older Horses
2009 2-year-old champion Lookin At Lucky was retired at the end of 2010 One good thing about social media is that it leads to interesting discussions. After Beholder’s win the other day Brian Zipse of Horse Racing Nation asked when the last time a 2-year-old champion (Beholder was U.S. champion 2-year-old filly in 2012) has accomplished as much as her. While that was a really solid question, I started wondering how many 2-year-old champions are actually given a chance to race after 3. Due to the financial risk of a colt not coming back the same or moving forward as an older horse (especially in the case of injury) a lot of them are whisked off to stud before we get to see them past their classic season. This leaves a lot of 'what ifs' left behind, especially if a horse was running near the top of his game at the time of retirement or injury. For the purpose of my research I looked at 2-year-old champions from 1994-2013 of both sexes from the United States and Europ...