Scientists may have settled a long-standing debate in horse racing: Are thoroughbreds still getting faster, or have they reached their maximum speed? Past studies examining this question concluded that racehorses have hit their biological speed limit, but researchers from Exeter University in the United Kingdom say those findings were based on data that didn’t tell the entire story. And although American Pharaoh wouldn’t stand a chance racing against 1973’s Triple Crown winner Secretariat, a new analysis of race times from 1850 to 2012 shows that racehorses, on average, are getting faster every year.
In the latest analysis, scientists wanted to fill gaps they believe past studies failed to address. For one, the studies only analyzed winning times of a relatively small number of elite middle- and long-distance races. Other studies also didn’t factor in outside environmental variations, such as ground softness. So researchers started by building a mathematical model to ...
