It isn’t true. Older geldings and pregnant mares, especially, will teach a colt manners.

He’d rather be running.

“Even the not-so-great race horses want to win.”

Concur. I have some experience with horses. Not much. And generally stallions, especially, are just naturally competitive. American Pharoah is a stallion. I’m afraid in our biologically challenged times I need to point out that’s why there’s any discussion of putting him out to stud.

That’s why the key to keeping horses together in a group, and you have more than one stallion, is to have enough room for one to get away if/when they get into a fight and one wants to give up.

It’s also why you don’t want squared off fence lines, where a horse can get boxed in into a corner, but not into a curved fenceline. And if you’re wondering why you’d want to keep horses together in a group, they’re herd animals and they need to learn how to be horses. I will go out onto a limb and say you’ll have more behavior problems with a stallion than with a gelding or a mare if you don’t let him learn how to be a horse.

As Kentucky Packrat notes it’s a dominance thing.

“One of his owners had two horses that were extremely dominant, and could beat anyone. Horse #1 was the faster of the two, but horse #2 would win every single race between the two, solely from being dominant. You could see #1 back down from the lead every single time the two trained against each other.”

They had already worked out the pecking order. When these horses that are complete strangers get together to race they have yet to work it out.

They don’t compete for reasons that make sense to us. They compete for reasons that make sense to them.

There is an amazing picture, taken from the rail, of Secretariat coming down the stretch. You need binoculars to see the horse in second place.

The last Triple Crown winner before American Pharoah was Affirmed, in 1978. If Affirmed had never been born, Alydar would have won the Triple that year, because he came in second in all three races, losing by a length, a neck, and a head. Some say that it was the competition from Alyadar that made Affirmed the winner.

Yet Secretariat won by 31 lengths and set the track record — with no compeition! He just liked to run fast.

I freely admit that seeing American Pharaoh pull away from the pack during the last half brought tears to my eyes. He was awesome!

I’ve seen “live cover” at a horse farm and it was a real education for a young, naive man. The girl who washed down the stud’s large, dangling schlong with a wet rag, for example…

Put’s me in mind of another great horse, the incomparable Secretariat. He exuded confidence. The utter aplomb with which he paraded himself from paddock to starter gate for the third leg of the Triple Crown was as much a spectacle as the race — which he’d won by some 30 lengths.

Reading the pre-race accounts, and listening to the race call, are, both of them, thrills. In an account of him in the paddock gathered together with the other entries, one writer described him as nearly insouciant as to the point of over overconfidence. As a plane, one of those dragging a banner, flew overhead, Secretariat looked and up and watched it. He would have been more nervous in a stud barn. I recall also the race call. When Secretariat took an early lead the color announcer was almost apoplectic that the jockey would allow him the pace. Secretariat’s usual race was to start slow and build up steam like a locomotive — he was built like one. In this race he not only took an early lead but extended with every quarter pole. Perhaps the most magnificent athletic feat I’d ever seen and surely in keeping that, in his case, no anthropomorphizing was necessary – he wanted to win, he felt confident he was going to win. Ooze alpha indeed.

The wonderful thing about AP, I think, is that in addition to being a great champion he is an extremely beautiful horse. In this he reminds one a bit of Secretariat.