The role of modern-day sulkies in record-settingspeed marks
by Brett Sturman
In July, I wrote a column documenting how 2-year-old’s have never been faster in the earliest part of their careers. Now, it can be said that 2-year-olds have never been faster, period.
As once impossible speed marks continue to become routine, the fastest 2-year-old mile in history was established two Thursday’s ago at Hoosier Park on Oct. 2 when the 2-year-old gelding named Odds On Mr Mamba won an Indiana Sire Stakes division in a time of 1:47.4. Odds On Mr Mamba is an Odds On Racing homebred by Odds On Equuleus; a horse whose talent I’d say was overshadowed early in his racing career by Captaintreacherous, though is probably most remembered for his infamous disqualification from The Red Mile in a 2012 Bluegrass division.
From 96 Odds On Equuleus registered foals to date, Odds On Mr Mamba is only the second one to ever break 1:50 (Trick Light being the other, with a 1:49.3 mark as a 6-year-old). Possibly in part a freak exception to breeding norms, the lower hanging fruit aspect is that of modern race equipment. As is the case with most record performances today, Odds On Mr Mamba was being driven with the UFO Eclipse race bike. In fact, most Breeders Crowns are won with UFO bikes, and almost every top driver is a UFO client owning their own race bikes.
To understand the obvious question as to what’s the relationship between continual record times and today’s race bike design, it’s worth first putting it into historical context. Tim Betts is CEO and a managing partner at UFO Racing along with a team that consists of brother and trainer Scott Betts, Collette Waldron, and catch driver Drew Monti, and he’s experienced the transformation of sulkies first-hand through the years.
“If you look historically at the period of time prior to 15 years there were a couple of the aluminum and steel model race bikes that were some of the popular ones out there,” Tim said. “That was the Tel Star’s and the Jerald’s and the Blackjack’s, and those were sort of the first evolution from the wooden bikes from 20 and 30 years ago. The big evolution from there was the UFO Galaxy, which was the model that kind of launched the company, and then from there we developed the UFO2 Eclipse.”
Providing a technical dive into the UFO technology, Tim spoke to a shift in a somewhat narrower fork/hub assembly which tightens the profile without compromising wheel clearances, and improvements in cleaner and smoother quick-hitch hardware, better wheel true/round tolerances, and consistent quality control so bikes track straighter under load.
“Drivers tell us the bike just sits different,” Tim said. “We routinely hear how it stays planted into the turn and then comes off the bend cleaner with less wobble or steering needed, which builds confidence to drive more aggressively.”
Echoing those sentiments is Monti, one of the sports younger catch drivers who last year reached $20 million in career earnings.
“From the time I came into the game and started driving, there were still bikes out there that just didn’t really serve as much purpose in terms of being aerodynamic, how a horse travels over the track, what is the most advantageous weight, material, shape, and the whole thing,” Monti said. “Today, drivers own their own bikes, so you need a bike that’s going to fit 95 per cent of the horses, and obviously there can be custom sizes too, but what we’ve accomplished is something in our Eclipse model that is universal for as many horses as it can be.”
As the Eclipse model builds from its Galaxy model predecessor, which has continued to make the bikes ride a track better and make the horses more efficient in their stride which equates in part to faster times, Tim observed that in the past six to seven years there hasn’t been anything revolutionary to industry design changes that came before. Faster times being seen all the time could be the result of small efficiencies that add up over the course of a mile.
“My personal thought as to how equipment — the race bikes — contributes to it is them being built more efficiently than they’ve ever been,” Tim said. “Horses who have high levels of speed are able to carry their speed farther now because there is less drag on the bike – whether it be aerodynamic or mechanical drag due to the design of the bike. It allows let’s say a trotter who the fastest he could possibly go eight years ago was in 1:57 – maybe now that same horse can go in 1:56 or 1:55 due to the efficiencies of the race bike.
“The driving style plays into that also. Guys, especially now with some of these tracks that are front favoring, they can go to the half mile in crazy times that you never saw before, and horses just don’t get as tired as they used to. And I think that the efficient bikes help do that.”
To me, it seems that the faster-than-ever times far outpace how fast the breeding could evolve, but Tim gives examples as to where the breeding impact is still seen.
“It’s multifaceted,” said Tim, who has been increasingly involved in that part of the sport over the past 15 years. “I do think there have been some pedigree differences you can see in the last 10-15 years with 2-year-old trotters, with the quality, and how good they are. If you go to a sale and buy one, they’re so much easier now versus what they were to train prior to the Muscle Hill era – or even the Cantab Hall era. The difference is unbelievable. Now, these horses can trot a quarter in 30 seconds the first day you put a harness on them, whereas before you had horses that couldn’t trot 30 seconds at all anytime as a 2-year-old prior to that.”
