RACE TIMES

This chart shows 10-year averages of winning race times for top-class races of various lengths. Although winning times dropped across the board from the mid19th century to about 1990, they have now stalled. The initial decrease was probably due at least as much to improvements in track conditions as to better breeding or advances in training. Individual performances by Secretariat, American Pharoah and Justify are marked (revised after Cunningham, 1991).