It should never be banned. The rules need to change. These horses are raced too early in their development. For instance, the Breeders Cup is a debutante race for thoroughbreds and they race as 2 year olds. Considering that horses can live to over 30 years old, these are indeed juveniles, and the Breeders Cup even calls these races the juvenile races.

Also consider that the official birthday of every registered thoroughbred is January 1, many of these "2 year olds" are not even a full 2 years.

And, continue to consider that thoroughbreds are usually around 15-17 hands in height. They are a large breed. The larger the breed, the more slowly they mature.

Also, these 2 year olds need to have some intense training before they even make it into the Breeders Cup. This is like making a 3 or 4 year old kid go into Olympic-type training for running track.

These colts and fillies are too young and too underdeveloped to have that kind of stress on their still-developing bones.

IMO, at least 3 years should be added to the minimum age at which a thoroughbred racer can be debuted.

As most thoroughbreds I have known have been track rejects (thank goodness), they generally reach their prime anywhere from 8 years on up to 15-16 years old in the show rings (jumping, hunter class, dressage, eventing). Jumping, in particular, puts more stress on the horses' bones than racing, yet these show horses end up living quite long and healthy lives. And, many of them did not show racing promise at an early enough age so they were lucky to get rejected.

Taking all this into consideration, I argue that we need to give these youngsters more time to grow up and develop more bone mass, before we beat their young bones on the track.

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