Turkey burger, if you are in fact an "equine scientist" I would wonder insitution you qualified from, as your facts are scientifically bollocks.
Horses are not genetically programmed to race and run. Horses are genetically programmed to stand about a lot, interacting with other horses and doing little else but fart and eat. Horses, "naturally" do not gallop flat out for several miles, unless they perceive themselves to be threatened. It would be a waste of energy where food is in short supply. They do not, "naturally" hurl them selves at or over obstacles unless they are threatened, to do so is dangerous and they simply wouldnt do so.
That they race is a combination of conditioning, being stuffed full of food concentrates, and shut in a stable leading up to a race. A race is nothing but a herd of horses bolting from an imagined predator, the notion that they are being chased reinforced by whipping, which in effect mimics a predator clawing at their arse. The fallers keep running, to stay with the herd as that is the safest place to be.
That the horsey set talk of horses "loving to race" is simply attributing human reasoning to horses, an accusation that infact they generally like to patronise "the ignorant public" with. Its just an attempt to justify the unjustifiable.
Horses are programmed to eat most of their waking hours, as they are herbivores. They are metabolically designed to eat large quantities of vegetation of low calorific value, and to forage and graze constantly. (unlike predators who kill and eat a lot at one time and then may not eat for many hours or days). So in fact, the feeding of racehorses and horse husbandry in general is really pretty unnatural for them and not particularly comfortable. Happy, healthy, "natural" horses, (as horsey types are alway bleating on about "nature") , are also plump, fat if they can manage it, because genetically they are programmed to build up fat stores to see them through hard winters. TBs are in fact painfully under weight.
The notion of early or late backing is in many ways a non issue. The TB is inherantly delicate and subject to all manner of illness, whether backed late or early. They are chronically inbred. It wouldnt be such a bad thing if the demise of racing brought about the end of the breed,or at least an introduction of a wider gene pool. You talk of the loss of "the work done " on the breed over centuries.
The "work done" has produced a breed which is inbred beyond belief, to produce physical traits which lend themselves to speed. Even when they dont break bones falling, they are greatly subject to spontaneous stress fractures and general lameness,because they have been bred for slim legs and small feet. Such legs and feet are inherantly unsuitable for they weight of animal they have to carry. Stocky legs and big feet do not produce a fast horse. They do not however produce a sound horse.
Many TB suffer heart attacks during or after races. Not just because of over exertion, but again because extreme in breeding has produced hearts and lungs which are relatively too large for the petite rib cage. The heart and lungs expand when the horse is flat out, with not enough room in the chest cavity, putting the cardiovascular system under extreme duress, leading to heart failure and breathing problems. This should not happen in young healthy animals, but again is blythly ingnored by the horsey world.
A huge number a foals are destroyed, because a large number of them are born with birth defects, yet again, yada yada yada,,,due to extreme in breeding. It continues, because at some point, a lucky shake of the chromosomes might procuce a champion, the other little carcasses born too ill to live, are disposable
I could go on and on about horses unfortunate enough to be thoroughbreds.
I despise so called horse lovers who justify systematic animal abuse in the name of sport, be it racing ,eventing, show jumping, dressage. Competitive sport is a wholly human construct, yet morons think they can justify it saying "horses love to compete, they love to win, they love the applause, ........" Bollocks, bollock, bollock bollocks. None of that is part of horse biology and does exist in the equine psychy, because there is no evolutionary reason for it to do so.
They do it because as herd animals, they are given to be cooperative, they do it because they have been subjected to brutal and extreme training. They do it because they dont know anything else. They do it because they have no choice.
Grotesque.
The sport of kings?