But should we?
Every time we have the Arkle argument on here people come on and say horses are better now, there's more competition, the breed has improved, etc etc, and they compare it with athletics in which record times are constantly being lowered.
If that applied equally to horses we'd be looking for a 215 chaser every year.
Yet we're still looking at horses rated around 170-175 and at the same time people are complaining that ratings on the whole have been artificially inflated in the last 20 years?
Are our breeding programmes merely reinforcing mediocrity?