Mandella's Exercise Prescriptions

With the best of intentions one day after winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, i left the office at 4 p.m. for the farm to find Y without a left front shoe. Insufficient light to tack it back on before dark.

Horses can run in the mud without shoes, but, experience is that they also bruise their feet running in mud. So, chance a bruise or worse an abscess, or do nothing was the choice today. Decision was nothing, and thus now three days of rest, and the stream of smoke emanating from the RR ears over the weather grows thicker still. Put it in positive spin, more time for those immature cartilages to absorb the training time and develop.

I have already spoken to my farrier, Mr. Nob. I reminded Nob we have lost three shoes in the last three weeks, and that his reputation for never losing shoes in the mud is in serious jeapardy. Nob, had several excuses, of course; everything but that he did a lousy job. He promised he would in the morning ignore the fidgety yearling jumping around all over the place during shoeing and make sure the shoe fit flush this time.

Now, on to Mandella, and his exercise prescriptions. What they are exactly is only a guess. As with any coach, trainer, manager in any sport, unless they tell us, we guess from circumstantial evidence what they do with their athletes. Ross Staaden in his book "Winning Trainers" which contains a nice feature on D. Wayne Lukas, notes Lukas confided everything about his shedrow except the exercise prescriptions stating (in the height of the Lukas career) that his exercise program is a guarded secret. (With humor I noted the opening of "On the Muscle" showing Lukas and son side by side ponying horses.)

So, Staaden was forced to provide how Lukas trains from a few tidbits of info made available and a few days observation. Lucas (like Mandella in the DVD), made a bit of a bfd with Staaden about his exercise log (before the training question came up), and showed Staaden a couple of pages, which Staaden apparently either copied or wrote down. From the one or two page log and his observations Staaden attempted to paste together how Lukas exercises his horses.

With Mandella its quite similar. The three hour DVD is without explanation of the frequency or length of breezes, gallops, rest periods etc. But, there are a few hints. I enlarged the little clip of Mandella's exercise log and noticed lots of G (for "gallop") many on consecutive days. I heard Mandella promising Pleasantly Perfect five days rest if he won the Pacific Classic (came in 4th.). And, I observed the breezes and times on the tape being anywhere from 7f to 3f. Mandella considered .35s good, but 58 and change way too fast ("I'd be mad if it were closer to the race, and i'm still a little mad two weeks out."). The 7f breezes seemed to be run at a steady about 12.5 sec/f.

I'm somewhat aware of Mandella breezes from my handicapper days. But I posted the question on the Derby Trails Forum which contains several handicappers, as to how frequently Mandella breezes horses now days, and the answer came back "every six days" and that "most trainers (presumably on the west coast) gallop their horses "daily". This would comport fairly closely to my own conclusions about Mandella.

So, what can we presume Mandella does? I think his horses slow gallop probably 4 to 5 days a week on most weeks and breeze once a week. It's my observation that Mandella (unlike e.g. Frankel) will skip some weeks breezing a horse. Nor do I believe it causes great consternation to the Mandella soul to rest a horse three days or five or more. The distances of the slow gallops is unknown, and I'll presume they are a mile to mile and a half. Nothing I saw would make me believe Mandella gallops farther. The DVD is without regular two minute lick gallops, and devoid of any mention that Mandella puts a lot of importance into what he does on his gallop days. He does it. And, I think we are left with that.

Surmise Mandella horses exercise at one half the volume and frequency, and at less speed than the horse "Groovin' Wind" from the shedrow of yet to be nominated to the Hall of Fame trainer RR. What all this means, how to put it together, and conclusions, on the next post.

Wed. 12/20/06 Rest.
Thurs. 12/21/06 Rest
Friday 12/22/06 Rest. Mud and rain have interrupted training for the last three days.