More On Mandella

On a foggy, overcast morning Accuweather reports 1.83 inches of rain in the last 24 hrs. RR is seeing smoke as always, in bad weather. They're training today at Bay Meadows. We, however, though thankful for unseasonal temps, will shut down till Friday morning in deference to a sea of mud. Hopefully we'll get three full workouts before Christmas.

The smiling fellow is Richard Mandella, whom i became aware of in my handicapping days in the mid 1980s. He's a noted trainer at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park, the son of a blacksmith and father of a trainer. Like P. Burch, it's a racing family.

Last post I summarily rejected the term "horsemanship" to describe race training, and also broke down elements of training as hopefully most would agree. I'll advocate that differences between trainers primarily involves differences in emphasis, and with these basics out of the way, i'll go ahead and describe Mandella's training and how it applies to our Y.

May we further agree after seeing "On the Muscle" that this barn carries animal husbandry to a very high level. Iv'e seen a few shedrows in my time. It's other than rocket science, but, this one is special. Let us say that Mandella like, by all apparent accounts, Lukas, Baffert, McGaughey, probably O'Neil, and much as I hate to include them Zito, Pletcher, et al, perform highly "adequate" care for their equine charges. That's part of conventional training. I always say if these guys and gals would gallop their horses as much as they bathe them, they'd have something.

Please note I never observed either in the DVD or otherwise what I would consider sophisticated or complex care of horses observing all the latest stuff. We were without any shots of Mandella studying his exercise physiology, the latest texts on nutrition, browsing the farrier forums, reading "Muscle and Fitness" for the latest in sports supplementation, or even studying university equine research. In the DVD Mandella is the instructor instead of the pupil, and what he's teaching goes back to P. Burch with a few variations. Nothing new in conventional training. Its pretty much in terms of horse care a recycling of the same old stuff. But the husbandry is done well and a source of pride for these sorts of trainers, much more so, in my opinion than their exercise programs.***

I'll leave it at that for this post, and next discuss what Mandella does on the track.

Thurs. 12/21/06 A combo of mud and busy day at work, make this the second rest day in a row. A day wasted, I'm afraid.

***please note the unusual breakout of creativity by these sorts from Doug Hendricks who put some avant garde polyurethane shoes on Brother Derek for that nice sprint in the Breeder's Cup Classic.