A Word About Baffert, Frankel, and Dirt Road to the Derby

We'd be remiss to generalize about West Coast training without mentioning Baffert and Frankel.

As everyone else, I've watched Baffert come up and drew a few conclusions about what he does. But, what I really know these days about Baffert comes from his book "Dirt Road to the Derby."

The book left a lasting impression as I still wonder what a fellow whose family keeps chickens in little cages for their eggs is doing training animals. Leave that one to PETA for now.

For those who have yet to read the book, it is the story of Baffert's path, the smoozing with Pegram, socializing, money spending, but good family man , with an occasional horse story thrown in.

While the Book is devoid enough of the horse side of the Baffert tale to the point one wonders if this guy ever goes to the barn, Baffert throws in just enough accounts and anecdotes of specific horses and races that what comes across is that Baffert ratchets up his training for big races. There is mention, e.g. of two mile gallops for Silver Charm and faster more tightly spaced breezes prior to a couple of big races, and the trainer sweating bullets wondering if he'd done enough.

When you combine the above with that unbelievable list of Baffert stakes winners listed at the end of the book--horse after horse for a 20+ year period--we may conclude to take this trainer seriously for any big race. Probably, Baffert coasts along normally in similar manner to Lucas with less sports IQ, but, Baffert has just enough intuitive sense of physiology to understand he must work a horse for a big race. RR is unsure that Lukas has that same sense. There is a difference between sports IQ and understanding exercise physiology.

Bobby Frankel in my handicapping days was my favorite trainer. There was in the 1980s nothing more consistent than betting on a Frankel horse. If you read the Hollywood/Santa Anita Section of the Form, there were in that time only two or three trainers in the country who consistently breezed their horses. The names were Stute, Wittingham and Frankel. I know this about Frankel, though he seems to be getting lazy lately: once a week like clockwork all Frankel horses breeze 4f usually at :48 or faster. Presumably such a trainer would gallop his horses regularly, and as such, against the rest of the training ilk, Frankel always had the fittest if not the fastest horse except against Wittingham or Stute. Always sure to be "in themoney"! Duh...let's see, Frankel breezes faster and more often. I'm trusting the reader to see the correlation.

Now, on to the real subject of the day, today's training of Y.

Wed. 12/27/06: 10 min light riderless trot-gallop. bellied.

Thurs. 12/28/06: 7 min. riderless gallop with some 2m lick bursts, aborted due to shoulder kick. Then, under tack horse refused to move.

Fri. 12/29/06: We were to rest today till i found out Lake Okachobee would fall on us the next two days. Continuous rain from this evening to Sunday Afternoon. Fast twitch work required. Then we can survive without too much damage two or three days off.

1. After warm up, 6 riderless 3f heats at snappy gallop with two or three 2mlick bursts thrown in. Next to last heat 1/2f at 85% speed. Last heat was 1.5f with 1/2f at near max speed--that's the fast twitch.

2. Then, sixth day under tack--try to coax horse into walking today. Remind reader that we did zero ground work with this horse prior to mounting. Horse is neither bridle or bitwise and I'm teaching him rider aids while on. For those that waste time with ground work consider the following--and this is other than to say that ground work is without benefits, I'm simply saying it's unnecessary. Mounting block was placed 60 feet from other horses eating alfalfa cubes off ground. Y was placed by the mounting block pointed in direction of his buddies. I got on at the belly, tapped him hard with the whip and he spurted toward his friend. When we got there I got off. We repeated at the belly. Third time I got on and tapped him. This time he veers off to the right drifting toward rubbing me off on a fence post. I jumped off. On the second try we walked straight to the herd. Three more times, and voila, we're walking under tack. A historic day!