Mandella and Injuries

Up next, Mandella and his DVD "On the Muscle". How did those horses fare injury wise over the two year period of the program?

There are Eight horses featured:
Pleasantly Perfect
Kudos
Redattore
Cagney
Brisquette
Ile De France
The Tin Man
Johar
A two year old (unable to recall name)

Out of this group the DVD shows only two significant injuries. Brisquette suffers a splint fracture, is operated on by Dr. Rick Arthur for removal, and thereafter is never heard from, even though a four month recovery is stated.

Kudos suffers an ankle chip either in a 58.4 work before the Arkansas Derby or in winning that race, and is off for some long period, but apparently races again.

Johar appears early in the DVD and then is heard from only almost two years later deadheating the win in the Breeder's Cup Turf on Mandella's four win day. One may presume that Johar suffered an early but serious injury omitted from the DVD but was able to return to racing.

Cagney disappears from the script about 1/3 of the way through. I looked at Equibase to see if he was in fact retired at that point. However, since there were about eight different Cagney's listed in Equibase, I declined to spend $24 to see which was the correct Cagney. I am going to presume this horse suffered some sort of injury or they would have commented on his disappearance somehow.

Ile De France in the middle of the DVD is sent to the farm allegedly because she is having mental problems at the gate. Since she races again a whole year later we may surmise this action is trainer speak that she also suffered some sort of serious injury, though this is uncertain.

The rest of the group makes it through relatively unscathed. There is the humorous tale of Redattore and his frog, and various minor problems. Mandella, the son of a blacksmith, decided to shave off Redattore's frog as it was shedding. Instead of just cutting off the part that was going to come off anyway (the correct procedure), Mandella shaved the frog down to the blood line. Nob commented that this injures the horse and also increases grow back time. Redattore misses a month from the debacle including the Santa Anita Handicap and the Dubai Cup, but, at least this little error makes us see the trainer as human. I enjoyed watching Mandella "rationalize" this in the DVD to his audience and the Brazilian owners who probably lost half a million after their trainer overtrimmed a frog.

Lost in the charisma of Mandella, a show case stable, and his brilliant success in this period: of the eight horses, only three make it all the way through the DVD racing. This is a period, I'm guessing, of about 11 months. Several are hurt relatively early in the year. Two are shown to have serious injuries, one definitely probably did, and two more are believed to have been injured--5 out of 8 if you are counting.

While we have the peril of drawing conclusions from small numbers, it would appear that Mandella's injury rate is consistent with my made up national injury stats that I posted a couple of posts back.

Next up D Wayne Lukas and his injuries, and then, The Heart of the Matter--relating conventional training to injuries.

1/22/07 Day 3: 5 x 3f heats on snow and frozen bumpy ground over half the distance at snappy gallop with 100 yds of each furlong being at about 2m clip under 30 lbs Astride. Then took off the Astride and repeated riderless. 10 heats in all. No tack work.
1/23/07 Day 1: Rest
1/24/07: Day 2: I blew this workout today. First Nob after a lot of protest due to weather shoed one foot. 30 lbs Astride on horse we walked-trot-gallop for 15 min with mostly slow gallop at about 20 sec/f pace and very little walking. Thereafter we tacked up the horse and the neighbor led Nob and the horse for 15 min for first tack work in about 10 days. I blew this because it is way too much to do speed work tomorrow. May surmise from this some minor strain on fetlock, splint and check ligs. I keep forgetting that Burch training is interested in speed instead of volume. We'll have to rest him tomorrow. Pick up from there.