A Short Detour-More, Why Do They Win?

*@**F##* As I stumble badly wounded again off the internet chess boards and onto this blog. It is frustrating when "they're just better". What can you do? You're buzzing along winning a few games, the rating goes up, the head increases a couple of sizes, and along comes some nameless icon from the Republic of Germany, and, oops, despite my best all out effort, four more in the loss column. It is disgusting!

Chess is a pure sport, mental instead of physical, but, you learn a lot about competition playing chess, and in particular the rules and laws that govern competition. When you play hundreds of one minute games as I do, you start to recognize patterns. Stuff just happens in a certain way. Competitive qualities such as momentum, intimidation, relative speed of the game as it pertains to skill, game strategies at different levels of play, mindset as it varies with success or failure, concentration and the ability to do so under different conditions, rest and how lack of it causes involuntary micro seconds of lapses of attention, and, most important, comparative characteristics of good vs. average vs. bad players.

Transfer all that to horse racing and you're talking about trainer, horse, and jockey. In the last post I made the bald statement that conventional training is specifically "non-competitive", but, immediately realized that while the blog had sorted through all the ways training might be evaluated or judged and then came up with the "preserve and enhance" standard to look at a program, I have yet to deal with performance specifics--those attributes that cause the horse to win. We need to identify those first before we can say whether a certain protocol is beneficial.

I referred to some of these in the last post, and now a few more:

The next one might be those rules of competition referred to above and their observance for the benefit of the horse. This will be discussed extensively at a later time.

Next, while RR tires of it a bit, at the track you hear the old refrain from conventional trainers--that horse has "heart" or, this other horse has more class. What are "class" and "heart" and how do they help horses win? I will deal with these old wive's tales extensively at a later date, but, for now, the answer simply is in the negative. Horses run faster than their buddies for other reasons besides class and heart. As just some suggestion of the error in these beliefs consider that the horse running at the front may actually be the horse with the least courage. The lions chasing the herd, after all, are to the rear of the pack. Is it conceivable that these races are being won by the biggest chicken in the field?

(Will post the views of a brilliant trainer on this issue later.)

Does "physical conditioning" have anything to do with racehorse performance? Yes, you say? RR observes that such a statement might be big news to a number of trainers at the several race track this stable has frequented. The names of the guilty shall be protected. Though things are changing somewhat, there is in my area such a preponderance of lack of track work to the extent one might observe that these trainers fail to see any benefit to exercising their horses at all.

For the present I will simply state the RR belief that, yes, there is a significant relationship between the excercise program and the racing despite what you see at most of the tracks in this country. The size of this relationship in the RR mind can be determined by noting that physical conditioning of race horses is the very subject of this blog.

Next post, I'll summarize my views on what elements create racing success, then, on to Conventional Training, The Bad.

Today's report:
1/11/07 Rest and tack work
1/12/07 Fast riderless galloping around partially frozen paddock. Several short near full speed bursts for about 10 min. Trainer to "busy" for tack work, and, we've had a talk with him about that.
1/13/07 Today was a pleasant surprise. Though the thermometer at training time hovered at 18 degrees, it seemed warmer, and just enough ice stuff fell in the pastures to flatten out the bumps. Me and the neighbor chased the herd through about 7 or 8 min. of pasture runs. There were several fast 2f bursts with our Art, as youngsters are prone to do, weaving in and out of the pack till he was in front. Again, the lions are in the back. The 14th or 15th tack session regressed a bit. The neighbor led the horse, Nob on, but the horse fought the bit the whole way. Nob did report that in this third extensive session the horse does now completely respond to the halt command, and that's progress.