Conventional Training And The Numbers Game

Baseball players at Surprise, Arizona currently audition for the 25 man roster of the Kansas City Royals under the watchful tutelage of the sage Buddy Bell. Mr. Bell, the manager of the Royals, a man who has difficulty completing a sentence, has been employed by the Royals to conduct the same sort of tryouts noted in the last post as done by T.J. Smith with horses. The aim is to put the best players on the field.

So, from a competitive aspect, is the numbers games as played by the big public trainers necessarily a bad thing? Well, as I noted last post, it might be, if it is your horse they are playing with.

For several reasons. First, the relation between a trainer and his horse and the trainer and his owner exceeds in both the fiduciary and the trust sense that of baseball manager to his players. Between horse trainer and owner there is a contract, written or verbal and thus a stated or implied duty, whichever you prefer, that the trainer will train your horse. The horse, in other words, makes the team by entry of the parties into the training contract. It would be highly unusual for the trainer- owner contract to indicate that the purpose of the transaction was merely for a tryout or worse, to run the horses as a group in an injury threatening manner to see which survive.

So, we have public trainer Mr. X, the leading trainer at track Y for the past two years having access to numerous horses due to a well deserved reputation for winning races. Is this fellow in breach of contract with his owners for running the sort of operation that T.J. Smith was accused of in the prior post by Malcom Johnson his stable rider of conducting training methods knowing they might injure horses because he has replacements for those that get hurt.

For openers on this one, I have yet to hear any trainer admit that they play the numbers game. Let's say that instead of playing the numbers intentionally, better trainers are merely placed in that position by their own popularity. They never train to hurt a horse. Rather, it just so happens if a horse would be injured there is a replacement. I had noted earlier that public trainers have their methods of dealing with injuries, and having "available replacements or new recruits" is such a method.

The problem with all of the above as I see it, the numbers game by trainers interested more in training for themselves than training for you permits the trainer to dilute the safety of their training protocol due to numbers. In other words, they care less than you would if your horse get's hurt, and they will do less to prevent injury than you would.

Of course, if you're an owner who's ok with your trainer playing the numbers game, then best of luck to you. Unfortunately, I have to report that your odds of success in this endeavor will be low. Sure, Baffert, Lukas, and in these days Pletcher can point to clients who made money, for a while. However, over the long haul I am bold enough to say that almost none of them make money. In the end, employing a trainer with these methods, all of them lose their shirt, even Eugene Klein who was a little slow, but finally figured it out quite a few millions to the worse.

But, for those who are other than ok with the numbers game, what can you do. I'll leave that for another time, but, for now, can we say Murray Johnson, Dr. William Reed, and Perfect Drift.

Training:
2/27/07 Abscess report: i'm rushing to finish this. Brief report. Good news, I guess. Nob today confirmed that the problem suffered Friday by Art is an abscess or possibly a bruise currently located at the quarters but in near the commisure of the frog. Since it was only 24 hours since the horse became lame again, Nob declined presently to remove much sole to discover the abscess--we wait 48 hour to let the abcess develop and lower itself into the sole before we start digging for it. Nob trimmed off a little sole just to see if it would pop. He failed to find it, and so applied epsom salt paste to the hoof and put it in a rubber boot overnight. This resolves an abscess about 50% of the time. more later.