Can Kiaran McLaughlin Train?

My personal contempt of this roly poly, personally appealing Irishman as a horse trainer I've expressed repeatedly including several times on the blog. And, yet, unknown. About trainers and training we have incomplete information and draw conclusions from sporadic circumstantial evidence. Does a soft conventional trainer with a talented, successful horse deserve to recognition as a "good" trainer? Well, at times, perhaps.

In McLaughlin we have a fat, stubby, sawed-off non-athlete with some obvious intelligence and apparently multiple health problems in the ridiculous position of training horses for the sheiks. What is a fellow without the knowledge or motivation to take care of himself physically doing training race horses?

McLaughlin's example to me speaks of the state of training racehorses generally. The sport is infused with horse people instead of legitimate coaches, managers, trainers or exercise physiologists. To illustrate the point, how many of these people understand that, yes, it is possible to move a great athletes such as Invasor or Discreet Cat forward by increasing the length and speed of their breezing and galloping. Very few is probably the correct answer, though I'm suspecting we're starting to see this sort of thing from a couple of the noted trainers, including Nafzger, who I notice is giving Street Sense immediate works after his race as opposed to waiting three weeks like most of them.

In the case of McGlaughlin we have a fellow despite having numerous highly touted horses to train has accomplished almost nothing with them until Invasor. We also have the fact that basically Invasor's accomplishment has come in the wake of a very weak crop of older horses last year, and by the standard of most years a substandard field in the Breeder's Cup, as it turned out.

So, I'll be tuning in this weekend for the Dubai Cup. If McGlaughlin wins it, I'm prepared to eat major crow as this race stacks up as one of the better in recent memory. Suspect though the crow will wait for another day, and I look for Premium Tap or one of the non-Arab horses to run by Invasor and Discreet Cat in the stretch.

Today's training:
Wed. 3/28/07: Day 3: 5x2f riderless sprints at less than full speed on hard ground. 10 min under tack.
Thurs. 3/29/07: Day 1: 15 min. walking under tack. The first walk in a circle.
Friday. 3/30/07: Rained out. 4th rain day out of six though the prior rains were light, today a monsoon, and tomorrow too, I guess. terrible for the oldsters we're trying to get ready for the track. for the little guy, he was acting a bit worn, so, ok. and, he really is little. I can see them checking now in May 2008--when did the last 650 lbs horse win the Derby.