In Horse Racing, Imagine If...

On tomorrow's Blood Horse cover page we have a photo of Mr. and Mrs. Joe Schmo with one arm around each other and their remaining talons held aloft clutching a fist full of thousand dollar bills, with the following caption: "Recent Beulah Park Sale Topping Buyers Turn A Profit"

Then we turn to the full article concerning the Schmo's which includes several large color photos of Joe and Mary and their four purchases from the 2006 sale happily chewing at their green hay nets in their stalls at Aqueduct. The article in fact uses the Schmo's merely as an example of a sudden and exciting new phenomenon hitting racing: owners are actually making money! The new Blood Horse Stats for the year 2006 just past show that 63.2% of all yearling auction buyers for the year 2004 turned a net profit of more than $10,000.00 for the year 2006. Moreover, a full 17% of these buyers earned over $75,000.00 net profit form their racing operations alone.

Indeed, what is the world coming to with a scenario described above.

Well, you surmise, this does require a rather wild imagination. Particularly in view of the discouraging posts of late at the Pedigree Forum where one C.A. Michael and Dray 33 have skillfully argued over which type of sale--yearling or two year old--produces the bigger financial disaster.

Without recounting the stats that have been posted at Pedigree Forum, let's just ask the question whether it is possible for anyone other than those struck by blind, dumb luck to expect auction purchases or any other racehorse to actually earn money. Can I realistically go to Keenland next fall and buy something that will act on my pocket book in other ways than completely depleting it of all reserves?

I'm very much an optimist despite extraordinarily gloomy statistics. I believe you can stay afloat financially in the game of horse racing for a very basic reason that it's fairly easy in this game to be the exception to the rule. Please let me explain.

Almost every horse loses money because they all get hurt, and most of them quickly. Yes, there you have it. It's other than that most horses are unable to run, or race or win. Fact is, most of them, handled correctly (in the present environment) would earn net money. But the truth is, and this is what the stats show, almost every horse loses money, and it hardly takes much off a look at the stats to see that the reason for money losing is injury.

Since I am asserting on this blog that injuries are unnecessary, that your horse can earn money, that you can keep it racing, I first have to deal with the real world statistics which suggest otherwise.

To do this we have to identify the cause of injuries. And, just to open it up, it's such a broad, complex topic I almost hesitate to dive in. The difficulty of relating cause to effect here can perhaps most easily be seen by the obvious that every injury has it's own cause, and that "causation" by definition can involve anything from micro to macro, specific to general, science to philosophy, and numerous other variations.

First question perhaps is, what do we mean in horse racing by the term "injury" and then what are we talking about in terms of "cause".

Today's training:
3/20/07 Day 2 Burch: 10 min. tack walk + 6-7 m riderless slow gallop.
3/21/07 Day 3 Burch: 6-7 riderless sprints at :13.5 (estimated) 1f each in Astride Paddock.
A strengthening workout after layoff.
3/22/07 Day 1 Burch: Off. I'm hesitating even sticking my neck out to look at the rain gage. it will be other than pretty.