Luck Of the Irish

Finally a post on that subject that never escapes me, and St. Pat's a good day for it. Pictured, a pot of Irish gold, and may it one day sit on your mantle piece.

Actually, just for a change I'd like to have a little of the Todd Pletcher karma rub off on my stable. You know what I mean! It's having Circular Quay, Cow town Cat, and Scat Daddy in the same shedrow with Ravel and Any Given Saturday in reserve, each to race next week, against either of a bunch of training idiots or some others that, well, best of luck to you, with horses in less than top form. Nice to run against horses where Doug O'Neill is cogitating post race "well, I should have had him a little tighter (Liquidity). That's the good luck for St. Pat's Day.

But, seriously, what good is anything one observes, writes about, or does with horses unless we take into account the impact of luck. And just to save you having to look up the term on Wikepedia, we're talking here about the unexpected, happenings beyond our control, or the influence of almighty, or whatever. I'd give you a list of my racing luck over the years, but, you already know it's a long list and calamitous. One thing I believe every horse person would agree too, Pletcher included, whatever sort of luck you may expect in horse racing it's certain to operate along the lines of Murphy's Law.

Now, since this is a training blog, please know that I am doing here other than rambling along about St. Patrick's Day, which is a day on which I always recall that great filly at Ak Sar Ben in the mid eighties trained by Herb Riecken, a Dr. Stat chestnut filly named St. Paddy's Day. Wonder whatever happened to St. Paddy's Day, and what she might have produced for Riecken down the road?

In thoroughbred training we do have to factor in the concept of "luck". But, this would be a different sort of luck than would be experienced by your average lay person. We have in horse racing a breed and variety of luck that I've never seen elsewhere in the rest of my existence. It's simply that the most amazing things happen, and they happen all the time.

Would it be possible, for example, to go out (true story) and buy four new tires for your horse trailer for a 17 hour mare trip to Texas, load your mares and their foals on at 7 a.m. the next morning, and walk around the trailer and see one of the new tires as flat... But, then, just as you're changing the tire the skys open and it starts thundering, lightening raining like cows pissing on concrete and foals bouncing off the trailer walls. Those that in such a situation would stoically commence changing the tire without raising a hair getting battered with raindrops the size of machine gun bullets understand racing luck.

In horses, "good luck is what happens when bad luck could have been worse" is the definition of good luck that I've developed over the years. And so, when an untoward event happens in this business, which it will as sure as the sun rises, I'm generally happy, thrilled, ecstatic since we know that whatever it was, it could have been worse.

Training:
3/14/07: Day 1: light tack work.
3/15/07: Day 2: 15 min. riderless slow gallop pasture romping.
3/16/07: Off--we'll commence early tomorrow. giving an extra 12 hrs off to allow final tendon healing after slight heat two days ago. Day 3 speed work in the morning.