Todd Pletcher and Racing Luck

It's finally starting to look like spring around here, and it's actually possible to imagine some training ahead. We've gone from a sixty day deep freeze almost directly into summer, and, with daylight saving time giving so much more light in our training time, St. Pat's Day around the corner, and all abscesses clearing up, well, can it get any better?

I wanted to comment about the Todd Pletcher phenomenon we're seeing on the Derby trail, and, it is really phenomenal what this trainer has done. I'm unable to remember anything similar.

Of course, it hardly hurts to have good horses supported by big money. However, lots of good horses and money race at this time of year, and so you have to look elsewhere to find reasons for Pletcher's success.

What does he do? By now, based on various record keeping, we know he breezes his horses once a week generally four or five furlongs. Of course, Ken McPeek does that, and we saw last weekend in Louisiana how far that gets you. What you notice about Pletcher's horses is that they seem, unlike the rest of the fields, to be the only one's running at the end. How does this happen?

I think we can extrapolate that the strength down the stretch for Pletcher comes from a couple of things:
1. What the horses do on their off (non-breezing) days--i am surmising long gallops at a crisp pace and at least one two minute lick per week thrown in between the breezes. Has to be. You are unable to get horses as fit as Scat Daddy, Cowtown Cat, and Circular Quay without something similar. (Compare this to the off day "loping" that I saw on the Birdbirdistheword Blog.)
2. The racing strategy. Part of beating the training establishment as it presently exists is to develop a training strategy more intelligent than the run of the mill. Unfortunately, Pletcher has beaten me to the punch. Notice what Pletcher's horses do in almost every race: (a) they are not hustled out of the gate or expended early. They all just gallop along until the 6f pole. (b) the acceleration begins with the change of leads into the back stretch and consists of a slow steady acceleration. Simultaneously, they keep the horse competitive by gradually passing horses. When they hit the turn, again, instead of spurting and quickly building up muscle paralyzing lactic acid, they continue a slow acceleration to gain position, and the horse spurts only after it passes the 3/16 pole, where, having avoided expending itself earlier, it has plenty left. Compare this with the usual of coming out fairly quickly then just maintaining position and spurting into the final turn trying to run all the way to the wire.

So, who'd a thunk it, fit races horses combined with a racing strategy consisting of eminent good sense.

Is Todd Pletcher lucky, good, or simply outsmarting a bunch that is hardly all that difficult to overmatch? Pletcher's training has plenty of holes, and we'll see whether the old cagey one presently preparing for Tampa Bay can find them. More on racing luck coming up.

Our training:
3/12/07 We're back in business. This day Art does a run on his own in the new Astride paddock, riderless with the oldsters after they had breezed. The horses exercised themselves for about 15 minutes as expected when little Art was introduced, galloping and cavorting around the 175 by 100 yd soft grass paddock, here chosen for softness due to the bad feet. Nice first day after a 17 day layoff due to abscesses.