Imitating Whittingham?

"It boggles my mind that other trainers do not follow Charlie's lead."

Chris McCarron's quote deserves a little closer look. The same sort of thing appears in Staaden's book "Winning Trainers" concerning Tommie Smith who won Sydney's premiership 33 years in a row with the question being asked why other trainers were failing to duplicate the methods of T.J. Smith.

There is also an interesting blip in Staaden's book when Whittingham was told of T.J. training, which involves three breezes or a race per week that Whittingham would just shake his head in disbelief.

Both of these trainers, Smith and Whittingham, were "conditioners". Though Hovdey's book omits the details as to frequency and speed of gallops, you get the impression of Whittingham relative to his contemporaries as a "hard" as opposed to "soft" trainer, and that he won races simply by having his horses fitter than the opposition. This is exactly the method of T.J. Smith.

And hence the question, were are the imitators?

At some point in the future I'll take a close look at successful trainers, managers, and coaches and what characteristics they share which makes them successful, and by the same token the characteristics of the unsuccessful trainer-coach. For this post I will simply observe that imitating a successful trainer, even if you know exactly what they do, simply hardly ever happens. Why?

We can get a hint at the answer if we widen the view just a little bit and consider coaches and managers of human athletes. How many for example duplicated the efforts or the training of Lombardi, or Don Shula or Tony LaRussa. Even Shula's son was unable to produce what Shula produced, just as Michael Whittingham, Charlie's son was unable to duplicate his father.

Duplicating someone else's successful training methods will get you to a certain point. I'll leave it to a later and larger series of posts as to the sorts of qualities that allow the conditioning coach or trainer to translate the fitness of their athletes to actual winning of the event.

Today's Training:
5/11/07 Fri Day 1 Burch: Off
5/12/07 Sat. Day 2 Burch: slow riderless gallop in paddock for about 7-8 min and ten min. walk under tack.
5/13/07 Sun.: Day 3 Burch: Fast riderless work around the paddock with an older buddy. This was a bit of a blurr because every time they stopped the two would commence fighting and playing, so, there were never any real rests. But, we got in probably 7 or 8 minutes of this stuff with several little short 3/4 speed bursts, which is enough at this point. Walked ten min under tack.