Traits Of A Winner?

Carl Nafzger and Francis Genter after Unbridled won the 1990 Derby. The 93 year old Ms. Genter had been in racing most of her life, but this was the first time she won the Derby. Ms. Genter died a few months later. Who ever snapped this photo should be in the photo hall of fame.

About six months ago I tossed Carl Nafzger's book "Traits of a Winner". I'm other than a collector, but, I'd had this book on my shelf since I read it around 2000. Figured I'd internalized sufficiently the training of Unbridled. It's a good book, but mediocre. I praised Nafzger elsewhere for putting it all together. He is after all a horse trainer instead of an author.

"Traits of a Winner" describes fairly closely the training of Unbridled. The obliviousness of conventional trainers such as the Nafzger of the time is illustrated by such comments in the book--and I'm quoting from memory--as "I gave Unbridled a series of strong two mile gallops". Such statements really say very little, though we get the idea Nafzger felt he was training Unbridled harder than he did his other horses. And, indeed he was, for Nafzger in the book makes a big bfd as to how you are unable to train lesser horses as hard as he trained Unbridled. Suffice to say though that the book fails at specifics, such as how frequent were the two mile gallops, the breezes, the length, the speed, etc.--the usual lack of detail and info, it's just unimportant to these sorts.

However, my feeling is that the Nafzger of 2007 has progressed way beyond the training of Unbridled. In the training of Street Sense we see more the echos of Charlie Wittingham than Nafzger in 1990 struggling to get beyond his own soft conventional training background with Unbridled.

While finding out what these trainers do with their horses is as usual like pulling teeth, enough came out about the training of Street Sense that you can put it mostly together. Everybody had privy to the published works, but, what was Nafzger doing with the horse between breezes and races? Absent daily reports (and one does wonder--where is our racing press on what these athletes are doing in their day to day training), you can put it completely together just with what Nafzger did with Street Sense this last week.

Of course there was the Tuesday breeze in about 1:01 with the clocker's comments that Street Sense crossed the finish line hugging the rail and continued right on to where he was timed for a 1:42 mile on the backstretch. Did Nafzger let up on the horse after this breeze? On another day--and this must have referred to before May 1--there was Street Sense out galloping around, and then he went around again--i.e. a two mile gallop.

This was followed by Steve Haskin's Blood Horse column on Friday, May 4 that Street Sense was out this morning galloping two miles through the mud and that he "steamrolled over it". Now, this must have been in error. Nafzger did not steamroll his horse two miles in the mud one day before the Derby, so this gallop must have happened Thursday morning, perfect timing with 56 hours to the Derby--plenty of recovery for this from the Tuesday breeze and a superb additional conditioning work prior to the Derby.

Then the Derby itself. What a wonder that the entire talented field except one all but dies at the quarter pole with the sole horse trained for the distance running by them like they were tied to a post. Hard Spun did what you'd expect off that nice :57 and change breeze on Monday, if only his trainer like Nafzger had the prescience to understand the Derby distance. You feel a bit sorry for Hard Spun and Stormello and all the rest, and wonder what they might have done had they been in Nafzger's barn.

But, the true test of Nafzger is yet to come. Hopefully somebody will deign to publish what Street Sense does on the track in the next month. Will Nafzger put him in a closet as was done with Brother Derek next year. Will Nafzger be afraid to breeze the horse, as happened with Barbaro? We got a clue today when Street Sense took to the track. It should be interesting!