Bill O'Gorman
I want to post on a couple of books I just read while they're on my mind, and then back to warming up. Click on photos to enlarge.
Paddy O'Gorman
Bill O'Gorman
This is the only training book written by the trainer without a ghost writer. O'Gorman details his 30 year stable and his great record for two year old winners some with 11 to 16 wins as two year olds. This is a training book written to join a legacy begun in the 1800s on thoroughbred race training.
Some highlights:
1. "the training plan was formulated on the assumption that the weather remains reasonable...unfortunately that is most unlikely always to be true...which necessitates minor improvisations." Really!
2. O'Gorman trains to sell. Took a little off the bloom off it for me. Economic necessity, he claims.
3. Gorman complains: "The frequent examples of horses that win having reportedly done no work at all are difficult to explain..." Read that one again. Interesting coming from a trainer.
4. Nothing wrong with "trying" the yearlings before Xmas.
5. "The enormous stables that have become the norm merely reflect the current defeatist attitude that this is purely a numbers game and one cannot hope to do other than hemorrhage money. As long as it's someone else's money the prevailing system does have certain attractions for a trainer."
6. "Most trainers should carry a Goverment Health Warning".
7. O'Gorman summarized: "the best protection we can afford our investment is a fairly rigorous training regimen. This need not necessarily be the extreme and precise interval training advocated in some quarters. These systems seem far too complex to implement properly in a working racing stable, and in any event, they may not be necessary for optimum results. What we will attempt to practise may involve an overall workload similar to that practiced in Newmarket beween the wars, although the detail may differ markedly."
8. "Runners should be ridden out for a trot the day after the race..."
O'Gorman details every aspect of his stable and husbandry. He's intelligent and educated, though maybe he hits a few too many verbose dead ends throughout the book for my taste. Anyone familiar with training will recognize most of this, though it's honed to incremental detail and adopted to conditions in a 30-40 horse stable at Newmarket. The substance of the book is comparatively interesting for to read a trainer with similar thoughts to your own provides a lot of confirmation that you'd question from other sources.
As to the training, regrettably O'Gorman omits specific training for his successful runners. I doubt he kept training charts, which is hardly a sin in my book since I also never have documented my training except in this blog. Nevertheless it might have been interesting to read in the details of the training how those 16 win two year olds were produced.
Instead O'Gorman presents his general exercise prescription for various ages and stages of training. O'Gorman is a hard conditioner type. A lot of this is "intervals" generally along the lines of 1 x 6f at 18 sec/f 1 x 6f at 15 sec/f. Breezing takes place every three or four days and certainly once a week but at fairly short distances generally at 12-13 seconds/f. O'Gorman's training method seems support for the general idea of each training session being 2 x something, with fairly frequent fast work, and thus is really quite similar to the sort of thing I've done before directly gluing on Preston Burch. O'Gorman achieved a lot of success by being a fairly hard trainer. The book was support for that.
Is it worth $75.00? That may be a slight stretch. But, RR is other than a collector. I read them and toss them. This one I'm keeping as a reference alongside my Burch and Ivers.
Today's training:
Truck is back and Eureka trip being planned for Sunday. Superb news. Called Fairmount Park--do you allow 6 yr. old maidens? "we have no eligibility rules". Thus I have a stable again. Looks like they'd take 13 year olds. Getting there the 325 miles--we'll see.
Art:
6/17/07 Sun: 4x3f riderless ends in a limp. 10 min walk under tack.
6/18/07 Mon: Off weather.
6/19/07 Tues: 10 gentle back and forth in the Astride paddock, involves a couple of spurts. Too dark for tack work.
Paddy O'Gorman
Bill O'Gorman
This is the only training book written by the trainer without a ghost writer. O'Gorman details his 30 year stable and his great record for two year old winners some with 11 to 16 wins as two year olds. This is a training book written to join a legacy begun in the 1800s on thoroughbred race training.Some highlights:
1. "the training plan was formulated on the assumption that the weather remains reasonable...unfortunately that is most unlikely always to be true...which necessitates minor improvisations." Really!
2. O'Gorman trains to sell. Took a little off the bloom off it for me. Economic necessity, he claims.
3. Gorman complains: "The frequent examples of horses that win having reportedly done no work at all are difficult to explain..." Read that one again. Interesting coming from a trainer.
4. Nothing wrong with "trying" the yearlings before Xmas.
5. "The enormous stables that have become the norm merely reflect the current defeatist attitude that this is purely a numbers game and one cannot hope to do other than hemorrhage money. As long as it's someone else's money the prevailing system does have certain attractions for a trainer."
6. "Most trainers should carry a Goverment Health Warning".
7. O'Gorman summarized: "the best protection we can afford our investment is a fairly rigorous training regimen. This need not necessarily be the extreme and precise interval training advocated in some quarters. These systems seem far too complex to implement properly in a working racing stable, and in any event, they may not be necessary for optimum results. What we will attempt to practise may involve an overall workload similar to that practiced in Newmarket beween the wars, although the detail may differ markedly."
8. "Runners should be ridden out for a trot the day after the race..."
O'Gorman details every aspect of his stable and husbandry. He's intelligent and educated, though maybe he hits a few too many verbose dead ends throughout the book for my taste. Anyone familiar with training will recognize most of this, though it's honed to incremental detail and adopted to conditions in a 30-40 horse stable at Newmarket. The substance of the book is comparatively interesting for to read a trainer with similar thoughts to your own provides a lot of confirmation that you'd question from other sources.
As to the training, regrettably O'Gorman omits specific training for his successful runners. I doubt he kept training charts, which is hardly a sin in my book since I also never have documented my training except in this blog. Nevertheless it might have been interesting to read in the details of the training how those 16 win two year olds were produced.
Instead O'Gorman presents his general exercise prescription for various ages and stages of training. O'Gorman is a hard conditioner type. A lot of this is "intervals" generally along the lines of 1 x 6f at 18 sec/f 1 x 6f at 15 sec/f. Breezing takes place every three or four days and certainly once a week but at fairly short distances generally at 12-13 seconds/f. O'Gorman's training method seems support for the general idea of each training session being 2 x something, with fairly frequent fast work, and thus is really quite similar to the sort of thing I've done before directly gluing on Preston Burch. O'Gorman achieved a lot of success by being a fairly hard trainer. The book was support for that.
Is it worth $75.00? That may be a slight stretch. But, RR is other than a collector. I read them and toss them. This one I'm keeping as a reference alongside my Burch and Ivers.
Today's training:
Truck is back and Eureka trip being planned for Sunday. Superb news. Called Fairmount Park--do you allow 6 yr. old maidens? "we have no eligibility rules". Thus I have a stable again. Looks like they'd take 13 year olds. Getting there the 325 miles--we'll see.
Art:
6/17/07 Sun: 4x3f riderless ends in a limp. 10 min walk under tack.
6/18/07 Mon: Off weather.
6/19/07 Tues: 10 gentle back and forth in the Astride paddock, involves a couple of spurts. Too dark for tack work.
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