Conventional Warmups, Whys And Wherefores

"Man commonly is blind throughout his life. My Faust be blind then as you end it".

The hundred year old Faust has pissed off the Grey Spirit named Care. Bad mistake! She breathes on him and blinds him.

Is it possible that our top conventional trainers are blind to the benefits of physiologically adequate warm ups? Unknown to me, but, there are a few indicators. E.g. I'm unable to find the words "warm up" in books by Preston Burch, Bill O' Gorman, and in 'Winning Trainers' by Ross Staaden in a comprehensive look at Lukas and T.J. Smith. Even Tom Ivers the horse exercise physiologist, in a vast body of work, barely mentions warming up. 'Whittingham' by Jay Hovdey gives a fairly detailed analysis of the methods but in Hovdey's interview process Whittingham apparently never mentioned warm ups.

And, of course, if you watch 'em in the afternoon, you'd have to conclude they're satisfied with the warm up. Watch 'em warm up for breezes in the morning and most of the time the stupidity will shock you.

How can this be so?

There are a large number of reasons, and I'll type them out as they come to me instead of noting them by particular priority.

In terms of more vigorous, appropriate warm ups at our North American Race tracks there are some practical aspects which serve as close to insurmountable obstacles. The first of these would be the starting gate and the outrider.

Have you watched 'em warm up in a 5.5f race at a mile track? The starting gate is positioned right in the way of the warm up at the 5.5f pole so that the horses can at best gallop about 1.5f from the post parade. This quickly becomes about 1f as the outrider is moving almost immediately from the post parade toward the gate. Here is the absurdity of an all out sprint and horses left without the physical room for rational warm up. Same deal to a lesser degree in distance events as the starting gate and position of the outrider effectively block any warm up sprints coming back counter clock wise.

Why does this occur? Needless to say it's doubtful that racetrack management--racing secretary, stewards, GM ever give the slightest concern to warm ups. Oh yes, they fret constantly over full fields and that at any given moment half the back stretch is injured. But connecting cause with effect, well, better stop there...

Then there is the outrider problem. You try any extended warm up and you're going to run into that person before you're half way through. These idiots (and I use that term only with respect to their concern about the horses) seem intent on conducting their roundup almost from the inception of the post parade. You can see them in any race impatiently biding their time until they can begin to do "their" job, which is getting the horses to the gate.

The gate's being up during the warm up and the outrider attitudes would be things so easily dealt with were anyone at the track even slightly connecting the dots. Such I fear is the state of the sport. Continue next post.

Training:
We're getting excited about the Woodlands coming up after another nice Wind breeze last night at the farm. Though I'll really only know after we hit the Woodlands, jeez that seemed fast to me last night. I've smoothed out some of our track and we can now do almost a full 3f. Wind last night did a no stop 2 x 3f. After heat 1 he had to be stopped to turn around, but then it was a 1.5f fairly fast gallop to starting point of heat 2. The aim had been to go slower last night to see how the shins would react. Thus, Nob only sat on the horse during each heat. But, Wind just took off. Nob said there was a little backing off about the middle of each heat but then he'd take off again. It looked impressive. We'll see. Oh, and, it was a nice 1.5f + 1f + 1.5f warm up before the heats. Stone cold cannons this morning. Aylward breezes tonight.
Art:
9/11/07 Tues. Day 2 Burch riderless 4f W/U + 2 miles slow riderless. Dark got us again on the tack work.