Who's Training?

Interestingconversation from the neighboring shed row a couple days back as during the break Jockey Beth Butler arrives to take a filly to the track:

"What're we doin' today? You wanna breeze her?"
"Ya. Take her 5/8th" End of conversation. Ms. Butler mounts.

The trainer looks to be in his mid fifties with health problems, and the short, chunky wife with short curls and wire rims about the same age. In another life she'd be fat, but mucking eight stalls per day provides some modicum of fitness to the lady. Trainer and wife recommence mucking as Ms. Butler rides off.

Ten minutes later Ms. Butler reappears with the filly, and they continue to discuss:

"How'd she go".
"She went awright. She's havin' trouble pushing off that right rear. I had to force her to go".

How to interpret?

Preface that Ms. Butler is a real decent jock, probably early 30s, athletic, high energy, and in my observation seems very dedicated to what she does. A good girl! Ms. Butler has an interesting face, sort of a mix of "country" and what you might see in those mountain folks in Deliverance, the movie, tough mien for a tough girl. She's no fool, but I'd doubt her schooling goes much beyond the 10th grade.

Mr. and Mrs. Trainer have won 30 races this year at Lincoln, Grand Island, and Columbus (N.E.). They have a four year old Metfield filly that's 7 out of 10 for the year, just beat the boys, and is entered in a male stakes race this Saturday. Mr. and Mrs. Trainer have a much better record than you'd ever guess at first glance.

Another example of their training would be what I observed this morning. The Metfield filly is in Saturday, and Ms. Butler arrived after the break to rider her:

"Just gallop?"
"Ya".
"1 or 2?"
"2." and off they go.

The trainer is galloping his filly 2 miles on Wednesday before the Saturday stakes. Thurs. the track is closed. I'll see Friday what they do the day before the race.

What is happening here?

Without writing a book, I see a couple of things. I've long understood that winning may correlate directly to a good jock working with your horse, morning and afternoon. 90% of what you see at the upper levels comes from such combos. The top horses get the top riders from day one, and this degree of riding talent provides the big outfits at every track an almost insurmountable advantage.

The second thing operating is that the trainer could care about the development of his horse on track. He'd prefer to muck stalls than watch them work. I have yet to see either husband or wife over the course of two weeks make one trip to the track for either gallops or breezes. I have watched Ms. Butler gallop their horses. It's other than going through the motions. Ms. Butler races these mounts, and on track in the morning she's very deliberate and professional in the three gallops that I've watched.

Essentially, if you want to subtract animal husbandry, in this shedrow Ms. Butler is the trainer. Sure, the trainer decides how often the horses go to the track, and I noticed that he never asked Ms. Butler for her opinion on that. She only shows up and jumps on. But, once she takes off it appears she decides everything else. I'll break down in the coming posts what it is that the rider here instead of the trainer is deciding and monitoring.

I'm sure that Ms. Butler does a fine job. Probably better than most jocks might do in the same situation. The record speaks for itself. However, as intricate as training thoroughbreds is, do we want somebody with a tenth grade education making the on-track decisions and observation for our horse, regardless of experience? Highly doubtful.

The filly failing to push off on the right in her breeze and the jock "making her go" instead of immediately aborting, is one indicator of problems. Here's another. This couple has an eight horse shedrow full of well conformed, scopy, decently bred (Metfield, Pike's Pass) racers only one of who will have been entered this week and next. Trainer announced he's going home after the stakes Saturday. This is code-speak that despite their 30 wins, nothing else remains raceable. It would be interesting to watch and see how many of the 8 make it back next year. My guess would be 2 or 3.

Training:
Here I'm talking about other trainers only to watch Wind lay another giant egg this morning. Jockey is late. Agent Ms. Barbara Noll drops by at 8:30 a.m, "oh, by the way, Ms. Torbit had to go with a set out of the gate". Barbara Noll is the "ex" mother-in-law of noted Prairie Meadows jockey, now retired, Cindy Noll. Before Ms. Torbit arrives they close the track because a horse was injured in the gate and had to be hauled off by ambulance. Ms. Torbit's set was stuck behind the gate as they regraded the track to get rid of the tracks left by the ambulance.

She finally arrived at 9:20 a.m. Off they go with the pony I hired. The plan: warm up--back track to 3f, turn around and gallop past wire with at least 1f at 2 min clip. Pony catches horse and goes to gate (first time since 2003) for 6f in 1:18. (I wanted to avoid pushing the horse after yesterday's disaster.) There were alternative plans if any of this went awry.

Result: The gate crew refused to let the horse come out of the gate. He was walked through twice and stood in the gate, and, reportedly fidgeted. My guess--we got lucky again--they'd had a horrific gate accident minutes before and decided to avoid another. Pony and rider exited the gate and commenced the breeze which I missed completely as I was waiting for the gates to fly open. By the time I spotted Wind (there went my photos) he was doing :14s at the 1/8th pole. Equibase time turned out to be 1:19 only 1 second slower than planned. So, better than it looked. Ms. Torbit said Wind started very well and ran out of gas at the head of the stretch. I interpret this as mild bleeding, something that plagues the horse. We'll give it one more try Saturday and it'll be time for horse and rider to show some stuff. Probably, nearly the last chance.

Art: just play galloped riderless on sunbaked, rock hard mud with the oldsters. Good exercise. Measures just under 15'3" in horse shoes. Seems we have slight growth. Serious training starts tonight.