How Often: Finale

Without noting again all the negatives, I'll reiterate my opinion that Wayne ("I never work horses") Lukas takes soft conventional training about as far as it will go. We see an uncensored version of Lukas at work in the opening scenes of Mandella's "On The Muscle" on track at Hollywood Park with a grim faced Lukas (he ain't smiling) and his son on ponies leading a couple to their gallops. Believe I accurately interpreted Lukas's training charts to indicate 17-22 times a month on track for each horse in the Lukas stable from Ross Staaden's book, and per my last post, that's a lot of work for a 25 horse stable.

So, I'm unable to fault Lukas or any of his copycats with frequency of track work in terms of injury prevention. We see with Lukas that fierce determination combined with an unlimited bank account can get 'em to the track with a large stable. Simultaneously, as the prior posts noted, for any of a number of reasons, numerous conventional style soft trainers try to get by with far less than Lukas, and this sort of work with race horses is Exhibit A for the injury problems that plague the sport. It's pitiful really what most of these so called trainers did with their horses before about 2002. Better lately, somewhat, but I'm supposing that until such time as owners start keeping an eagle eye on those trainers to whom they're paying $30-100/day, things will remain as they are and we'll continue to rotate shedrows due to injuries about every 18 months.

Training: The beginning of the thaw today, but, all I could do this morning was one of those better than nothing pasture romps. Hopefully the crusty, bumpy ground will have softened tomorrow and we can commence serious work. I'm seeing mud in my near future.