A Few More Facts

Here are some Derby prospects working on the same day a weekend or so ago:

Tale Of Ekati: 5f in 1:03

War Pass: 4f in :46.8

Into Mischief: 7f in 1:25.6

Maimonides (photo): 6f in 1:12

Please notice the wide range of distances and speeds, nor do we know whether the works were steady or e.g. contained intial slow fractions with the horse coming home in sub :12s.

What were the trainers thinking? Or, more relevant to my subject, were any of them thinking injury prevention?

Unnecessary to note that we'd have to have a whole pattern of works and gallops to draw any conclusions since any one single work may reflect a number of unknown variables most of them probably depending on where the trainer thought the horse was at the time.

But, it's first of February. The Derby is only three months off. If I'm a trainer, time's a wasting, and I want to maximize both my performance prep and preserve my horse.

In analyzing the above works my opinion is that they show more the modus operendi of their trainers than they say anything about where the particular horse is in it's training.

First there's War Pass doing the typical Zito :48. Does that trainer ever do anything else besides 4f, and does he really believe in this day and time with trainers really training their horses (as opposed to the soft mid nineties when Zito won) that 4f breezes every 10 days to two weeks is going to cut it in the Derby? I'd predict War Pass will do 4fs right on through. My experience, trainers never change their stripes.

Then there's Baffert, and Maimonides, pictured, and whoops bucked the shins of a 4.6 million dollar son of Vindication. Maybe should have stayed on the astro-turf Bob. But, very nice :12s for 6f here to bring the colt back. This is also typical Baffert, ratcheting up his training for a big race.

And then my personal hero, the venerable Barclay Tagg with the typically soft Tagg Breeze. What are you doing Barclay? I doubt he knows.

My interest here is which of these works is best in terms of injury prevention for the Derby distance. It's a no-brainer. Into Mischief. Both distance and speed there, but, I have to lay a little more groundwork before reaching some final conclusions on what it is exactly we have to do to get sufficient bone remodeling for fracture resistance.

Training: I'm just leaving the Testosterone Nation website considering this book:
and how nice had we the weather to consider building an efficient athlete. Then I see Accuweather and our 13 degree temps. The horses are off today. Ridiculous ground conditions and more precip on the way. I'll have a word to say about weather and trying to train in this climate.
2/7: 7 or 8 2f bursts riderless at 85% speed in Astride paddock for both horses.
2/8: off
2/9: 36 hours after last work about 15 minutes of play galloping in the Astride. Went pretty well. Decent conditioning considering the speed work on 2/7, and what's coming weatherwise.
2/10: off.