Barclay Tagg: II

The horse at left seems to me "for real". Forget that Big Truck to date has received so little publicity, and that he "was" maybe the least Derby Prospect in the Barclay Tagg stable, and that, though he's a nice looking horse, we'd hardly call him a Curlin, Tiznow, Easy Goer or the like in terms of build and conformation.

Big Truck looks to be what I call one of those that's "trainable", the type I favor, for any race we might consider. And, by my definitions, this means that the horse has enough conformationally, presuming he can breathe, that the horse's performance will closely reflect what Tagg does with the horse in training.

Based on Tagg's past history I'd be pessimistic. Sure Barclay Tagg has had of late some good performances, even surprising performances. However, we need gage and evaluate these in that Tagg primarily competes on the East coast where to note that "truth is truth" there fails to exist at the moment any trainer that moves up animals by training alone. In Ny and Florida they all seem to be conventional trainers (by this blog's definition) and thus, when Tagg wins against these sorts, I'm decidedly underwhelmed.

But now again, B. Tagg is on the national stage competing against the very best. And, quite curiously, Tagg's training this year barely resembles what he did a year ago with No Biz Like Show Biz. Tagg trained Biz much as he trained Funnycide--hit and miss with the breezing, inexplicable delays between works, primarily conventional training though at times on the TC trail Tagg would wratched up and he'd get a better performance. I thought last year that No Biz was another equine vicitm of his trainer's limited mindset.

But this is this year. And, here are the workouts of Tagg's runner Elysium Fields:

2/24 Race

3/6 4f in :49

3/12 5f in :59

3/18 6f in 1:12

The works are all bullet works. They're all in :12s and with a reasonable 10 day break after the race they're spaced six days apart. Asmussen is breezing every 7 days, Tagg, lol, is breezing every 6 days this year. Big Truck and Tale of Ekati show similar spacing, distance and times in their works.

Does the above sort of workout pattern remind anyone of Carl Nafzger and Street Sense? Nafzger breezed SS at least once a week with long gallop outs starting in January. Tagg, this year and unlike Tagg in years past, is breezing one day more frequently that SS did with each of his runners. And hence again the question, has Barclay Tagg found religion?

If Tagg continues this pattern--and I'll be unsurprised given his history if Tagg backs off from this sort of training at some point--my theories that this sort of spacing will provide both performance and injury prevention will have a real live test. Tagg's runners (so far) serve as lab rats. If they continue, will they, based on this sort of training: 1. All make it to the Derby, and 2. to be right in there at the finish?

I'd think they would with caveats as I'm recalling my last post that this is a trainer who uses those ridiculous muzzles(see last post). My conclusions and predictions on this year's B. Tagg, next post.

Our training:
Decided to skip last night when I saw the raw weather conditions and the mess with the mud. We're in post-Winter around here instead of spring. My horses have worked only 2 days out of the last 5, but those two days were both fast works, and so thus far we've lost little (and gained nothing) with this weather. The key will be today if the ground dries enough to let us start up again. Another day of nothing and we go backwards.