Has Barclay Tagg Found Religion?

2 inches of rain in KC yesterday, and bravo to the Irish who finished their parade in a world record 1.5 hrs. compared to the usual 4. Every float that started finished, and they each and every one started according to reports, with one undaunted Irish person noting, in driving rain, that we've run the parade in ice and snow, this is just rain. That's just enough inspiration for this middling horse trainer to go out there this afternoon and scruff through ankle deep mud.

But first, today's matters at hand as I'll continue to look at how frequency of fast works and spacing of days between fast works affects the injury equation. This should be enjoyable because it's so easy to tie the topic to this year's Derby training, and launch this with a look at the smiling gentleman below and what he's doing this year with his talented stable.

When Tagg burst into prominence in 2003, I identified immediately. Yes, Barclay, I know how much it hurts to smile, + small stable, rides horses, works behind the radar, but that he married a jock means he's probably smarter than me, or, maybe not. Does alimony lurk in Tagg's future? Lol.

What do I think of Tagg's training? I've tried to ferret it out but one little event said it all for me about Barclay Tagg as horse trainer. I've long railed against those horse muzzles made of dark plastic you see advertised in the horse catalogues. They keep the horse from grazing pre-race, and they have air holes that presumably permit the horse to breathe. Look at them closely though and you'll see the plastic resting right up against the nostril trapping carbon dioxide and basically causing the horse to rebreathe it's own exhale. Only an insensitive idiot would this contraption on a defenseless animal.

And, then, early 2007 a Tagg Blood Horse video on No Biz Like Show Biz. Biz pre-race looking unhappy with one of these very muzzles over the nose. Do we need to know anything else about Barclay Tagg as this degree of mindlessness and insensitivity will color whatever conclusions I come up with.

Before the muzzle video I'd tried to digest the 2003 Funnycide happening and the training that produced it by reading this book below:
written by Sally Jenkins. It's a nice book, decently written, entertaining and tells all the Funny Cide Story except the training.

Best I could do from the book was to read between the lines and ferret out what Tagg did with FC. My conclusion from limited information is that Barclay Tagg at that time was a typical conventional trainer who breezed his horses on occasion when the spirit moved, and that also, like the typical conventional he wratched up his trainining with the good horse. By the time the Belmont rolled around it appears to me that Tagg had completely backed off with his training of FC, decided the horse had done enough, and did very little training between Preakness and Belmont(see C. Nafzger and Unbridled). This brillilance in ceasing to do what got you there in the first place produced a fading 3rd place finish to Empire Maker in the Belmont that cost FC the TC.

The Tagg from the FC book seemed one of those so stuck in the tradition of easy east coast training, Woody Stephen's style. However, Tagg, though hardly a Rhodes Scholar, also seems reasonably intelligent and consistently displays in his comments a very inquisitive mind. This also comes across in the book. For this reason I have been betting with myself that Tagg unlike a lot of his peers might be one that responds to the competition around him and begins to exceed conventional style training in his own stable.

Will this happen, that Tagg like Asmussen exceeds conventional training, next post.

Training: Horses were off in the rain yesterday after planned fast works day before due to the coming weather.