Pletcher Again
Oh my! The Pletcher training mystery continues. Behindatthebar and David Flores at left. Interesting stride!It's other than a wild guess on my part that TP's horses will finish up the track on Derby day. Why? Pletcher's horses will be running into several buzz saws instead of the powerpuffs of Coolmore Lexington day.
But, for now, a brief RR attempt at how this victory was got. Let's look at:
1. Number of breezes/races since 2/17/08 (I'm without the full PPs for the year).
2. Furlongs breezed/raced since 2/17/08
3. Timing of last breeze to the race.
Here is the order of finish, first with "number" of breezes since 2/17:
8 works/races Behindatthebar (Pletcher)
8 Samba Rooster (Baffert)
8 Riley Tucker (Mott)
7 Racecar Rhapsody (McPeek)
6 Big Glenn (F. Brothers)
7 Tomcito (Dante Zanelli Jr.)
6 Salute The Sarge (E. Guillot)
7 Atoned (Pletcher)
4 St. Joe (Darren Miller)
8 Red Sandy (Lukas)
6 Felon (M. Maker)
Analysis: Its 9 weeks back to 2/17. All of these horses average breezing/racing less than once a week. Most of the have 7 or 8, but, it is interesting that the first three horses all had the most works.
In terms of total number of furlongs worked/raced since 2/17 in order of finish first to last went as follows: 44, 40, 46, 37,36,44, 35, 47,33, 47,36. Pretty even.
Days between the last breeze and the race:
7 days Behindatthebar (Pletcher)
6 Samba Rooster (Baffert)
5 Riley Tucker (Mott)
8 Racecar Rhapsody (McPeek)
8 Big Glenn (F. Brothers)
5 Tomcito (Dante Zanelli Jr.)
9 Salute The Sarge (E. Guillot)
7 Atoned (Pletcher)
16 St. Joe (Darren Miller)
8 Red Sandy (Lukas)
8 Felon (M. Maker)
Notice that no horse that worked more than 7 days out finished in the top 3.
My overall view of the Lexington. You'd think Pletcher would beat a bunch of soft trainers, he did. But, imagine had Samba Rooster trained by Baffert and leading all the way to get run down by a nice ride right at the wire, who Baffert trained with 4f breezes. What if B. Baffert had given Rooster 6f breezes instead. What if Rooster had breezed more than once since 3/30. The poor horse did that on one breeze in 20 days.
Training:
Just dry enough to attempt it after two weather days off. Frustrating night. I'm going to leave it that I got a lot more exercise than the horses. Nob did get back up the 3 year old. Tack work has restarted.
posted by rather rapid at
8:00 AM
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2 Comments:
Hello... I've been going over your past posts to your blog, as time allows:)
And thank you for posting the link to the free training book that's available online.
One question I have is how many trainers do the slow galloping that occurs on most days at about 1.5 miles... and do any of them do the long distance training that Ivers discusses in his book?
I too, have been wondering about the tongue hanging out thing.....I HATE seeing that and you know the horse hates it too.... It's hard to get new people interested in horse racing when they see that. The tongue thing, along with the trainers that get busted using drugs,and lots of other stuff is bad for the image of horse racing, and I really don't know what to say to people who point these things out to me...
Keep up with this great blog : )
Kaunard
u r a glutton for punishment kaunard. ya, the tongue thing is a pet peeve of mine and blinkers + shadow roll as I'd prefer a horse to see its feet landing. I'm unaware of anyone doing Ivers these days. I've gotten away from it for reasons I've detailed. If you continue to read u'll see i'll be trending more and more away from slow galloping. I'd say most trainers gallop slow far more than they work horses. how often a horse sees the track varies with the barn. a lot of them, not much, unfortunately. lot's of reason for that.
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