Derby Training

The horse at left ran such a nice race in the KY Derby you wonder had Louis Roussell only breezed the horse 4 days out instead of 8 days whether Recapturetheglory might have sustained his run and beat Big Brown to the wire. With slightly revised training might we be talking about Roussell's horse for the TC instead of the questionable connnections we have now?

I'll render my opinion that Louis Roussell, for whatever reason, completely clutched in his training of Recapturetheglory, and had Roussell adjusted things correctly the horse would have been competitive all the way around.

What Roussell did: Roussell had the horse on a program of infrequent breezing but numerous and vigorous off day slow gallops many at distances of 2 miles. The photo above is one of the slow gallop days which shows the horse obviously into his two miles at a two minute clip.

Rousell wanted to breeze 7 days out from the Derby on Saturday, but feared the Saturday rains, and so decided on Friday instead. The horse thereafter galloped 1-2 miles per day into the Derby.

What Roussell should have done: the question is why would Roussell have chosen the last breeze 8 days out (due to weather) instead of 6,5 or 4 days out as every known principle of exercise physiology dictates as preferable? Recapture faded because that last breeze was too far out, and the horse was insufficiently tight on race day to maintain his front running style.

The picture below shows two gentleman who probably never have been involved in athletics as participants at more than a junior high school level. You can sort of pick this up from the photo, but it's easier to believe this when you see the men on video.
In this sense lack of being tuned into basic exercise physiology with their horse is more understandable. After all, there are numerous coaches and athletes with similar deaf ears to the science. And though things are changing rapidly with humans, in horse racing, I fear, we still have people more attuned to throwing horse feed than understanding athletics training for the Derby.

Of course, breezing days out from the race is but one aspect of performance and injury prevention. When I look back at the Derby training there are numerous other what if's. Had only this or that horse done this or that, Colonel John comes to mind. Was this really such a weak field of horses or were we merely missing Carl Nafzger and a couple of others? More next post.

Training:
Thurs: 5/28 Both horses did slow riderless work for about 10 minutes basically 3f at a time with short rests. Art then trotted a mile under tack and again responded appropriately when asked to gallop. Nob said the soft ground made for very poor training conditions, but the horse did gallop without incident almost 75 yards. Rod, the two year old also did some tack work, though Nob declined to get on in the first under saddle work in a week.