The BB Belmont Stride Problem

Just a few thought on the BB shoes that occurred to me:

1. Anybody notice the long toes on the fronts in the bath photos and shorter toes on hinds. There is a significant school of thought(see Tom Stovall CJF wesite) that the hind toes need to be a little longer to allow the horse to grab and power off. BB's front toes long, back toes short. A puzzler. In any event these feet looked unbalanced from these "expert" farriers. Minimally seems to me the toe length and angles needed to be equal vis a vis fronts/hinds. BUT unknown whether BB was reshod after these photos. If so, we're without reports.
2. The pig like stride of BB in this race as opposed to the graceful ground flicking stride of prior races might be partially accounted for by this imbalance in the toes.
3. Report this morning the the turn downs (I believe they're illegal in NY) had been removed. Speculate what sort of hind shoe they might have used and how STUPID it is to change shoeing styles and hence stride efficiency right before a major race.
4. Report this morning that one of the hinds was lose and this was not a problem. HUH?

I've been shoeing horses for 12 years. I've learned a thing or two about shoeing and track black smiths. The track smitty's are in general highly skilled, intelligent good people. BUT they are other than trainers, and in general violate the rule that I (as a trainer as opposed to smitty)developed over the years that it's awfully hard to help a horse. Lot's of times its better to leave well enough alone than to come up with fancy glue ons, wire laces and lots of stuff I've seen done with BB. Unknown how many times I've spent an hour on some major therapeutic project to look at it in conclusion and decide to take it all off. Often you solve one problem only to create three others.

Please note that this is other than to question Ian McKinley. I am hardly a quarter crack specialist, and McKinley obviously knows his procedures and that they work. BUT in this case it is obvious to me there was a stride problem from the get go which on a hot day would have made this big horse's work much tougher.

One year ago I had a similar quarter crack problem on my horse Art who created the crack all the way to the coronet band by tearing off a shoe in a fence in the exact area as BB's latest crack. I removed some hoof wall, let the thing dry out then applied Equilox over it and the horse was able to continue training without a burp. I have to wonder whether in their effort at therapeutic shoeing that in the end they might have made things worse whereas normal correct shoeing methods and allowing the cracks simply to dry by removing hoof wall might have worked just as well. Open for speculation of course. It might be interesting to hear Ian McKinley's take, particularly on the unbalanced toes and questionable stride of the horse both in the race and in his Friday gallop.