Derby Training Specifics

I never know whether to credit the owner or trainer for a horse's performance. In our system, after all, it's the owner's horse, the owner's money, the owners time, effort and energy that creates the situation. And so, for this year's RR award for best Derby effort goes to Casners and their Winstar farm. I thought the training and handling of Colonel John was leaps above the others in 2008, and I'm thinking if they stay in the game the Casner's might be back again and again. Those Susan Casner You Tube videos of Colonel John and Winstar are recommended viewing.

To train Colonel John they hired Eoin Harty, who by my reckoning did a commendable though less than perfect job. Nafzger like, shall we say, without being Nafzger, and since I've described Nafzger's warts on the blog you get the idea where I stand vis a vis Derby training this year.

So, how did the 2008 Derby trainer handle the training variables:

1. Speed of breezing.
2. Distance of breezing
3. Timing of breezing both with frequency and spacing to the race. (and, again thanks to Bill, see comment last post, for validating the points with a little exercise physiology!)
4. Off day galloping, distance, speed, frequency.
5. Riders--the quality of rider doing the work always affects things.

My posts 4/26/08 to the Derby indicate a fairly wide variation within a range of what most of these trainers did. If you take an average I'd guess that "Derby Training" in 2008 to the extent we can generalize goes something like this:

:12/f or slightly faster as speed of breezing.
5f is the predominant breezing distance.
7 days is the the most common breeze/race spacing.
6 days would be the average "last breeze" to race spacing.
Off day galloping seems to take place on an average 1.5 miles at about :18-:20/f. speed generally about 3 days pre-breeze. Otherwise they're off.
2 pre-derby races for the year.

I put this in bold as I think the above is significant. You analyze it, step back and consider that in this "average" prep:
1. It seems sufficient for injury avoidance though it's on the bare edge of that.
2. Horses are (and in the past decade generally "have") been worked less than this 2008 average.
3. Any horse could easily work significantly more than this, and several of the Derby horses did including all of them (except EB)that finished in the top 4.

Conclude that this "average" 2008 prep leaves the average horse far short of optimum physical condition in terms of performance, and hence there's still hope for the small fry. I'll continue next post.

Training:
Nice to have a certifiable mechanical genius as a close friend. Clutch on the brush hog blows up. No problem, we're back in business a day later, and I'm mowing our track through the pasture considering that Art the 3 year old is about to do his first track work that I would really consider race prep. I'm very excited.

Then, disaster. This is unbelievable. A year ago Art tore off part of a rear hoof on a fence. On 5/31/08 he did it again. Front hoof this time. And I have two parallel cracks going up from ground level about 1 inch apart and 3/4 inch up. He was limping after the shoeing. I'll know more this evening, but, looks as if the trauma went into the sensitive laminae. I might have a very unwelcome Big Brown situations on my hands.

Rod galloped riderless medium speed for 8 minutes and was walked under tack for 5 minutes. 1st time for the tack walk, btw. Milestones.