Brief Seguay To Training Protocols

The question has come up, why are all the races these days won by such as the fellow on the lower right or the 2008 Saratoga training title won by Kiaran "Krispy Creme" McGlaughlin. If hard training works where are the present day versions of Preston Burch, Sunny Jim, Max Hirsch, or the training progeny of Tom Ivers?

Please consider this analysis strictly my own, and very short version of what basically is the subject of the blog.

Thanks to Richard Dutrow can we first observe possibly the last 30 years of racing maybe has been besmirched by steroids. Did Lukas bring his needle with him from the quarter horse barns? Do the 'roids perhaps explain where the conception that "less training is as good as more" might have come from? Unknown. Maybe someday racing will investigate and place an asterik by some of the past performances.

But, for this analysis, let's ignore the steroid question, and look specifically Winston's question of a couple of posts ago. Allegedly Vladimir Cerrin removed a horse from hard training and Papa Chuillo started winning on a softer protocol.

I'll begin this by noting that I am without any doubt whatsoever that everything else being equal, that anyone that would attempt Preston Burch training and actually would get their horse to the races would literally blow away anything put out there, steroids or no. Can I make it any clearer as to the degree of my certainty? If you can say Burch, T.J. Smith of Australia (33 training titles in a row), Bill O'Gorman in Britain and their similar methods, I believe nothing you see out there today would hold up against those styles of training.

The last real conditioner that I'm familiar with was Charlie Whittingham. I'm unsure after reading Hovdey's book exactly what Whittingham did (it was far less than T.J. Smith), but Whittingham was the hardest trainer going after 1980 and his successes speak for themselves.

The closest successor we have to Whittingham (I believe) is Bobby Frankel. I also believe training at the upper levels the last few years has intensified in part because all of these top trainers have tired of Frankel shipping in and whipping their buts on a regular basis. As its prone to do, training has intensified the last few years in response to competition. Though we're without Preston Burchs right now, the horses receiving the most works and intelligent training are winning--see Street Sense, Curlin etc., and my documentation of this year's Derby training on the blog.

As to Tom Ivers, just briefly for review, Ivers training lasts 9 months in 3 month cycles of 1. slow galloping to 6 miles, 2. 3 x 1 mile intervals to 2 min. speed, and 3. 3 x 6f breezes to 1:12. All this proceeds in sequences of 4 days as follows G, G, Breeze, R. Ivers believed you could do speed work safely every 4 days and that the 4 day interval for breezing was the ideal point of maxium acquisition for the horse. I believe he's right on that, though, once the horse started racing, I could never figure out what to do between the fast works.

The blog notes I've put the same horse through this twice and interval trained several others thought that was incomplete. I'm quite familiar. Bill O'Gorman in his book notes that Interval Training is impractical at the race track. Winston snurfed this out in his comments. If you have a large stable you'd have to have tremendous resources to pull this off both in terms of money, rider availability, and, good lord, when you finish breezing them 3 times in one day they go in the ice tub for 20 min. You'd need an army of grooms.

But, what about small stables? Preface by noting that you'll have a very fit, sound animal after going through Ivers. I've documented the exploits of my Jeckimba Bay on the blog. The finished product is a pleasure to race and train.

But, several problems with Ivers. Each protocol took me 15 months. Stuff happens and Iver's 9 months quickly drags on. Secondly: had Ivers read Preston Burch before he began, I'd doubt he'd have invented his own program. If you spend 15 months just breezing every 3 days instead of going through Ivers I'm almost unable to imagine how good your horse would get. What I finally concluded about Ivers was that it's unnecessary.

But there were also problems. In each 3 month stage of you only finally get to the fast work the last couple of weeks. I.e. in the 3 month breezing cycle you only get to the :12 second furlongs the last two weeks. You've thus spent 9 month or 15 month with only the last 2 weeks of it race speed specific. In practice this simply makes no sense, and probably Ivers recognized that later.

Interestingly Ivers did attempt to interval train by his program his own horse at a farm in Indiana in the late '80s. The scuttlebutt was that he injured the horse.

So, I conclude that it's incorrect to say that the "best" trained horses are failing to win the races. If you know the PPs, I'd suspect most races the best trained horses are right in there. I also believe sans steroids these trainers will be ripe for the picking. We'll see.

Training: 9/2 after several days of training we're off as the Gustav rains descend.