An Explanation For Injury Avoidance With Assault

"Old men forget, and it shall be forgot, but they'll remember with advantages what feats they did that day". --Mr. S

Is it really possible the regally bred, for his time, Assault made it all the way around Churchill with that white patch pasted to his left front tendon? What's with the patch and how it stayed on presumably went with Max Hirsch to his grave.

Can you win a race with a slow horse? Can you win the TC with a slow horse? Can you breeze a horse ten thousand times in one year and go on to race two more years? The relatively slow Assault and Max Hirsch left for us a lot of interesting questions.

In coming posts on PERFORMANCE I'll get back to Assault, his splits and fractions. But these have also significance for injury avoidance and fracture resistance. One more brief look at Assault's workouts. A little long, BUT take note of the times!

4/20/46: 2d in the Wood Memorial, 1/16 mile in 1:46.3
4/23: 3f in :39
4/27: 8f in 1:42
4/30: 4th in Derby Trial, 1 mile in 1:40.1 Assault probably repeated his 1:42
4/3: 4f in :48
4/4: Won KY Derby in 2:06.3 (so far we have 6 workouts in 14 days. Wow!)
4/8: 3f no time given--looks like a :40
4/9: 8f in 1:45
4/11 Won Preakness
4/16 4f in :52
4/18: 3f in :40
5/20: 4f in :48
5/22: 8f in 1:43.3
5/24: 3f in :35
5/25: 10f in 2:05
5/28: 4f in :50
5/29: 1.5 miles in 2:32
6/1: Won Belmont in 2:30.4
6/5: 4f in :52
6/7: 4f in :51
6/9: 8f in 1:43
6/11: 3f in :36
6/13: 8f in 1:43
6/15: won Dwyer 1 1/4 miles in 2:06.4
6/18: 3f in :40
6/20: 4f in :51
6/24: 4f in :48
6/29: 3f in :39
6/30: 4f in :50
7/3: 3f in :37
7/7 6f in 1:19 slow time
7/9: 8f in 1:45.2
7/12 8f in 1:47.

The above indicate that Assault even in his races rarely goes faster than :12.5/f. The Derby went in :12.6/f, the Belmont in :12.5/f and certainly most of the workouts are in the neighborhood of :12.8-:13/f.

And, this horse won the Triple Crown with these sorts of fractions. How? They called Secretariat a machine. Take a look at the Derby tape of Assault and notice the machine like steadiness of the horse in the stretch.
http://ratherrapid.blogspot.com/2008/09/1946-derby-assault-and-max-hirsch.html
Assault is able, whatever the fractions, to run full tilt to the wire. Such was the training of Assault.

The fractions also possibly help explain how Assault was able to survive his training.

I roughly averaged the training/racing fractions of Preakness winner Bold and Assault for all workouts/races posted in Preston Burch's book. Bold averaged :12.2/f. Assault :12.8. Assault breezed significant distance almost every other day in Belmont month and made it through the year. Bold never made it to the Belmont.

We want to avoid, of course, taking too much out of a two rat experiment. It is however very relevant to note that my hypothesis of 1% bone cell damage per work is postulated on :12 second furlongs. To highlight this further, somewhere in the blog I took a close look at different speeds and tried to identify exactly at what speed bone remodeling begins. In that analysis I noted a big difference in stride in terms of concussive effect between :13/f and :12/f. I'd decided that concussion is sufficient for race specific bone remodeling only if the horse is doing at least :12.5/f.

Since Assault even in his races rarely averages faster than :12.5/f, and one of the key assumptions of the 1% bone cell damage is that the horse travels in :12s, we might assume de minimus and certainly less than 1% bone cell damage resulting from the work of Assault.

Training:
Fri. 9/12: Off. 4 inches of rain.
Sat. 9/13: Off. Wet ground
Sun. 9/14: Art trotted 1 mile under tack on squishy ground. Rod for his first work in 10 days due to bruised hinds was bellied.
Mon. 9/15: Tack work: Art trotted 1 mile with a few strides of gallop at hilltops where the wet ground permitted. Rod walked about 1/2 mile.
Tues. 9/16: Art trotted 1 mile with a little gallop here and there. Ground still way too wet. Rod walk-trot 1/2 mile. Hinds seem to be ok.
Wed. 9/17: Mark it down, first time Art gallops all the way around the course. .8 mile gallop, trot-walk, then 1/4 mile gallop. Rod trots 1/2 mile then gallops riderless 1 mile.