More on Assault's Survivability

Assault perhaps raced and worked too slowly for concerns on cumulative bone cell damage, whereas it's plausible that Bold worked too fast too often. Bold was a runaway, very fast and hard to restrain in his work. Here is a sample of Preston Burch's comments sprinkled throughout Bold's log:

3/5/51: 5 furlongs, reverse way of mile track at Aiken. 11 4/5, :22 4/5, :34 3/5, :47 4/5, 1:01 2/5. Tired badly. It was intended that he work in 1:03, but the boy couldn't hold him during the first part of the work.

Was Burch concerned that Bold tired OR was the concern "injury"? May we think that Burch, being unaware of this blog, had that intuitive sense which is the hypothesis here that with Bold he was on the edge of injury working every 3 days in :12s? Note Bold's fractions above!

All speculation of course, that Burch sensed what this blog has attempted to establish--that with 10 breezes a month you'll have a horse with 10% damage to his bone cells with each cell in various states of repair. Note that this is thus less than 10% total damage. That 1% damaged in the very first breeze will be almost good as new by breeze #10, and so "10% damage" overstates the actual situation.

Max Hirsch solved Burch's worries by taking Assault at a slower pace. I merely want to acknowledge this instead of making too big a point of it, though I'll come back to "speed" in making the final conclusions. For now, I also want to take note of other factors that may be in play as to Assault's survivability:

1. The Hard Body Training effect: You Tube shows the Karate Masters beating their knuckles and shins with hammers to strengthen their bones. Something they've figured out over the eons of their sport. May we think that Assault and Bold breezing every 3 days since they were late yearlings eventually develop their bones so that there might be less than 1% damage per work?

2. Accumulated damage in thick,dense bones leaves more structure to hold things together than identical percent damage in thin, porous untrained bones.Big Brown's bone structure with far less work would be significantly less advanced than Bold and Assault.

3. Frequently trained horses carry less weight: and, of course, thus do less damage.

Training:
Thurs. 9/18: Excitement that we're finally galloping in good weather short lived tonight. Picking Art's feet pre-gallop reveals a heel bulb laceration, right hind, unbelievable. Probably a 1 or two day thing as the thing is still attached instead of being an open flap. We'll see, as it looks fairly severe. So, after 4 days work Art is off. Rod 1 mile trot under saddle and 1 mile riderless medium gallop.