Doug O'Neill Stats
O'Neil's website, for reasons unknown, contains a list of recent workouts that is incomplete which omits almost 1/2 of recent workouts. Thus my initially very incorrect impression of O'Neil and my subsequent revision of the prior post. I've figured out now how to extract info from O'Neil's site and in fact all workouts and races for the year are available. O'Neil has too many horses to go through the whole exercise, but, I'll do that with some of the smaller stables.
Here are some summary stats on the 28 O'Neil horses I looked at from 8/15-10/15/08:
Total races in 60 days for 28 horses: 52--the "average" would be that each O'Neil horse races once a month. The stats show that the O'Neil modus operendi is to race every 3 weeks. As you'd expect, they fall a bit short of that and average about once in 30 days. I consider a stable average of racing every horse once a month as decent.
Total breeze/races over 60 days for the 28: 104 which is 3.7 per 60 days per horse or less than 2 per month. This stat is skewered because many horses fail to make it through and quit racing or working out. Thus we need a stat for the horses that made it through, as follows:
Total breeze/races for horses that make it through the period: 12 of 28 horses make it all the way through. These have a total of 64 workout/races which averages 5.33 for the period or 2.66 per month. But, note that this is an average. O'Neil is very inconsistent in his workout pattern--see below.
Number of horses looked at: 28
Number of horses that make it all the way through: 12
Number of horses that fail to make it all the way through: 12
Number of horses that might have made it through, i.e. questionable: 4
Giving the benefit of the doubt 16 made it through and 12 failed. 16/28 = 57%
The four labled "questionable" horses are horses that were there from beginning to late September and then disappear. Since O'Neil tends to give 2-3 weeks off workouts between races these 4 might simply have been in abeyance and will reappear shortly.
Were the 12 horses failing to make it through all injured? Presume that horses racing in August probably will keep racing barring injury. Nevertheless other reasons exist that may keep a horse off the track: Sickness, giving the horse a break, lack of performance, horses in transition, claims, etc.
I think most of the horses failing to make it through probably had some kind of injury over the injury spectrum. All injuries may have been minor causing removal from training for short periods, or catastrophic and permanent. We're without a way to discern this. For the purpose here, I'll be generous in terms of "estimating injury". We want to know what % of horses were DEFINITELY injured.
In this sense I've looked at the 12 possibly injured. I believe 9 out of the 12 in all likelihood suffered some kind of injury in the 2 months. The overall injury percentage over 60 days is thus
32%.
There are also some patterns which show in the schedules. O'Neil appears to like to give two weeks off from hard work after a race. This is extremely consistent. Sometimes he gives 3 weeks off before the horse recommences. For the rest of the time it appears that O'Neil likes to give works/races every 7 days, and that for many horses there is a 2-3 workout pattern every 7 days prior to a race. There are almost zero patterns which show workouts more frequently than every 7 days.
O'Neil however is very inconsistent with this. Horses for reasons unexplainable frequently undergo abnormal (for O'Neil) delays between events. It is more common than uncommon in O'Neils patterns to see a gap of 8,9,10 or more days between workout/races. Why? Could be multiple reasons--rider availability, track schedule, laziness and inattention, etc. The real reasons are unknown to us.
We may summarize thus that O'Neil is hardly the grossly negligent buffoon that I'd supposed on initial incorrect info. In fact O'Neil's stats show him to be a Todd Pletcher like trainer in that he likes to give a significant break from fast works post race--O'Neil 2 weeks, Pletcher 3 week,--and that he "likes" to breeze every 7 days.
But O'Neil has a much less religious pattern than Pletcher. In the Breeder's Cup and TC races where I've followed Pletcher training to the extent possible Pletcher has a set pattern that he follows without fail:
race
three weeks off
3 breezes of 5f in 1:00-1:02 seven days apart
race.
Such consistency is lacking for O'Neil. And, it's noteworthy that for O'Neil such consistency is also lacking with his top drawer stakes horses.
Without talking to O'Neil--and that would be interesting--why he does what he does we can only guess at. I'll look at this next post.
Training:
Tues and Wed 10/15, 10/16 Off due to rain.
Thurs. 10/17: tough conditioning workout after two days off. Its way too muddy for constructive tack work, so, riderless hard workout: 9 x 3f with significant rests as fast as they could motor, which was :15s or slightly slower, but in the mud. They expended a lot of effort, and given the conditions it was a decent day. The two year old is starting to stay with them in terms of toughness, which is encouraging.
Here are some summary stats on the 28 O'Neil horses I looked at from 8/15-10/15/08:
Total races in 60 days for 28 horses: 52--the "average" would be that each O'Neil horse races once a month. The stats show that the O'Neil modus operendi is to race every 3 weeks. As you'd expect, they fall a bit short of that and average about once in 30 days. I consider a stable average of racing every horse once a month as decent.
Total breeze/races over 60 days for the 28: 104 which is 3.7 per 60 days per horse or less than 2 per month. This stat is skewered because many horses fail to make it through and quit racing or working out. Thus we need a stat for the horses that made it through, as follows:
Total breeze/races for horses that make it through the period: 12 of 28 horses make it all the way through. These have a total of 64 workout/races which averages 5.33 for the period or 2.66 per month. But, note that this is an average. O'Neil is very inconsistent in his workout pattern--see below.
Number of horses looked at: 28
Number of horses that make it all the way through: 12
Number of horses that fail to make it all the way through: 12
Number of horses that might have made it through, i.e. questionable: 4
Giving the benefit of the doubt 16 made it through and 12 failed. 16/28 = 57%
The four labled "questionable" horses are horses that were there from beginning to late September and then disappear. Since O'Neil tends to give 2-3 weeks off workouts between races these 4 might simply have been in abeyance and will reappear shortly.
Were the 12 horses failing to make it through all injured? Presume that horses racing in August probably will keep racing barring injury. Nevertheless other reasons exist that may keep a horse off the track: Sickness, giving the horse a break, lack of performance, horses in transition, claims, etc.
I think most of the horses failing to make it through probably had some kind of injury over the injury spectrum. All injuries may have been minor causing removal from training for short periods, or catastrophic and permanent. We're without a way to discern this. For the purpose here, I'll be generous in terms of "estimating injury". We want to know what % of horses were DEFINITELY injured.
In this sense I've looked at the 12 possibly injured. I believe 9 out of the 12 in all likelihood suffered some kind of injury in the 2 months. The overall injury percentage over 60 days is thus
32%.
There are also some patterns which show in the schedules. O'Neil appears to like to give two weeks off from hard work after a race. This is extremely consistent. Sometimes he gives 3 weeks off before the horse recommences. For the rest of the time it appears that O'Neil likes to give works/races every 7 days, and that for many horses there is a 2-3 workout pattern every 7 days prior to a race. There are almost zero patterns which show workouts more frequently than every 7 days.
O'Neil however is very inconsistent with this. Horses for reasons unexplainable frequently undergo abnormal (for O'Neil) delays between events. It is more common than uncommon in O'Neils patterns to see a gap of 8,9,10 or more days between workout/races. Why? Could be multiple reasons--rider availability, track schedule, laziness and inattention, etc. The real reasons are unknown to us.
We may summarize thus that O'Neil is hardly the grossly negligent buffoon that I'd supposed on initial incorrect info. In fact O'Neil's stats show him to be a Todd Pletcher like trainer in that he likes to give a significant break from fast works post race--O'Neil 2 weeks, Pletcher 3 week,--and that he "likes" to breeze every 7 days.
But O'Neil has a much less religious pattern than Pletcher. In the Breeder's Cup and TC races where I've followed Pletcher training to the extent possible Pletcher has a set pattern that he follows without fail:
race
three weeks off
3 breezes of 5f in 1:00-1:02 seven days apart
race.
Such consistency is lacking for O'Neil. And, it's noteworthy that for O'Neil such consistency is also lacking with his top drawer stakes horses.
Without talking to O'Neil--and that would be interesting--why he does what he does we can only guess at. I'll look at this next post.
Training:
Tues and Wed 10/15, 10/16 Off due to rain.
Thurs. 10/17: tough conditioning workout after two days off. Its way too muddy for constructive tack work, so, riderless hard workout: 9 x 3f with significant rests as fast as they could motor, which was :15s or slightly slower, but in the mud. They expended a lot of effort, and given the conditions it was a decent day. The two year old is starting to stay with them in terms of toughness, which is encouraging.
posted by rather rapid at
12:10 PM
.jpg)
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home