O'Neill Stats Move The Inquiry Forward

What do O'Neill's stats tell us about frequency of breezing/racing and injury prevention? O'Neill is a major Southern California Trainer. He has won several Breeder's Cup races with the likes of Thor's Echo, Stevie Wonderboy and Maryfield. There's Lava Man, of course.
Just today O'Neill has Mr. Chairman, a recent big winner and Great Hunter as the top two horses in a Santa Anita Allowance. (We'll see how they fare!)

Moreover, O'Neill's work seems highly similar to the conventional style training that predominated in the 1990s through the early 2000s and still seems widely practiced by the likes of Mott, Mandella, Zito, etc. When we look at O'Neill training we're looking at a style of training that has been widely practiced. But, even in saying that, I think things are changing. These trainers are scrambling around trying to figure out how to be competitive with some of the new stuff coming down the pike. O'Neill e.g. quite obviously is other than competitive.

Let's take a look at some stats, and then I'll conclude as to what we know in terms of injury prevention from this type of training.

O'Neill's 2008 Record:
793 starts 110 wins 123 place 117 show
2008 win percentage: 14%
2008 win,place, show percentage: 44%
2008 national ranking in terms of number of wins: 29th just ahead of William I. Mott

Pretty good you're thinking. Here's Thor's Echo winning the 2006 B.C. Sprint.Yes, I'll take a 44% in the money percentage any day of the week/month/year/decade. Yet, let us recognize there's more to a racing stable than the racing stats. For O'Neill E.g. we have this NTRA headline dated 10/1/08:
"Thor's Echo Injured. Thor's Echo, the champion sprinter of 2006 will not start in this months BC sprint because of a splint bone injury, trainer Doug O'Neill said..."

a splint injury on a 5+ year old horse. What does that tell us about the training of that animal? For the uninformed, a splint on an older horse is likely to happen only with fairly gross negligence in handling. Could have been extreme bad luck also, but that it was negligence is quite consistent with what else you see in this training.

And, we do a little more snooping just to peg this barn:
89 of the top 100 2008 trainers have a better win/place/show % than Doug O'Neill, i.e. there are only 11 rated worse than O'Neill's 44%. The little red flags start to wave.

Contrary to the NTRA website which reports that O'Neill has 110 horses in training split up between Hollywood and Santa Anita, we know that 332 horses have passed through his barn this year. Noting this, the racing stats have an entirely different look.

332 O'Neill trainees have had 793 starts. 2.38 starts per horse. .331 wins per horse(yes, that's point 3) or roughly 1 in the money finish per horse, first, second, or third.

And so, looking at all the O'Neill horses instead of just the few they choose to race or that can actually race, the 44% in the money figure becomes almost meaningless. You may further dissect this by understanding that if you have 332 horses at your disposal from which you can pick and choose the easiest competition for your best going horses, 44% seems quite achievable.
Indeed, most of the major trainers that play the numbers game have these sorts of stats, and they really mean very little for any particular animal just starting out.

So, we have O'Neill training whittled down a bit. This is getting long and I'll continue tomorrow.

Training:
Wed. 11/12: 20 hours after 2 inches of rain the ground is, shall we say, damp. Rod lost both front shoes. We're missing those Australian nails they've quit importing. This night we do what we can: Rod walks 1/2 mile, and Art trot-walks a mile.