On To Plecher

Man... I hate to read stuff such as Haskin's article on Wanderin Boy. I have a low enough opinion of Zito as it is, and then they throw Arthur Hancock in the mix. But, I'll leave the problems of racing to others. I'd prefer to just go straight ahead with injury prevention. And so for this blog, Todd Pletcher training is up.

What Pletcher does in terms of frequency of breezing/racing is fairly clear. Through a couple of Derbies and BCs where I've watched Pletcher horses, they get 5f breezes at 1-1:02 spaced 7 days apart with the last breeze 7 days pre-race, and post race the horse gets a 2-3 week respite from recorded fast work the exact length of the off period depending on where the next targeted race comes up. Plecher seems very consistent with this.

There are a couple of patterns here in terms of the average time of Plecher's horses between breeze/race:

1. The 7 weeks between races: This involves 5 breeze/race and the average is one every 9.8 days. I might add that this is the sort of thing that did in Momba and Cowboy Cal (for a while.)
2. The 4 weeks from the commencement of the first breeze to the race, as follows:

B x x x x x x B x x x x x x B x x x x x x R x x x x x x

For this period the Plecher horse averages, obviously, a breeze/race every 7 days. I'm taking a wild guess that Plecher's consistency which includes the 4 week pattern of every 7 days achieves greater bone remodelling than O'Neil's inconsistency. I just disbelieve that, like O'Neill, you can do three or four weeks of once every 7 days then do a 4-6 weeks of a breeze/race every 14 days. I think Plecher's consistency is superior in terms of injury prevention, but, what do Plecher's stats show?

I looked at Plecher's 3 and up horses that raced on 8/1. Plecher's work tab is unavailable except for the period from 11/23 to 11/30.

Ruff N Ready: Raced 7 times. Last raced 8/3.
Calzone: Raced 7 times. Last raced 8/1.
Daguerrotype: Raced 5 times. Last raced 10/7.
English Willow: Raced 3 times. Last raced 10/15
Magnificent Melody: Raced 6 times. Last raced 8/1
Jessie's Justice: Raced 5 times. Last raced 8/27.
Brushed With Gold: Raced 5 times. Last raced 11/5.
Fujita: Raced 8 times. Last raced 11/16.
Lucky Money: Raced 3 tunes. Last raced 10/23.
Cliffy's Future: raced 5 times. Last raced 11/1/08.
Royal Card: Raced 3 times. Last raced 8/2.
Sumptious: Raced 6 times. Last raced 8/2.
Hall of Famer: Raced 7 times. Last raced 10/24.
Red Giant: Raced 2 times. Last raced 9/27.
Distorted Reality: Raced 7 times. Last raced 10/29.
Live Life Outloud: Raced 2 times. Last raced 8/21.
Atoned: Raced 8 times. Last raced 10/24.
Perfect Forest: Raced 3 times. Last raced 8/3.
Jamaludin: Raced 7 times. Last raced 8/30.

9 out of 20 make it 3 months. None of these horses show up on the Plecher work tab from 11/23 to 11/30.

Couple of weeks ago I took another Plecher sample but have forgotten the time period when they all raced. I'll avoid typing up the stats, but here are the horses:

Perfect Forest
Sage Chappell
Loh Collado
Tribolet
Rap Tale
Smokin Stephanie
Restrain
Triple E
Southern Terminus
Texas Wild Catter
Gold Coast Cat
Ready's Echo
Kromium Cop

Of the above there were for the year 64 races or 5 races per horse, but only 1 of 13 appears to be still going at the moment. None of these show upon the 11/23-11/30 work tab.

This is all the time I plan to spend with Plecher while noting that Plecher horses get in more races on average per year than O'Neill's. I'd guess Plecher's are averaging about 6 races/year to O'Neill's 5. With Plecher the absence of a work tab make it difficult to come up with exact stats. I'd think that Plecher's spacing is superior to O'Neill's but that his injury results probably will equal the 50% every 3 months of O'Neill. Plecher's stats would further support the conclusion that spacing breezes more than 7 days apart is insufficient for injury prevention. Can we find a trainer that averages breeze/race every 7 days?

Training:
11/29 Sat. With weather coming in and after tough Friday training the horses were off.
11/30 Sun. morning: 36 hours after the last fast workout, we're at it again as we've had 1/2 inch precip overnight and the ground is in process of freezing. I want to get to 'em while the ground is still soft. The pasture is covered with snow. Less than predicted, but we pass on tack work in favor of riderless fast work over a mud slick paddock. Both horses are driven as fast as they can go 2 x 1 mile with 5 min. rest between. The speed probably is :15s max, but through the mud they had to huff and puff, and this was the nice conditioning workout we needed with cold coming in. I was very happy with it even though we lost yet another day of galloping. I was fretting over failing to work the horses hard enough. Today qualified as a tough workout for them, and they charged through it all the way.