Mine That Bird Training

"MINE THAT BIRD--Mine That Bird, the 2008 Canadian champion 2-year-old, galloped two miles Thursday around 7:30 a.m. and gave New Mexcico based trainer Chip Woolley reason for optimism, despit a 50-1 morning-line assignment at Wednesday's post position draw.

"He went super and really got over the ground well today," Woolley said."

The above courtesy of the Downey Profile Thursday 4/30 Derby notes. And then the Derby videos, the prior race videos, today's (as usual) superb Haskin column filling in the blanks, we find out that Chip Woolley himself was the rider of this horse, and that after the accident some fellow named Charlie Figueroa rode the horse.

Well(!) it starts to come together. Some thoughts to chew over:

1. Note Woolley's 2-33 record for the year for wins. This is other than an accomplished trainer. I'll go so far as to say that I've seen the likes of Woolley at track after track and in general this is the sort of crew you'll see complaints about on this blog. One look at Woolley tells me that most of the horses in his shed row are probably in trouble, and that his record fairly accurately reflects his ability.

2. Enter Charlie Figueroa "top rate exercise rider" according to Steven Haskin. Here is the second thing I know about this ilk of the training establishment exemplified by the probable situation of Chip Woolley: Every morning they throw the rider up on whatever horse they happen to be galloping this morning, generally 20% of their shed row, and the instructions will be something to the order "just gallop him", or "gallop him and let him go down the lane a little". Intellectual stuff like that. Horse and rider head to the track, and trainer gets back to mucking stalls.

3. Figueroa, probably after the first gallop or two on Mine That Bird starts to figure out he's on the best horse he's ever been on, somebody tells him its the Candadian two year old champ, and suddenly the situation gets Figueroa's attention. Maybe he has some personal pride in his work, maybe it's just for the thought of a bonus out of a big New Mexico purse, whatever, Figueroa commences to really work Mine That Bird. As in most of these sorts of shedrows the exercise rider is the trainer in fact.

How do I know this is what occurred with MTB? I don't. But I know the probabilities, and my guess would be that Chip Woolley initially had zero idea the horse was being taken two miles every day, or the clip of the gallops. If Woolley did, and if Woolley planned it, hats off since it would be totally our of character for a trainer that dresses, talks, and acts, and has a training record, like Chip Woolley. And further, blog apologies to Woolley if this is off base. I feel pretty safe though.

So, enter Figueroa. Watch the clip and you'll see some nice work:


Looking at the clip you start to see what was going on in New Mexico. Heavier, balanced rider and a little horse that can handle it, obviously has been handling it, and is very strong as a result.

So, what caused the Derby win? Here is Mine That Bird's probable protocol indicated by info we do have, mostly from Downey:

120 days (in the year to the Derby) divided by 13 speed events (breezes/races) is one every 9 days or about 3 per month. The last pre-race breeze tends to be 4 or 5 days out which is particularly big since it was a mile Calvin Borel type breeze. The next breeze post race 10 days after the first 2009 race but 21 days after the second.

There were only 2 races for 2009. One of those, The Sunland Derby was a heck of a race won by highly impressive performance by Kelly Leak were Bird faded in the stretch.

Every evidence is that MTB galloped almost daily. The distance is recorded in the Downey notes as 1/4 mile trot/1 3/4 mile gallop.. Haskin's got one thing wrong. MTB instead of just jogging at Lone Star galloped 2 miles according to a Woolley interview. The video shows these gallops to be productive heavy exercise rider conditioning gallops.

So, for MTB, and for posterity, it looks like:

G = 2 miles total volume
B= Breeze
W= Walk

R(3/28 Sunland Derby finshes 4th in Sunland Derby by 3 lengths to impressive Kelly Leak) W W W G G G W G G G W G G G G W G G G G G B(4/19 1:01) W T(4/21 travel) G (4/22 Lone Star), Arrive (4/23 at Churchill) G(4/24) G G B(4/27 1 mile 1:40) W G G G R(5/2).

Probably something like that is what won the KY Derby.

What next for MTB? You start to worry that Chip Woolley will now take over and start "not" training the horse. We'll see. I may have to take it all back. I hope so.

Sunland Derby appears below. Post on RR stable coming.