Analyzing Trainer Injury Stats

33%/8.00 O'Gorman

35%/3.54 Catherine Day Phillips

43%/3.33 D.Wayne Lukas

50%/2.98 Mark Hennig

50%/3.00 Bruce Jackson

50%/3.00 Todd Plecher

50%/3.4 Bongo Racing Stable

55%/??? Kiarin McGlaughlin

55%/??? Mark Casse

62%/4.00 Richard Mandella

65%/???Reade Baker

65%/Mr or Ms. Average American Conventional Trainer

69%/3.25 Linda Rice

75%/2.88 Doug O'Neill

Photo is the younger Doug O'Neill. Unsurprising O'Neill sits at the bottom of the injury stats I looked at. Others have caught on to this fellow since. Nor is it any surprise whatsoever to any paying attention that Reade Baker Linda Rice and Mandella also sit near the bottom, although for different and varying reasons. Baker is one of those whose lack of appropriate husbandry and conditioning is obvious in the photos of his horses. The stats of Linda Rice show that her horses do very little breezing at all after racing begins. She is one of those many fairly good at initial race prep, but after racing begins fails to connect conditioning. Mandella's DVD shows very good intentions and effort but utter lack of knowledge concerning exercise physiology. What Mandella knows is right there in his charts, and it's very little. His injury rate is to be completely expected. There's little more common than a young Mandella horse dropping out of the TC picture due to early injury. Generally takes about one race.

And, you could go on up and analyze each one separately. What I am trying to do here, however, is to relate "injury rate" to frequency of speed work. First glance at these stats shows somewhat of questionable correlation. Is Catherine Day Phillips 3.54 speed works a month all that different from Mandella's 4???

Here lies the answer to this question, and it's something we see(saw) repeatedly in our sport. I use "saw" because the last two years at the upper levels things are changing a bit in terms of training. All of the above trainers are strictly conventional type trainers except two of them. This means that their training protocols are very similar If you omit Doug O'Neill as a careless aberration the frequency of speed works above ranges from 2.98/month to 4/month max for all but O'Gorman. And, almost all of them have about a 50%/year permanent injury rate.

If you look at each of these stables separately--as was done on this blog late 2008--the differences in injury rate can more be explained by trainers continuing to breeze, however infrequently, once racing begins--such as Mark Hennig, eg.--and those that forget about breeze work after racing begins such as Mandella, Linda Rice, and Read Baker in varying degrees. Again, this was 2 years ago. All of these are of late changing up in response to competition.

Thus, there is more difference in in the above stats in the way the trainers handled their horses after racing began than there is as a result of the "frequency" numbers given.

This is, however, no matter to the analysis, again because most of the above trainers had remarkably similar speed work training protocols in terms of frequency. They are mostly all what I have termed "conventional trainers" with some subtle variances in the way they approach.

The trainers who stand out as "different" or separating themselves from the bunch are Lukas and O'Gorman, and of course O'Neill on the other end of the scale. (BTW, I'm tempted to put Reade Baker in the same category as D. O'Neill, except unable as the stats are unavailable to analyze. I am fairly certain if Baker's training were exposed the results would be horrific.).

How O'Gorman and Lukas stand out, and the significance, next post!

Training:

12/11-12/14--4 days off due to weather, and an intentional break.

Wed. 12/15: Pasture romp. The ubiquitous and much feared bogeyman appears in the pasture in the person of myself bearing a whip. Up go the tails, and they're off! Exceptional speed from our Rollin' one. Nice short bursts until Rodney decides about 2/3 of my intended work, to quit. It's a problem that Rod refuses to run with the other horse. The forecast is out. Cold and mostly dry to 1/1. Terrific in terms of winter training!