Contrasting Day-Phillips

The embarrassing enormity of buying that idiot Rollin'Rodney for $3500.00 hits me, reading back through these posts, where I might have spent a "combined" $4427.00 to purchase the "best 3 year old filly in the world" Snow Fairy, AND Hollywood Horse of the Meet Bwana Charlie? Loss for words to describe except that we small fry in horse racing may take some assurance in cheap horses continuing to win big races.

Or, how about this one below?

Pictured is Catherine Day Phillips of King Farms fame with her Twenty Five Hundred ($2,500.00) dollar purchase Jambalaya which won the Arlington Million for her in 2007! Has possibly this attractive lady with her excellent 35% 2008 injury rate got it all figured out?

Possibly! Bears another look!

I'd originally also called this trainer a "benchmark" here:

http://ratherrapid.blogspot.com/2008/12/day-phillips-as-benchmark.html

Reading that post, and the prior posts on training of VanLear Rose (Breeder's Cup Juvenile Fillies) and other Day-Phillips horses where there was a fairly remarkable consistent injury avoiding plan for each horse, all impressive work by Day-Phillips.

Yet, Van Lear Rose finished up the track in the BC creating some red flags. This caused some closer analysis of the available info on Day-Phillips and finally I'd branded her another "conventional trainer"--in this case a Todd Plecher type without some of Plecher's questionable practices. Why?

Let's first acknowledge the requirements of logic. If conventional trainers injure horses, and, if Day-Phillips is conventional and she avoids injuries, how does that compute?

If Bill Pressey--comment last post--runs across this, I'd wonder what he thinks of my definitions of conventional trainers, or whether Bill even thinks in those same terms. I am really pigeon holing a lot of training styles here in an effort to make a point.

Back in 2008 in the Day-Phillips posts, to answer the Q, I'd pegged Day-Phillips as a conventional trainer because her PPs (past performances) indicate that although she tends to outdo most of them injury wise, in the end she engages in many of the same illogical practices as her peers. I am now forgetting the details--but this refers to such as e.g. last breezing 10 days out from a race, skipping a logical breeze, breezing way too slow, or too short etc. etc., those sorts of things that conventional trainers engage in as a holy grail.

I am interested to see what Day-Phillips horses are doing lately. Think it requires another look.

Training:

12/22: Off