More Analysis of Trainer Stats

Here they are again. What do we make of them? I'd forgotten to include trainer Joan Scott, who is included below.

Estimated permanent injury rate per year/number of breeze/races per month

as estimated from their websites, O'Gorman's book, Ross Staaden's "Winning Trainers", the DVD On The Muscle, and various horses that were followed on Equibase.

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

55%/3.25 Joan Scott

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

Examining these again, am wondering--any owner out there have less than a 50% permanent injury rate/year with their trainer? Or, any trainer reading the blog that can report consistently injuring less than 50%/year permanently? My own observations over the years are that the 65% estimated for Mr. or Ms. Conventional trainer is right on the mark or, if off, it's a little generous.

I'd more guess, although this might be a slight exaggeration gleaned from cynicism, that with Mr. or Ms. Average, the average horse will have some sort of injury within 3 months of hitting the stable--most, instead of all.

For owners, of course, this is a dreadful unsustainable injury rate. Reason we're out of owners, I'd say, although very few seem to recognize the problem, or they poo poo it as "just racing". We can always point to the few winning owners like so many proud winners of the lottery.

However, we're interested whether the above stats tell us anything about minimum training parameters.

To evaluate, the prior posts lumped all these trainers into a group as "conventional trainers" except Lukas and O'Gorman. With outstanding horse care, consistent training, and very regular speed work for the first five months for her horses, Catherine Day Phillips is buzzing along in 2010, as she did in 2008, with an outstanding comparative injury rate. Possibly we could say Day Phillips skirts or blurs the line a little, but, unfortunately, as you examine her PPs in many ways she "gets it" little better than the rest. Her performance parameters, that we'll get back to, show this. After racing begins Day Phillips is, primarily, conventional.

There are only 2 above--O'Gorman and Mandella--that average 4 or better times per month speed work. I must observe that "On The Muscle" fails to fully communicate what Mandella does. I stopped the DVD on those training logs of his and tried to magnify them, but they were still blurry and hard to read. I got better info by following his horses on Equibase and from that am guessing, if you watch Mandella closely, he knows very little what he's about, and is about as conventional a trainer as conventionals get that provide very excellent horse husbandry.

Next post--do these stats show anything? I think they do.

Training:

Sun. 1/16--13 degrees when i was at the farm, and we passed on training again. Rough week weather wise ahead, and then winter seems to be over. Will see how our intestinal fortitude to fight the weather this week goes. At this point, uncertain.