On With Race Horse Injury

If you own or train a horse the idea is to keep them injury free, keep them running. My most consistent observation since 1982 when I started in the sport as a handicapper at Ak Sar Ben, is that horses that race consistently will win. I saw early evidence one day when Mary The Twit at her usual 50-1 ran away with a $5000.00 claimer after two years of futility but consistent racing by that horse. They'd wheeled her out there every other week for two straight years, managed to keep her healthy as she never ran fast enough to get hurt, and finally she did win.

The question involves what is minimum frequency of speed work required to achieve race appropriate fracture resistance (FR)? I'd speculated that it was possibly "once a week"--every 7 days of at least 4f in at least :12.5/f, quite similar to what Catherine Day Philips does with all her horses for the first five months of her program.

The Q here is--do the trainer stats tell us anything? Can we divine that if our horse averages speed work 4.3 time/month that it is likely to stay healthy?

I'd posted, of the stats I looked at, there is Bill O'Gorman and "all the rest". But, there's D.W. Lukas also, who I differentiate for his slow day work in that Lukas sends his horses to the track mostly for 1.5 miles averaged 22 days/month in 1988. Very few trainers give their horse this frequent amount of track work including yours truly, and so, I think Lukas training is a little different than your average Mr. or Ms. Conventional Trainer.

The Q came up that it is a surprise that Lukas has a 43% per year (better than most) permanent injury rate because he injures a lot of horses. Well--Lukas had a lot of horses. To explain--my exam of Lukas's 1988 training logs for his CA stable--published in Ross Staaden's book "Winning Trainers"--and following a few of those horses on Equibase for verification--showed a 50% per year disappearance rate. Since horses disappear for other reasons besides injury, I gave Lukas the same 7% benefit of the doubt that I gave all the trainers looked at, and came up with 43%. The detailed posts here on Lukas training appear in late 2006 and early 2007.

Next post I'll look at the trainers as a group and try to make some solid conclusions concerning their injury stats.

Training:

Tues: 1/4: Off--they escaped the paddock.

Wed. 1/5: 19 min walk trot.

Thurs. 1/6: 1.5 miles riderless spurts + 3 times slow gallop up the hill.

Fri. 1/7: Off.

Sat. 1/8 In 18 degree weather we decide riderless only. They did some spurts before the older horse showed slight lameness on left front and was removed. Rodney then did a continuous 3.5 miles with what have become his antics when he's running alone. He pulls up his tail and prances at the trot thinking he's fooling me not having to run unless I am there within 15 yards running with him, i.e. he pulls himself up out of the gallop. And so, we had just short spurts mostly. Should have done tack work as Mr. Nob was quite warmed up after all this, but late start. Try it tomorrow weather willing. Winter interruptus on the way to KC!