Trainer Analysis Continued

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

There are three groups of trainers listed above:

1. O'Gorman

2. Lukas

3. The rest.

And, note these are 2008 stats. Things are changing a bit, under pressure, as they had been changing even into 2008. Examining the above the first thing that strikes is that "The rest" group is going to permanently injure 50-60% of your stock every year. Meaning that, regardless of how much $$$ you invest, regardless of the day rate, or the individuals trainers skill at husbandry, if you give them 10 of your horses, you'll have 4 or 5 left for the next year, if you're lucky, with the hope being that the injured earn a few bucks before they go down.

The second thing to note is that none above average one time a week speed work except Mandella and O'Gorman, and that the closest to one time a week is the one with the best injury record, Catherine Day Phillips. Look at 'em close. We're analyzing now. Additionally, the one with the lowest per month speed work average (O'Neill) also has the worst injury rate by far.

Does one begin to see some correlation then between frequency and the amount, quantity or average speed work/month?

However, let's look at it a little closer. Were the speed works per month by these trainers gotten by consistent breezing e.g. every 8 or 9 days, or are these trainers in "The rest" group all over the place. The answer is "both". Some are consistent, some of their PPs such as Bruce Jackson show very little consistency. You might interpret e.g. that Bruce Jackson is either out to lunch or that he carefully taylors his specific program for the individual horse. Given his state of education--high--you'd suspect that latter, whereas with others of the inconsistent trainers you'd go with the "out to lunch".

The main point to consider is that if a trainer averages 3.25 speed works per month, does that mean the trainer breezes about every 8 or 9 days OR does it mean e.g. that the trainer speeds their horses every 7 days and then takes a week off per month. The difference in this is significant!

If the trainer does speed work every 7 days for the first 3 weeks of the month, and then merely skips a week, quite possibly this would be much closer to achieving FR than a trainer who that never does the minimum FR frequency of once a week. Huge difference. Put another way--if we're breezing our horse every 7 days and decide to give that one week off at the end of the month, right after a race maybe,--our horse, injury wise, probably is better off than in the barn that consistently does speed work 9 days or more apart.

To provide examples--certainly Todd Plecher is a trainer that consistently does speed work every 7 days but for the lengthy post race 2-3 week breaks from speed work that he gives his horses. In contrast Nicholas Zito, and let's say the old Zito for Zito too is changing and responding to competion, would never breeze a horse every 7 days and fairly consistently breezed or raced his horses with 9 day or more breaks.

In this regard, quite interestingly, O'Gorman's book in his older horse training section notes that since you have to daily adjust the O'Gorman twice a week speed work program to each horse and how they are specifically doing and feeling, O'Gorman, instead of being interested in a general rigid schedule, is interested only that the horse gets in the sufficient stated work over the long run. O'Gorman thus uses a point system where he assigns points depending on what the horse has done. A breeze gets so many points, a longer breeze gets more, etc., and each horse must achieve the goal of "points" over a period of time.

Thus, possibly by feel and experience, O'Gorman uses "long term averaging" of the number of speed works instead of a rigid schedule in a manner similar to which the "average number of speed works/month" were gotten above for each trainer. Continue next post.

Training.

Mon. 1/17/11. Suddenly warm this day. The horses were playing and doing little short sprints on my arrival. We went with the program and got in a pretty good pasture romp for the conditions. Several fairly lengthy :14 sec/f type licks with short bursts a little faster. After 7 days off this put relaxing detraining corpuscles on notice that we're at it again.