Animal Kingdom Training
We look to training with regard to 1. injury prevention and 1. performance.
Animal Kingdom training (posted last post) indicates that since February 3, 2011 AK performed speed work a total of 11 times including his races to and including Preakness Day. This would be 11 speed events in 107 days or an average of one speed event every 9.8 days. That is 3.06 speed events per month.
We know--if you go by this blog (big if, we understand)--that AK is working significantly below minimum speed work requirements for injury prevention in terms of frequency, which requires, as a minimum, speed work to average taking place once per week or 4.3 times per month average. AK in terms of speed work frequency is near the bottom of what we generally see in terms of frequency for animals at this level which sometimes dips into the 2.8-2.88, in that neighborhood, speed works per month. You rarely see anything lower than that at this level, and AK is right there.
With this insufficient injury prevention protocol how is AK holding together in a literal sense? A couple of observations: 1. AK's racing style has been almost the easiest possible on a horse's legs--in both Preakness and Derby circumstances (the Derby trip) or Zenyatta style racing in the Preakness, the horse was able to gallop along at a slow pace and give extended effort for but a few furlongs at the end of each race. 2. What does show in the speed work up to that 6F in 1:13 on the Saturday right before the Derby is that AK's breezes and races ertr particularly well spaced and very appropriately speeded up for a couple of them. There is a nice well planned--in terms of minimalist type training--speed work that, may we say, maximizes what injury prevention is to be got from this sort of conventional training.
Does G. Motion off day galloping contribute anything to injury prevention or performance? What AK did between Derby and Preakness shows that G. Motion training on the off days is much more in the nature of "bare maintenance" sort of galloping than anything logically moving a horse forward or contributing to injury prevention. The horse gets out of his stall onto the race track, and we give kudos to that in a comparative sense, but in terms of what the horse does when he gets to the track, I would have to categorize G. Motion work here only in terms of "bare minimums" in terms of performance and well below minimums for injury prevention. Could a horse possibly do less than AK and still perform???
What if anything do we take away from the training of this animal? AK training, for openers, seems to me an interesting benchmark of the lowest you can go in terms of track work and speed work and still get something from the horse. Note after the Derby that G. Motion, once the horse got on the track the Wednesday after the Derby after three days off, off time which seems reasonable, sent the horse to the track every single day to the Preakness. I avoid recommending this sort of constant galloping protocol for a number of physiological reasons, but we take note that the animal is doing something every day and gaining some minimum benefits in that sort of constant doing.
And, if you have the extraordinarily talented animal such as AK, obviously this minimalist work done by G. Motion was enough to get the Derby victory and there was enough left over in terms of conditioning, albeit much weaker galloping in the stretch than in the Derby, to run past the Preakness field.
I tend to give high praise to any trainer that wins a major race--whatever you want to say about them, they pulled it off that day, and there's something to be learned from each such victory. However, for G. Motion--and fail to know him personally from Adam--in terms of the man's training I continue my own large contempt. Here is a trainer with one of the most talented animals in any year skating on the bare edge of both injuring the horse and actually actively compromising the horse's performance merely by an unimaginative mostly stupid training schematic, and that can be said even with the couple two or three nicely timed and performed breezes. It's mostly bad instead of all bad.
This evaluation above--we'll see if it stands the test of time. G. Motion's history is that his horses occasionally rear their heads and win a race. That's what imho happens when you get to race against 10 peers that train as questionably as you do. Somebody's got to win. In AK's case I suspect we'll hear very little from this talented horse going forward due to the training, and we keep our fingers crossed the horse holds together with this sort of nonsense. I'll come back to this post in the future when we see more from AK as to accuracy of this analysis.
Training;
Fri. 5/27--mud and bad going, but we could have gone and declined. A day of trainer implosion.
There'll be 3.5 days now between track work.
Animal Kingdom training (posted last post) indicates that since February 3, 2011 AK performed speed work a total of 11 times including his races to and including Preakness Day. This would be 11 speed events in 107 days or an average of one speed event every 9.8 days. That is 3.06 speed events per month.
We know--if you go by this blog (big if, we understand)--that AK is working significantly below minimum speed work requirements for injury prevention in terms of frequency, which requires, as a minimum, speed work to average taking place once per week or 4.3 times per month average. AK in terms of speed work frequency is near the bottom of what we generally see in terms of frequency for animals at this level which sometimes dips into the 2.8-2.88, in that neighborhood, speed works per month. You rarely see anything lower than that at this level, and AK is right there.
With this insufficient injury prevention protocol how is AK holding together in a literal sense? A couple of observations: 1. AK's racing style has been almost the easiest possible on a horse's legs--in both Preakness and Derby circumstances (the Derby trip) or Zenyatta style racing in the Preakness, the horse was able to gallop along at a slow pace and give extended effort for but a few furlongs at the end of each race. 2. What does show in the speed work up to that 6F in 1:13 on the Saturday right before the Derby is that AK's breezes and races ertr particularly well spaced and very appropriately speeded up for a couple of them. There is a nice well planned--in terms of minimalist type training--speed work that, may we say, maximizes what injury prevention is to be got from this sort of conventional training.
Does G. Motion off day galloping contribute anything to injury prevention or performance? What AK did between Derby and Preakness shows that G. Motion training on the off days is much more in the nature of "bare maintenance" sort of galloping than anything logically moving a horse forward or contributing to injury prevention. The horse gets out of his stall onto the race track, and we give kudos to that in a comparative sense, but in terms of what the horse does when he gets to the track, I would have to categorize G. Motion work here only in terms of "bare minimums" in terms of performance and well below minimums for injury prevention. Could a horse possibly do less than AK and still perform???
What if anything do we take away from the training of this animal? AK training, for openers, seems to me an interesting benchmark of the lowest you can go in terms of track work and speed work and still get something from the horse. Note after the Derby that G. Motion, once the horse got on the track the Wednesday after the Derby after three days off, off time which seems reasonable, sent the horse to the track every single day to the Preakness. I avoid recommending this sort of constant galloping protocol for a number of physiological reasons, but we take note that the animal is doing something every day and gaining some minimum benefits in that sort of constant doing.
And, if you have the extraordinarily talented animal such as AK, obviously this minimalist work done by G. Motion was enough to get the Derby victory and there was enough left over in terms of conditioning, albeit much weaker galloping in the stretch than in the Derby, to run past the Preakness field.
I tend to give high praise to any trainer that wins a major race--whatever you want to say about them, they pulled it off that day, and there's something to be learned from each such victory. However, for G. Motion--and fail to know him personally from Adam--in terms of the man's training I continue my own large contempt. Here is a trainer with one of the most talented animals in any year skating on the bare edge of both injuring the horse and actually actively compromising the horse's performance merely by an unimaginative mostly stupid training schematic, and that can be said even with the couple two or three nicely timed and performed breezes. It's mostly bad instead of all bad.
This evaluation above--we'll see if it stands the test of time. G. Motion's history is that his horses occasionally rear their heads and win a race. That's what imho happens when you get to race against 10 peers that train as questionably as you do. Somebody's got to win. In AK's case I suspect we'll hear very little from this talented horse going forward due to the training, and we keep our fingers crossed the horse holds together with this sort of nonsense. I'll come back to this post in the future when we see more from AK as to accuracy of this analysis.
Training;
Fri. 5/27--mud and bad going, but we could have gone and declined. A day of trainer implosion.
There'll be 3.5 days now between track work.
posted by rather rapid at
11:42 AM
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