Belmont As A Training Baseline

Can we owner/trainer types take anything away from the Belmont in terms of performance?

I have one in my backyard that flies through deep mud and a second that struggles. One has small hoofs; the one that struggles has large hoofs. Explanation for Belmont results may be as simple as this--that the horses suited to the conditions quickly galloped to the front, and those unsuited stayed back or eventually faded. And certainly we note that big powerful horses such as Shackelford can power through anything for a while, but there is a cost as with each stride the big hoofed horse picks up a weight of mud that the smaller avoid due to hoof construction. There is also the issue of flat sole vs. concave sole, in that concavity of sole does large hoofed horses little favor on the off track surface.

Ruler On Ice definitely navigated easily through sloggy conditions but he also maintained his forward pace throughout the course of the race which also brings up the question of conditioning. The way that horse was galloping, and given my prior exam of Kelly Breen training, the first thought popping to my mind was steroids. The horse was coming off a layoff, but then it was only about 35 days, so, likely steroids was a non-issue.

The second thing that came to mind were the fractions. A conditioned horse should easily be able to maintain pace when fractions are a half second slow, and in this race there were frequently a full second slow. If you get on a horse there's a huge difference in stride type between :12.45/f and :12s. The first the horse is able to glide along with much less energy expenditure whereas the second is the beginnings of all out sprinting for the animals that I have been on.

Thus with ROI behind S's slow pace the whole way, we may imagine there was some energy left for the finish.

But, this still fails to explain how ROI, based on 3 speed works in 35 days was able to run 1.5 miles even if it was at about :12.5/f. One of the keys to this has to be the "slow day" training. My understanding is that Mr. Breen rides his own, and this gives a big big training advantage. First, the trainer is out there everday observing the horse instead of back at the barn mucking stalls. And second, trainer riding horse is able to pick up all the nuances and easily tell exactly where the horse is in terms of conditioning, breathing, ease of action and how long the horse can maintain it. Riding your own horse allows you to improve your horse every day, appropriately speed things up, through in those impromptu 2 min gallops, etc. etc.

Given the above possibly the lesson of this Belmont might be that these horses are able to perform to the limit of the time of the race as these conventional trainers train these days. Noted last post--they all primarily train the same--and, its an improvement from the 1990s to early 2000s. Now days you see the TC training generally breezing once a week even if they occasionally skip, its generally 5F in slightly slower the :12/f.

While this sort of training is hardly ideal for injury prevention, in terms of performance can we conclude that this sort of training provides a minimum baseline. Breeze the horse 5f in 1:01 on most weeks--i.e. every 7 days, race once a month, and you can get him around Belmont race track in :12.5s or a little faster. What happens if we trainer harder or softer is a different question.