Getting Around The Race Track

In a perfect world--consider perfect form of horse and rider at left-- we'd train horses like Richard Mandella in "On The Muscle" DVD where Mandella sends his youngsters out in sets of three with hall of fame jocks aboard putting them through their paces.

Riding so in company certainly solves most training problems the easy way. Yet, I'd bet a fair amount of my fortune that even the likes of Mandella is able to schedule sets in this manner only on occasion for the reason that within the system of morning training it's mostly difficult to impossible to get your jock on your horse with any consistency, much less three jocks at once throughout the morning in tandem.

Supposedly this sort of thing happens daily at Newmarket. Let's just say there's a whole lot more cash flowing there to make that happen than most of us have available. If you can do it, if you can find riders dedicated to it, most of the training challenges following below will be a piece of cake. If on the other hand, you have but one rider just congratulate yourself that you can get that one to show up on a consistent basis at a consistent time.

The way I have done this in the past is with cash. For small fry with a little money laying around the strategy is to buy your way onto the race track, and when you get their you purchase the training of your horse. Very early on in my Prairie Meadows days as a lowly owner it quickly dawned on me that the minute you pass that guard shack everybody there has their hand in your back pocket.

My method at the race track generally was 1. to recognize the crucial nature of good riding in terms of injury prevention. If, out of desperation, you wind up with the plentiful supply of idiot riders remind yourself it only takes but one stupidity in flash of a second to put your horse out of commission.

2. To ideally find a young aspiring jock without too many mounts, and then to pay that individual plenty to get on your horse, and, of course, also to actually show up. I have also used the strategy of using jocks near retirement that are losing mounts and need cash.

The young variety you can sometimes find by scouting the various jock agent's third stringers, the problem being in the morning you're often stuck with waiting on that young jock till the agent is through sending the rider in company with the big outfits. The older jocks needing money are more consistent in the time of their appearance, but you're more stuck there with the on-track proclivities of your rider as they grey beards tend to be more quite a bit less receptive to your specific instructions. The ideal is the older jock that naturally does what you want done without asking. I had such a very decent experience for a couple of years with ancient jock Terry McGee, whom can be googled. McGee was 110 lbs., was naturally obsessed with getting leads. All good, except when he got to racing it was heck to get him to warm a horse up. Always something.

Next post, rider hits the track. Then what?

Training:
Sun. July 31 Off. Decided to go next morning in cool.
Mon. Aug. 1: Riderless 10 min with a few spurts. Horses enthusiastic after time away from riderless paddock. I overdid my roadwork last night, and with leg sore and feeling like jelly, declined to get on. Decent w/o!