Factors Affecting Training Programs

If T. J. Smith is leading trainer in Australia 33 years in a row, if Charlie Whittingham wins all of the big local stakes, or if Bob Baffert consistently cleans your clock, why would rational trainers avoid taking a step back from their own training program and analyze what these successful trainers are doing?

In the NFL it's called copy catting, and you may safely bet your paycheck that this year's Superbowl innovation will be next year's league wide protocol.

Yet with horses this rarely happens over the long haul. Instead, horse racing by and large has the same idiots performing the same idiot training year after year, decade after decade. Tom Ivers referred to it as an old conventional trainer having one year's experience multiplied 20 times.

And thus, for our new stable of 10 two year olds, let's assume--big assumption--that our trainer is one who does make the connection between exercise science and performance, that our trainer while understanding the difficulty of more complex training programs in actually winning races (last post), is there anything else that might cause such a trainer to refrain from exercise science and instead continue on the old beaten path of conventional training.? My own answer would be in the affirmative and the list of whys is long.

Briefly comment on the ones that come immediately to mind (there may be many more) without any particular order.

1. Copy Catting intelligent exercise programs ain't that easy. Consider the case of Australian trainer Gai Waterhouse, daughter of T.J. Smith born and raised in T.J.'s stable. Ms. Waterhouse is a trainer of note and seems to win an occasional big race. She is, however, hardly ever experiencing the sort of success of her father. Why? Success in athletics requires an intuitive process that I call an elevated dose of common sense and logic as it applies to sport that in truth is a talent of the few instead of something easily acquired or universally shared. If you possess this ability you will on a fairly continuous basis be astonished by the utter obtuseness of your training/managing/coaching peers.

While this may be a comment on the human condition in general it also has a specific athletic component. I'll leave it there except to note that I can watch a football team for 60 seconds and tell you whether they are well or poorly coached. Most of my peers cannot.

Moral of the story is that Gai Waterhouse may be trying copy T.J. Smith but lacking some of T.J.'s natural athletic talent which he likely ran into early on with his first horse name "Bragger" and with the horse background of his own father, the daughter Gai simply lacks some of the intuitiveness and attention to detail in aspiring to the level of success of her father--even though what she has done is still fairly impressive.(Gai Waterhouse in the photo).

Rest of the list, hopefully, next post.

Training:
Fri. 9/9: Off. Rain.