The List

10 new two year olds to train in the shed row, and reasons why our good trainer avoids exercise science. The list is getting longer. To summarize to date;

1. Does the trainer make the mental connection between performance and the training program?
2. Does the trainer have the ability--mental, intuitive, attention to detail, etc.--to carry out the program?
3. Duplicating a rational training program has its inexplicable difficulties.
4. Track experience militates against "programs". Do they ever work in terms of wins?
4. Does the trainer have the motivation, given their emphasis is more on earning a living than creating an athlete.
5. The numbers game and short shelf life of the race horse.

and, there's more. Here's a really big one:

6. Owners. Our good trainer of the ten 2 yr. olds has an owner that without a doubt has some "ideas" how they want their horses trained. And, very likely, those ideas have a lot more to do with making a quick buck than they have anything at all to do with athletics. Here you have your trainer of one of your horses embarking on a rational six month training program designed to avoid injury and get performance and the owner appears trackside one day and exclaims, "what the heck is going on with my horses". How come have they yet to race."

Or, for our good agricultural owners--the farmers who supply two or three foals a year, and, since they get up with the cows and are in bed before the NFL games get televised and are themselves with zero experience in athletics--what the heck, are you trying to kill my horse. These sorts have very ingrained ideas on "training", and they expect their their trainer to comply.

The moral of this story is, the idea of keeping the "owner" happy is also likely the interfere with the thought process of what would constitute the "program".

Training:
Lot's of rain around here last 4 days. Horses have trained riderless in mud at speed and we've walk-trotted under tack each day that we trained. Idea of racing the horse hanging on by the fingernails but hope still there.
Sun. 9/18: Off. Rain. Wet, slippery.