Techniques Of Race Track Lead Changing

A former chess master name Josh Waitzkin has out an instructional DVD that I am plowing through. And, OMG. How do talented people achieve their status? Waitzkin at some point mastered the intricacies of this game down to the nth detail. Its other than that Waitzkin possesses some magical mental ability to anticipate a correct combo of moves. Instead, confronted with a position, what does he do? He figures it out. Simple as that.
He figures it out because he has internalized the names of the rank and files of the squares and with each move considers each in combo. That's 64 squares with various permutations. Certainly there's mental ability there, but primarily Waitzkin's game appears to be an obsession with detail greater than his opponent. His games primarily show more applied mental energy than his opponent instead of innate brilliance. The DVD shows step by step how Waitzkin mentally calculated each and every sequence purely by process of elimination to the best move in his better games.

By comparison for horse racing here is a training e.g. I just witnessed, and wish I'd saved the vid clip. In the barn area at Santa Anita a trainer is throwing up a rider for a breeze, and the rider is standing there talking about golf with the trainer also engaged in the golf conversation oblivious to the horse. I am thinking of this scene, how many times I've witnessed the same and considering the number of errors we're likely to get at the breeze that the horse hopefully will survive. What would be the owner's take when just before a crucial breeze before a major stakes race trainer and jock are talking about golf?

Breeze looks decent, and post breeze turns out the jock is Garrett Gomez. Lesson of this vid being perhaps if u can throw up a Hall of Fame jock, an equine version of Josh Waitzkin, then maybe it's ok to avoid worry. If on the other hand, u have Mr. or Ms. typical exercise rider, I am impressed with the degree of Waitzkin's detail. If we want to succeed is one of the things that pro sports requires is correct knowledge and application of technique to the nth detail?

One of these skills, of course is lead changing, and, though this series of posts is much longer than planned, I want to relate in the next post or two what I know about this important subject. It starts with the walk as the rider enters the race track knowing (and paying attention) that the trot MUST commence on the correct diagonal. If it starts on the wrong diagonal it will be physically impossible for the horse to get the correct lead at the start off the gallop.
Here's Waitzkin for anyone interests. Some good stuff in this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Waitzkin

Again, too long a post. Discuss Techniques, next post.
Training:
Thurs. 10/20: lengthy riderless with a few spurts + got on for first time in 4 days--about 10 min walk trot, not for the horse but because I again needed to stretch inner leg tendons on this ridiculously wide beast.