Preston Burch Again

Good to hear from Bill Pressey!  Will be watching the BC Sprint!

I think I will restart this blog, although there are so many sources of racehorse info now.  Had left off somewhere wanting to talk about performance and what it takes to get there.

We have two horses at Harmony Training Center:

Duke of Montevideo
Tee Pee Minister

Why Tee Pee?  Out of Tee Pee Tomahawk who won 50 grand.

The two horses are in differing sort of training.

Duke of M since around mid August is strictly in Preston Burch style training as set out for the horses Bold, Greek Sun etc. in Burch's book "Training Thoroughbreds".  Duke of M. has been breezing fast every other day to every third day (of late).  We are up to 2f with strong gallop outs to 4f in 12s.  The first vid is from Wednesday 10/7 with Duke of M doing straight 6s for each half F although the rider was asked to get 11s instead of 12s.  Heck to get a rider breezing to faster than 12s. Duke is breezing much faster than the Burch horses.  Although Burch goes every third day, the breezing e.g. will frequently be in :38 or :50 or slower. We've kept Duke strictly doing :12s, and this has worked out great to date.  So far, no heat, no swelling, no lameness, knocking on wood.

Tee Pee is being trained for longer races through acceleration workouts.  Tee Pee has been tough, but right now he's doing about 1/8 mile gallop with 1F accelerations thrown in.  The 1f so far are only to :14 speed.  Trying for :13 tomorrow.  We will increase the acceleration speed first to :12s and then go on to increase the distance of the accelerations.

Will see how these horses develop.

Vid #1 Duke of M's Wednesday Breeze:

The next vid is from Thurs. of TP throwing his rider.  As mentioned, this horse has been tough.  Big big horse 17'2" mind of his own.  Probably have to stop action on the vid to see the rider falling. Long way to fall. Cam corder too far away to get good shot.