"When asked, "How do you write?" I invariably answer, "One word at a time," and the answer is invariably dismissed. It sounds too simple to be true, but consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time, man. But I've read you can see that mother****** from space without a telescope."
— Stephen King
That is what thoroughbred conditioning is to me: building an equine Great Wall one stone at a time. A stone is a breeze or race that results in the horse coming back days later stronger, fitter, and sounder. Doesn’t seem like much, a breeze every 6 days, 12 races a season (ideally) – but boy, oh boy can the results add up to something significant as most former Triple Crown champs followed a similar course back in the old days.
One key, of course, is not to drop any of these stones on your foot, because then it’s either off to the farm – or off to the pharmacy and a career filled with multiple injections and stall time designed to simply survive to the next race. See Revenge, I Want.
So, one has to be careful or aggressive, and often the decision is an economic one. It’s much easier to drill on a big sound colt in your backyard who you bought for $20k than it is to drill on a $200k purchase for a deep pocketed owner with the whole world watching.
Where am I going with this? To two descendants of Indian Charlie on the 2011 Derby trail: Comma To the Top and Uncle Mo. Two trainers, Peter Miller and Todd Pletcher. Two owners, a relatively unknown Hollywood partnership and Mike Repole (who I really like, by the way) – he’s no IEAH or David Lanzman.
Interestingly enough, Comma To the Top is gelded – so no stallion career here, we may see this gem race 50 times by age 5. I suspect no one endeavoring to develop a stallion prospect would race 10 times at 2, and breeze 6F in January of a 3yo campaign, this isn’t 1930.
Pedigree, Shmedigree.
Here we have the genetics of Indian Charlie in two colts – so ideally we have a fairly similar starting point. Regular readers know I put little emphasis on breeding: genetics simply set the blueprint for what is possible – but conditioning/racing dictates how much of that blueprint is developed, or squandered.
Let’s take just one simple measurable (at autopsy) physiological trait: the number and function of mitochondria in muscles. Mitochondria are the energy powerhouses that take oxygen from the blood and transfer it into muscular energy which propels a horse down the track.
Genetics may dictate a colt is born with 20 of these things in a particular muscle, but appropriate physical conditioning increases this number, if done correctly. The more you ask the equine body to produce mitochondria – they more it gives you. The more it gives you, the greater your ‘cruising speed’ as Todd Pletcher astutely calls it. I define this as V200 – how fast you can travel when your oxygen carrying system is maxed out and you must tap into that 3-4F of anaerobic burst most thoroughbreds possess.
And you aren’t asking for much development when breezing a short 4F every 10 days and only racing 2-3 times in your 2 year old year. You are playing it safe to avoid injury and maximize residual value should you capture your black type.
When it comes time to physical conditioning the paths of Comma To the Top and Uncle Mo diverge very quickly. Who has developed more mitochondria since birth and therefore possesses more stamina at this moment in time? Let’s enumerate the training/racing schedules of each:
Uncle Mo – No DRF recorded workouts for this one. But Pletcher says he should get his first 3F move since last November’s Breeders Cup victory at Palm Meadows this upcoming week.
| Horse Name | Date | Track | Dist | Time | Surf | Cond. | B/H | |
| Comma to the Top | 01/25/2011 | HOL | 6F | 1:10.40 | All Weather Track | Fast | H | |
| 01/19/2011 | HOL | 6F | 1:14.80 | All Weather Track | Fast | H | | |
| 01/13/2011 | HOL | 5F | :59.80 | All Weather Track | Fast | B | | |
| 01/07/2011 | HOL | 4F | :48.40 | All Weather Track | Fast | B | | |
| 12/12/2010 | HOL | 5F | :59.40 | All Weather Track | Fast | H | | |
| 12/06/2010 | HOL | 4F | :48.20 | All Weather Track | Fast | H | | |
| 11/21/2010 | HOL | 5F | :59.40 | All Weather Track | Fast | H | | |
| 11/15/2010 | HOL | 4F | :48.40 | All Weather Track | Fast | H | | |
| 11/01/2010 | HOL | 4F | :47.40 | All Weather Track | Fast | H | |
Career race results:
Uncle Mo - Race Results & Past Performances
[Add Race Result][Add Horse]
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Comma To The Top - Race Results & Past Performances
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Race info courtesy of Horse Racing Nation.
Comma To the Top also had 3 earlier races not reflected here, they were claiming class also – one of us could now own a Derby prospect with $500k+ in earnings for the princely sum of $30k or so, what a great sport this is!-
Where do I get this equine Great Wall metaphor from? Here is a graph from an equine science journal out of Cambridge, Mass:
![[overcompensation.gif]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2ChZTxtYjiutRYNQrmmqpTMd-0-pu_dRtbFrp8j1CaNsS4g6Q5DmN9anfFO2PJ_wEzdF_bQJnnEQuQCn3_8wwpA2m1x9OrNv4pKkYxcEhEP8qFft1huB4XTcC7G0FLcr_Loh64ASyyB0V/s1600/overcompensation.gif)
Training load is a breeze/race and the x-axis is elapsed time in days. You see, after a piece of work and the resulting fatigue, there is a period of Overcompensation where the systems of the body make positive adaptations in order to make successive training loads easier to achieve. More mitochondria being one such change. But, if you wait too long before adding another Training Load, you lose the overcompensation effect – and the benefits of cumulative fitness, as seen below in graphical form:
![[frequency.gif]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3SagJLe_YlhKWCv12pKLLrBh6quBGqCU282xttbKJUJvjOhpGtTpamExCyU5K11l01T907QQEHXw9_PNN0dweZ6OmlrZSp895x9zehyj9kaVJLKrBkwh7z_8kPI2zV6M8NcQ57p1LHRKu/s1600/frequency.gif)
Uncle Mo is line A – few and widely spaced works/breezes resulting in less than optimal fitness development over time.
Comma To the Top is line B – more races, more works, more closely spaced together in an effort to capitalize on the concept of Overcompensation.
Line C is what happens if you breeze/race too much, too often and breakdown occurs – not too common these days – referred to as ‘overtraining’ by most in the industry.
Both have 2 year old experience on dirt, which Nunamaker at New Bolton has proven is best for building strong bones, ligaments, and tendons. I suspect that Comma has many more breezes over this surface during his formative years, however, that does Uncle Mo.
Now Uncle Mo seems destined to a dirt prep season (which I recommend) – and so far Comma is back to synthetics at Hollywood. I hope the connections see fit to try him on dirt again before the Derby (Santa Anita perhaps), or at least train on the dirt loop at Hollywood in order to maximize neuromuscular coordination on that surface going into Churchill.
My two cents: a 50% chance that Uncle Mo will get injured during his prep for the Derby. If he does survive unscathed, Pletcher will lose a few others in his place. He’ll only breeze 4-6F a few times, he’ll only race twice – and I think he comes up lame in the process. I hope not, but that is what I forsee.
I can’t blame Pletcher, with his 2yo exploits, Mo seems like a fantastic specimen that I would be afraid to drill on too much also. Baffert, Lukas, Assmussen, and Pletcher himself win big races with such a prep schedule every year anyway, so they have no reason to change after listening to a nobody like myself.
However, I will be pulling hard for Comma To the Top as his campaign to this point clearly illustrates the one advantage the little guy has over the big operations: conditioning – you can spend more time and effort on each one when you don’t have 200 prospects spread out over 4 strings nationwide. It doesn’t cost one additional dime to train in this manner, simply takes the will and the effort to stand out from the crowd.
With his foundation of race specific works and races, he has the mettle to enter and be competitive at all three classics, while no other lightly trained horse could even run in all three last year. Look for him to be breezing miles in April while most others are still working 4F.
Say Comma To the Top pulls of a Mine that Bird type spring and fall – will trainers then emulate his aggressive prep program, or stay with the Pletcher model?
Traditional horsemanship has pegged Uncle Mo as worth 10x that of Comma To the Top as evidenced by the auction results. Will that stand up throughout the 2011 racing season?
So many questions, and so many answers to follow. I love horseracing.
Posts
Update:
ReplyDeleteTrainer Peter Miller said Wednesday that the $250,000 Robert Lewis Stakes over 1 1/8 miles at Santa Anita or the $200,000 El Camino Real Derby over 1 1/8 miles at Golden Gate Fields will be Comma to the Top’s next start.
The decision will be based on how Comma to the Top works later this month on Santa Anita’s newly installed sand-and-clay track, Miller said. The El Camino Real is run over a Tapeta synthetic surface.
“I’ll breeze him at Santa Anita, and we’ll see how he breezes and how the race comes up,” Miller said.
A start over 1 1/8 miles will be the longest race of Comma to the Top’s career. Comma to the Top has won 6 of 10 starts and $551,600, including his final three starts of 2010. The winning streak includes the Grade 1 CashCall Futurity at Hollywood Park on Dec. 18.
“He’s going to have to try it,” Miller said of 1 1/8 miles.
Miller said he intends to give Comma to the Top two races before the $1 million Santa Anita Derby on April 9, in advance of the Kentucky Derby on May 7.
“I’d like to run him three times before the Derby,” Miller said.
Bill,
ReplyDeleteThe last 3 Triple Crown winners all made their 3y.o. debuts in March, all three times it was in a sprint.
SECRETARIAT raced three times, total of 24 furlongs in seven weeks prior to the Derby.
SEATTLE SLEW, the most closely related to UNCLE MO's development, 25 furlongs in 8 1/2 weeks before the Derby.
AFFIRMED ran 33 furlongs in 8 1/2 weeks leading up to the 1st Saturday in May.
If UNCLE MO adheres to the two prep schedule, he'll get just 17 1/2 furlongs (1 1/16 miles Tampa Bay Derby and a 9 furlongs prep). I agree w/ you, that's just not enough if the past can predict the future.
As for COMMA TO THE TOP, running 1 1/8 miles first time this year is really not the way to build the wall you're talking about. If he runs three times starting on February 12, he'll have three prep races at 9 furlongs (27 furlongs) which puts the mileage on him. However, horses tend to spoil and it's difficult for me to project Peter Miller (even with his skill) keeping COMMA at the top of his game for 77 days, about a month longer than Hall of Fame trainers Lucien Laurin and Laz Barrera kept SECREATARIAT and AFFIRMED going, respectively.
'MO and 'COMMA have tremendous stamina on the bottom of the pedigrees, both have a chance of inheriting PRINCEQUILLO's "larged heart gene." That fact could be the great equalizer allowing them to tire at a relatively slow pace.
Pedigree is important. Geldings can not run in The Derby(England).
ReplyDeleteDo you think this rule requires amending to world wide concensus. Surely the breed is the important thing here.
Horse racing in the USA is a big business when compared to other countries. Those other countries do seem to appear to realise that entire colts can only run in a race of this type. it is good for the business.
AC, great input as always-
ReplyDeleteI am more concerned with the 2 year old regimens as that is the key window to foster strong bone development and soft tissue strength. All the TC champs you detail I feel had 2 year old seasons more like Comma than that of Mo.
I don't believe Comma's 6F breezes on synthetics during the month of Jan are going to cause him to spoil.
Large hearts are only one piece of the puzzle, as a big time horseman told me: "We thought we had the big secret with large heart and vet scans in the 80's, now I have a barn full of large heart and thin ventricular walls and none an run worth a lick"
Just because a large heart is found in all great champs doesn't mean there aren't any large hearts at Beulah and Turfway, too.
Furthermore, pedigree is a roll of the dice, you win or you lose - once they are born you are stuck with those results. Now, training comes into play and can help you maximize the hand you are dealt from genetics.
ReplyDeleteIt is my opinion that these days appropriate conditioning practices are minimized and over-reliance on drugs has become the norm.
Comma to The Top follows my model(sort of) and Uncle Mo follows the other.
Again, if that approach worked and horses were running Derby times in under 2:00 - I would shut my trap as this method would then be proven to be superior.
How much of a role can pedigree play when all thoroughbreds are out of the same 3 foundation stallions?
We have bred the best to the best for 80 years and still wind up with NO horses out of 30,000 per year that can run 10 consecutive 12 second furlongs - Princequillo's 'large hearted gene' or not.
Bill,
ReplyDeleteIn regards to genetics, i think that you slightly underplay its importance in thoroughbred performance.
There is no doubt that superior performance is going to be polygenic and most likely to be involving gene/gene interactions which would also include nuclear/mitochondria interactions, but genetics will ultimately be a limiting factor that no matter how good a trainer/environment is, will see the horses with the right polymorphisms for performance beat those with sub optimal polymorphisms at the highest level.
If genetics is a score from 1 to 10 with 1 being poor and 10 being optimal, and environment is the same score from 1 to 10, genetics is going to be what is the most important, as by your own admission the environment (i.e the way they are trained), doesn't vary enough at the highest level. If Todd Pletcher provides a "9" on the environment scale and has a horse who is a "3" on the genetic scale (he can we well bred but have inherited poor genetics as you point out) and another trainer a "6" but has a horse with a genetic score of "9", the lesser trainer is going to beat Todd Pletcher with his horse just about every day.
The number of mitochondria in muscles is as you state, determined by genetics, but so is the ability to create more (regulation of mitochondia). You can certainly train your way to create more mitochondria but this is regulated by the genetics you are given in the first place - there is not some type of free for all here that will let you train your way to mitochondrial superiority (forgetting that this alone would not mean superior performance).
Genetics is the first "limiter" there is. As you say, "once they are born you are stuck with those results." This raises the question of if it would be better to know in the first place if a horse has the "right genetics" to do what you want it to do or indeed when considering the matings of thoroughbreds the percentage chance of the resultant foal having the "right genetics".
Moreso, this all points to a stunning lack of investment by the thoroughbred industry in genetics and physiology, from the way we breed to the way we train horses, but I suspect you already knew that!
Exactly Byron, when training is a constant among the best horses then genetics wins the day.
ReplyDeleteWhen I discount genetics I speak in terms of the idea trainers have that "hell he's out of Sire ABC so he'll either get the Derby distance or not and there is nothing we can do about it."
Or the idea that you can spend time planning the perfect mating, but then be at the mercy of the 25% chance you may/may not get what you are asking for.
Finally with Comma to the Top we have an instance where the training/racing prep has been radically different than the others, so the results should be interesting.
Again, so true that 'trainability' is certainly a genetic trait and can influence whatever mitochondrial development you can muster after birth. I realize that mitochondrial superiority (cool term by the way) does not alone mean superior performance.
I would love to see a physiological assessment of foals and yearlings in an effort to collect enough objective data to determine which prospects are worth continuing on, and which are incapable of significant further development.
My experiences means I would use heart rate and blood lactate numbers during exercise. This manner gives you a number that combines all the factors of heart size, blood chemistry, neuromuscular coordination, mitochondrial density, confirmation, etc. Or perhaps adding in thermogrpahic images from a FLIR and/or bone density scans?
Taylor Made could do this for clients and advise them on who they should keep to race, for instance.
Unfortunately, with the preferred method of sales being auctions - I doubt we can ever see this in place.
Something can happen to improve ROI on racehorse purchases. I can think of only one horse ever sold at auction for $1mil plus that earned that money back - Fusaichi Pegasus.
Similarly, I can think of several: Big Brown, Curlin, Zenyatta, that sold at some point for $50k and were superstars.
Correct me if I am wrong Byron, but what we would like to pinpoint is whether or not certain genes have been passed on to offspring, AND that those genes are adding up to superior athletic ability, correct? If so, we would need an objective way to define athletic performance, not potential.
ReplyDeleteFor instance, the NFL has a combine to measure athleticism - hoping in translates to playing the sport. But there is no such program for a professional mile runner, fast is fast.
Lance Armstrong has such a number I wrote about last year:
http://horsetrainingscience.blogspot.com/2010/03/what-can-rachel-alexandra-learn-from.html
Of course he is strictly an endurance athlete, not like a thoroughbred.
Bill, For 80 years everybody trains the same way. This type of training is not conducive for a horse to run 10- 12 second furlongs. In the past 30 years humans and sled dogs going a route of ground have run faster not horses. Horse trainers do not think out of the box.
ReplyDeleteBill
ReplyDeleteGenetically, the horse has one advantage over the human. They have been selected to race for over 300 years. Humans have rather diverse genetic profiles whereas the horse, or more specifically the thoroughbred, has been selected, whereby variants that developed the superior thoroughbred have been kept in the gene pool and those that have more influence on inferior performance have been selected out.
In some cases this is not a complete deletion of the variant within the gene pool. To give you an example there is a muscling gene within the thoroughbred that carries a variant that is either an AA, AG or GG. The GG variant is in a very high percentage of the population, almost 80%, the AG variant is in almost 20% of the population and the AA variant is in a very small percentage, less than 5% of the entire population. However, the AA variant seems to be a legacy of the Shire, who shares the AA variant at the same position and was a horse that was used to develop the thoroughbred many years ago. Thoroughbreds with the AA variant in this muscling gene are invariably big but slow horses who are barely able to break their maiden, let alone get anywhere near stakes class. This AA variant is over represented in the American gene pool where tall, large horses seem to have come in favor over the last 20-30 years so in some ways we are selecting back in deleterious gene variants. This is just one example of genetics that will limit the performance of the thoroughbred. Thankfully from a matings perspective, there must be some regulation of this AA variant during meiosis. In mating two AG horses you would expect to get an AA 25% of the time, there is some regulation of this whereby it inherits to AA at a much lower rate.
From a genetic standpoint, separating out GrI horses from GrIII horses is almost an impossible mission unless it is a case of rare variants making the difference and capturing these rare variants is quite difficult (but not impossible) even with current genetic methods. Sprinters are much harder to separate out again over stayers/routers as the latter use different systems to excel and finally the environment that they are raised in/race in blurs the picture again.
I think that if you could define what superior is to you at least (it could be colts as three year olds at 10 furlongs for an example, or fillies at 6f as another) and balance out the environmental factors (training, etc) then finding the variants within genes that control key systems should be possible. It would be a case of taking a group of superior horses (good colt sprinters or good route fillies) and then a group of inferior horses of the same subset and comparing variants found within. You would need a significant sample to do this but it is possible with current technology. Once we know what these certain variants are, and what type of polygenic profile/combination of variants (possibly cumulative) is required for the horse to be a superior athlete it is a case of setting up a blind test on horses not previously tested but with known performance to ensure that what we have found is indeed right.
The racetrack results would be one thing that you could then compare. It would be equally as instructive to look at horses with large hearts (which is certainly not regulated like it has been printed in the X-Factor and that type of rubbish) to see what not only regulates heart size but also contractibility. You could also look at lactate thresholds, mitochondria, etc - whatever can be compared as good and bad and has an influence on the performance of the thoroughbred. Each of these comparisons at a molecular level would start to develop a system of selection for thoroughbreds.
ReplyDeleteThe major problem with most racing programs is that they don’t have a stated goal and their buying patterns struggle to reconcile with this. We had a client a few years ago who said he wanted to win the Derby and the first horse he had bought before he came to us was a sprinting filly! Most people get into this game without the single-mindedness required to win. If a racing and breeding program was solely designed around a singular goal, like say winning the Kentucky Derby, then there is no reason why application of genetic and training principles wouldn’t deliver superior results to the norm.
Byron-
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for taking the time to reply, I am learning quite a bit about your end of the game. What I don't understand is that you have two entities who I assume want to win the American Classics, Godolphin and Winstar - who build or re-do onsite training track and put down Polytrack and Tapeta.
Safer for the horses, possibly. Less desirous of optimal bone redevelopment, probably. Certainly it flies in the face of the concept of specificity - training on a surface other than dirt and expecting optimal dirt success.
I see you face the same issues: stated preferences for one goal followed by behavior that often contradicts that stated purpose.
Winstar even achieves their goal with Super Saver, and he spends all his times on various dirt strips around the country before his black type victory.
Just to chime in on the recovery/supercompensation model (which is spot on from what I know about human athletes), we should note that recovery rates from excercise are also somewhat genetically predetermined.
ReplyDeleteI remember a horse we had in England called Golden Garter, who ran 17 times at two, including six times from August 1 to Sept 1, which included two wins, a second, and a third in the Gimcrack Stakse. On August 31, he was unplaced in the Champion Stakes (listed race), and came back the next day to win condistion race. They said that he problem with his Champion Stakes run was that he need the race (off a 12 day break)!
Later in the year, he was fourth in the Middle Park Stakes (gr. I) and the next weekend second in the Rockingham Stakes, his sixteenth race of the year.
Obviously that kind of program would have ruined most horses in short order, but he could just bounce back. We see the same thing with human athletes, especially in things like the Tour de France, where a superlative cyclist like Chris Boardman (Olympic Gold Pursuit Gold Medallist; rode fastest ever prologue in the Tour de France) was never a long term factor in the tour, because he was not good at recovery.
So basically, where the supercompensation model is right in principal, the correct application is going to differ from individual to individual, because of recovery rates (which are genetically pre-determined). So an appropriate training program for individuals of similar performance could represent appropriate stimulus for one, overtraining for another, and undertraining for a third. In the same way, a lot of horses that don't show much initially, are going to be genetically pre-determined to be "super-responders" and make more than average improvement with training.
I'd foresee a time when really smart trainers devise programs (and possibly race-tactics) based around a horses physiological/genetic profile. After all, they don't generally have the luxury of experimenting over several years, as do trainers of humans. I'd see this saving a tremendous amount of wastage.
Well said Alan-
ReplyDeleteEverything differs according to the individual horse, however in my experience most get the 1.5 mile gallops and every 7-10 day 4F breezes regardless (that may be perfect for some, but too little for others, as you stated). All exercise decisions are based on subjective measures such as behavior, appearance, etc. and that leaves room for error. Typically a trainer has to guard against overtraining and therefore is so careful with his program that he missed the overcompensation window entirely. Very little objective data is present at this point, except perhaps a stopwatch.
Likely Alan your Golden Garter, if given to an American supertainer, would never have realized her full potential, as Pletcher has stated numerous times that his statistics show he has the most success with 45-60 days between races. And he will religiously follow this for Uncle Mo, even though he may be a genetic specimen that is able to withstand, and thrive, under the workload given to Golden Garter.
I advocate what I call the F.I.T. method of conditioning, which stands for Feedback Induced Training. You never decide on what work load to do Friday until you gather and analyze the physiological info from Thursday’s effort consisting of heart rate, lactate, and GPS info.
I call your super-responders those that have high rate of trainability. We can find this ability in yearlings. Send them to an exercise wheel for a structured protocol monthly, and record their physiological adaptations. All should improve with age, but some will stand out to the good, and to the bad. They only need to travel around 50-75% of max HR, which in yearlings is a very reasonable 6-12mph. Scientists around the world have been gathering this info for decades, mostly on treadmills – but recent advances allow you to capture it in the field.
I have a jock in Argentina who gets this, despite the language barrier. The trainer had a horse that kept running 4th, but the jock said that he had felt he was full of horse at the end. Of course, he would start her at the 3F pole like all others. I showed him through HR/GPS work that she had 4F of anaerobic burst in her, and she should be getting started at the half mile pole instead. She won the next time out by a nose.
Most of my work has involved 2 year olds to this point, but I hope to work back to the youngsters given the appropriate access. As I have said many times, thoroughbred behavioral training is very much the art of horsemanship, but physical conditioning should ideally have a scientific aspect to it.
One thing that does concern me about Comma to The Top is his front-running style.
ReplyDeleteIn human cycling, it is known that the leader faces so much air resistance that he works 30% harder than those drafting behind him. This number is greater for horses, who have much more surface area facing the front. Standardbred guys have this figured out, as many fall in line and attempt to slingshot around the last turn.
I hope he gets lucky and is able to tuck in behind one with cheap speed as his preps get longer and longer.
Way to stir the pot, Bill !!!
ReplyDeleteI tend to think of stones that are much smaller than the ones you allude to, but the Great Wall imagery was catchy and helped get readers' attention ... even though the inanimate Wall has little to do with a living runner of any species.
Having coached human runners (and having a male American 5000k record holder and a female Hawaii Ironman triathlete in the family), I know very well that there are no substitutes for being able to "tune in" to the body on a daily basis. This translates into knowing your horse, and part of that is horsemanship and part is proximity (some trainers cannot be with their horses on a daily basis).
I also know that speed has the power to unravel carefully composed regimens and to cause debilitating injury. The idiosyncratic balance between use of speed to create muscle memory and aerobic sharpness with conditioned stamina is crucial for bringing an athlete to maximum performance at the right moment. And all of this translates once again into knowing your horse and horsemanship.
That said, no training patterns or horsemanship can create innate precursors to success that are found in the horse's genetic predispositions (pedigree). Therefore, the "nature vs. nurture" issues are alive on the racetrack.
Keep on inquiring. What you write stimulates thought.
all the best .... Rob Whiteley
BE WELL ............................ BE KIND ................................ BE HAPPY
Old Fashioned Quality .... Modern Speed
www.liberationfarm.com
Hi Rob-
ReplyDeleteThanks for the feedback.
The fascinating thing about physiology is: if you take a 200hp engine and run it at 205hp – it grows into a 205hp engine.
Then you train it at 210hp.
However, you take a car with a 200hp engine and run it at 205hp, it overheats and breaks down.
I simply help horseman put an objective numerical value on the horsepower of their trainees.
For instance, if you have a horse that travels at a 2 min lick with an average working heart rate of 85% of max (around 200bpm), you are in business.
Then the best way to train that subject for maximal oxygen utilization is at that pace of 15sec/furlong.
Stakes level horses are more talented, and require mile efforts in the 1:50 range, but all they ever seem to get is the typical 4F blast every 7-10 days.
I think horseman could use a dose of science and technology in order to fine-tune their conditioning choices.
I believe that ‘modern’ methods of conditioning mostly fail to help our horses reach their true genetic potential as evidenced by pedestrian times in our route races nationwide.
But, if you fail to develop strong bone starting at an early age 2 per Nunamaker, you are forever limited.
In fact, of Daily Racing Form’s six January favorites for the Derby between 2004 and 2009 (Eurosilver, Declan’s Moon, Stevie Wonderboy, Nobiz Like Shobiz, War Pass and Old Fashioned), only Nobiz Like Shobiz actually made the race. And he finished tenth.
ReplyDeleteJeff Scott writes about horse racing in The Saratogian. He may be reached at utahpine1@aol.com.
Does he portend what will happen to this year's DRF darling Uncle Mo?
what a great resource..
ReplyDelete