Uncle Mo, Comma To The Top, and the Great Wall of China. What?

"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]

Date Fin Tr # Dist. Sf. Race 1st Time 11/06/10 1st CD 7 1 1/16 m D Breeders' Cup Juvenile-G1 Uncle Mo 1:42.60 10/09/10 1st Bel 9 1 mile D Champagne-G1 Uncle Mo 1:34.51 08/28/10 1st Sar 5 6 f D MSW Uncle Mo 1:09.21

Comma To The Top - Race Results & Past Performances

[Add Race Result][Add Horse]

Date Fin Tr # Dist. Sf. Race 1st Time 12/18/10 1st Hol 9 1 1/16 m S CashCall Futurity-G1 Comma To The Top 1:44.72 11/27/10 1st Hol 7 1 mile T Generous-G3 Comma To The Top 1:34.77 11/06/10 1st Hol 9 1 1/16 m S Real Quiet Comma To The Top 1:43.56 09/08/10 6th Dmr 8 7 f S Del Mar Futurity-G1 J P's Gusto 1:22.95 08/08/10 4th Dmr 8 6 1/2 f S Best Pal-G2 J P's Gusto 1:16.61 07/22/10 1st Dmr 6 5 1/2 f S Mcl Comma To The Top 1:03.67 06/12/10 6th Hol 10 5 f D MSW Western Mood 0:58.02 05/20/10 2nd Hol 8 4 1/2 f D Mcl The Great Caper 0:52.52

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:

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:

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.

I Want Revenge (on my trainer...)

Old story, but somehow the New York Times was able to get a copy of the veterinary bill for this fantastic equine specimen during last April, the month before his unfortunate scratch the morning of the Kentucky Derby, here is a portion:

The colt was x-rayed 04/10/09 and remained in training for the KY Derby.
Colt underwent ultrasound on 04/14/09 and remained in training for the Derby.
Colt had tendon sheath injected 04/15/09.
Colt had both front fetlock joints injected with HA on 04/29/09.
During the previous month the colt also received:
60 cc DMSO IV jug,
IV baytril X 6,
IV liquamycin X 4,
IM adequan X 2,
gastroguard paste ($280 worth),
panacure powerpack,
naquasone paste,
injected “enzymes” and “vitamins” X 5,
lasix X 3,
dormosedan X 2,
IV bute X 5,
IM banamine,
L-arginine (animo acid),
robinul (decreases stomach acid),

and anedotal evidence suggests more was involved but left off the invoice in question.

Noted vet Dr. Larry Bramlage was quoted as saying this was a typical prescription for all Derby horses.

I include this info because I have many foreign readers who perhaps don't allow medications in the countries in which they race. Also, because when we discuss conditioning practices in terms of how far, how fast, and how frequently horses are exercised - we need to realize that there are many factors of which we have zero knowledge about.

My critics will state: "So what, he was scratched - the vets did their job." But he wasn't scratched until the morning of the Derby when he was unable to jog sound - even though he threw a bullet 4F work just 3 days earlier - a work he could have never attempted without multiple injections. We are all lucky he wasn't allowed to run 10F on Saturday.

As trainer Jeff Mullins stated so eloquently: "People who bet on horses are suckers." I'll give the man this, he's a honest guy.

How can you bet off of info from Ragozin and DRF when neither of them will give you the vet bills on the horse you back with your money? We spend all of this time and effort handicapping and arguing about surfaces when performances often result from good or bad drug practices.

I, and my clients, WILL prove that you can win in the US without drugs. I am not anti-drug by nature, if all of this stuff added up to horses running Derby times under 2:00 I would be a big advocate for Lasix, Bute, and others.

But, we breed the equine Michael Jordans and Marion Jones(track) a million times (80 years X 12,000 times a year) conservatively, and we still cannot run Classic races any faster than we did in 1930. What is wrong with this picture?

How about we stop the drug use, employ old time training regimens with speedwork twice a week starting at age 2, and use 21st century technology such as interval training, massage, chiropractic, hyperbaric chambers, etc. on horses BEFORE they go lame, in an effort to product the next Secretariat?

The alternative is to do the same stuff and waste another 80 years of potential development so we can watch the 2094 Derby winner come across the line in a pedestrian 2:03, what a waste of a fantastic animal.

EDIT: Here is the actual vet bill: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/sports/20091003-racing-document.pdf

ThoroEdge on the radio at Twin Spires

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/twinspires/2010/12/10/twinspires-horse-racing-podcast-wderek-simon

Something a bit different this week. I was on the podcast of Derek Simon last month, and we had a great discussion about the fragility of the modern racehorse and how it related to the 'perceived' increase in speed.

Interestingly enough, we refer to the Bill Finley piece entited "Do we need a Sturdier Racehorse" from the Thoroughbred Daily News that recently won an Eclipse award.

My portion is roughly from the 5 to 15 minute mark in the show, you will notice the blogtalkradio dashboard in the middle of your screen, that is where the controls are for the podcast.

As always comments are welcome-

The NTRA Should be Certifying Horses and Trainers, not Tracks

Magnificent filly Eight Belles broke down during the gallop out after the 2008 Derby and this was the nationally televised impetus to establish the Safety and Integrity Alliance.

Did anyone blame Churchill Downs or the track surface for the incident?

Of course not, so why are we now wasting time ‘certifying’ tracks in an effort to avoid another such catastrophe?

Courtesy of www.ratherrapid.blogspot.com we know that:

-Eight Belles worked and raced less than any other entry in the field at just 52 furlongs total for the first 5 months of 2008. Next lowest was Big Brown at 56 furlongs, and both careers ended soon after their heroic Derby efforts.

-Eight Belles worked/raced only 1 time each in December and January, and just 2 times in February. But when March comes along, Larry Jones ups the workload 300% for the next 6 weeks prior to her Derby start.

-To hell with paraphrasing, I need to directly quote the RatherRapid blog here as he is much more a horseman than yours truly:

“Now, Jones claims his filly was in perfect health going into the Derby. Unlikely. I will guarantee with my last breath that after that :58 work on 4/27 followed by the 2 minute lick under Jones’ 215 lbs 3 days later that this filly showed significant heat in exactly the area where she fractured.

How do I know this?

Again most trainers will understand you're unable to get away with this sort of back to back work unscathed. Never happens, and in particular would never happen with a filly this young, this tall, and this lightly trained. The probability: Pre-Derby this horse was showing heat in her lower cannons, which will explain why Jones went very easy from 4/30 to the Derby.

By Derby day with the light work the heat would have disappeared and EB's legs somehow passed State Vet inspection. Too bad they never put infrared thermography on her. I feel sure that those fetlocks and lower cannons would have lit up that machine like a Christmas Tree.”

I just don’t buy the fact that this was ‘just racing’, a bad step, or a fluke accident. I could go along with that if the injury happened to one ankle during some jostling the first quarter of the race. But to break both ankles after the longest and toughest race of her young life – there is something else at work here.

In March 2008 at the Welfare and Safety of the Racehorse Summit in Lexington, the following recommendations were passed on by those in attendance:

Recommendation 2: Catastrophic Injuries
• Promotion of standardized pre-race exam protocol
1. Develop a standardized protocol and procedures for pre-race examinations

Recommendation 4: Education
• Develop continuing education programs for trainers

I offered my assistance, for free, multiple times and was ignored.

Here was my proposal:

Many years ago you would have been reading about the spate of deaths in equine endurance racing, where some competitions last 100 miles. In an effort to curb these deaths, the powers that be in that discipline instituted the Cardiovascular Response Index based on heart rate recovery after exercise. Now no horses drop dead in that sport, as they are disqualified if they fail the CRI.

Why can’t we do the same for thoroughbreds?

The basis for my recommended *Pre-Race Cardiovascular Fitness Test for Kentucky Derby length of 1.25miles/10 furlongs*, comes from the following publicized work:

*David W. Freeman, Equine Specialist, Don R. Topliff, Associate Professor of Animal Science, Michael A. Collier, Professor of Surgery, Veterinary Medicine. Monitoring Fitness of Horses by Heart Rate. Oklahoma State University, ANSI-9118

Relevant material from the report:

• The normal resting heart rate of a mature horse is between 30 to 40 beats per minute. Although the resting heart rate in humans can decrease dramatically as a result of physical conditioning, the resting heart rate of horses does not appear to change appreciably with fitness.

• Recovery heart rate below 120 beats per minute at 2 minutes post exercise and below 70 beats per minute at 10 minutes post exercise suggest the horse is adequately conditioned to the level and intensity of exercise.

• One method of monitoring fitness is to graph the heart rate response to an exercise bout of constant speed through the exercise program.

• As a horse becomes more fit, heart rate at a constant speed decreases. It is probable that an injury has occurred if heart rate increases sharply during a specific exercise bout.

• Careful monitoring of heart rate may assist in early detection of injury much sooner than is otherwise possible.

• Elevated heart rates may also be a sign of chronic fatigue, or ‘overtraining’ as it is commonly termed in the industry. The training program may have to be completely stopped and the horse rested for 30 to 60 days if conditioning fatigue persists.

For the Kentucky Derby length of 10 furlongs, I would recommend the following:

-Test to encompass 12s/furlong pace at 60-70% of race distance for these elite horses
-1.25 mile race requires 6 furlongs breeze in 1min12sec
-Taken and passed, no less than 3 days before race, no more than 10 – ideal would be 7 days out.
-Recovery heart rate must fall to 120bpm within 2 minutes, and 80bpm within 10 minutes of peak work speed. (2min period reflective of horse being cooled down properly, 10min period reflects fitness level/conditioning of horse for the effort.)

In my opinion we must strive to prove that a horse is conditioned appropriately for a 6 furlong effort the week before being asked to race 10 furlongs. Horses that have undiagnosed problems with bone remodeling, tendon or ligament stability, or systemic illness or infection will not pass such a test.

Secondly, with respect to continuing education for trainers, I feel my background in exercise physiology would be a big help in the desire for future catastrophic injury prevention.

From my experiences with local trainers, I understand there is a great deal of reticence to listen to new ideas. However, I do believe that my focus on enhancing racing performance is more attractive to horsemen of all backgrounds – the promise of faster horses earning a greater purse share can then be used to promote sounder, healthier racehorses.

My final enclosure is:
*D. M. Nunamaker, VMD. On Bucked Shins. Proceedings of the 48th AAEP Annual Convention. Orlando, FL. December 4-8, 2002.

Relevant material from the report:

• Traditional training methods of long, slow gallops for yearlings that result in bucked shins are a major cause of saucer and stress fractures later in life, injuries that can contribute to catastrophic breakdowns when racing.

The above is just one example of the research that has been done to help trainers mold sound and healthy thoroughbreds, but no system is in place to put this scientific work into practical application.

Some other topics to include:
-Proper warm up prior to race to decrease chance of injury
-Minimum training threshold necessary to ensure appropriate fitness/injury prevention
-How to spot the signs of overtraining syndrome
-Use of correct nutrition/diet practices to ensure proper recovery from exercise
-Establishing baseline resting heart rate data for each horse as a vital sign

Here we are in 2011 and the only progress made has been with regards to certifying track surfaces, starting gates, veterinary personnel, etc. – NONE of which was to blame for the demise of Eight Belles in the first place.

Now, you Larry Jones apologists are 100% correct in that he is a great horseman and possibly an even greater human being. But, if he believes the best way to build a sound filly is what he did in early 2008 with Eight Belles, he is sorely mistaken. Going slow with 215lbs aboard is no substitute for race-specific preparation via speedwork.

Please note I am not blaming this trainer, all others do the same.

The great Michael Matz was on HBO’s special entitled ‘Barbaro’ just last week – did you catch his quote after the accident?

“Maybe we had him wound a little bit too tight for this one.”

Hmm, very few preps, no works in between the Derby and Preakness, etc. and two dead horses that could have made history for the right reasons - instead of the wrong ones.

Sounds very familiar to me, but hey at least CD, PIM, and BEL are certified, right?

More Speedwork Plus Less Drugs Equals Faster Horses

OK, last few posts dealt with the stagnant thoroughbred winning times over the past 80 years, but what about other countries?

Let's go to France, where reader Gina at GallopFrance.com recently gave me some details on training regimens in her country. That got me thinking, what has gone on in the Arc de Triomphe, their flagship race, over the past century?

A glance at the above chart shows that the improvement in winning times, averaged over a decade, is nearly 500% greater than that of the American classics. 12.7 seconds is the improvement in the Arc, while the American races averaged a 2.7 second improvement.

Coincidentally, or not, a previous post regarding American winning times in the Hambletonian found very similar numbers:

http://horsetrainingscience.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-can-thoroughbred-trainers-learn.html

Again, thanks to Ms. Rarick, we find that horses in her care in France are subjected to bursts of speed from 2-3 times each week. Also, training on the farm allows her to spend an hour a day per horse and she uses no raceday drugs, which are illegal in France.

Sound familiar?

http://horsetrainingscience.blogspot.com/2010/08/ideal-2-year-old-training-program.html

I can only assume the great majority of the French trainers, like Freddie Head with the brilliant Goldikova, condition likewise. Slightly off topic, Goldikova will continue to thrill us in 2011 while Zenyatta is in the breeding shed, another casualty of the economics of racing in the US.

As discussed earlier, nearly all US based horses train trackside, going at speed once every 7-10 days, exercising a total of 12 minutes or less on average, and competing with Lasix and Bute.

I don't want to praise or condemn any country or style, but simply find what is the best for performance. For instance, there is no use of a stopwatch in France, while Americans use it for each breeze - I like this practice very much.

So all of you on here finding this site while searching for 'interval training for the thoroughbred' need to first make sure you are putting sufficient speedwork into your charges 2-3x per week before even worrying about such advanced conditioning matters.