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-