My research and personal experience shows exactly the opposite that
today’s average thoroughbred track is far “softer” and better maintained
than tracks back 50 or more years ago ever were and that would certainly
also hold true for the natural terrain any horse would go over in the wild
or farm. Just stands to reason when you consider our big tractors and
sophisticated harrows and our cranky modern trainers that are fixated with
not wanting to hear their horses’ pounding hooves over the track as they
pass breezing. All you have to do is look at some of the old antique race
track photos to get an idea how hard those old tracks use to be in the old
days! I might also add that the tracks were maintained back then with the
minimum of water and with a team of horses pulling a simple harrow AND most
of those tracks back then were used for both harness horses and thoroughbred
racing at the same time. Harness horses race on relatively harder tracks and
you can bet that they did not convert the track from one breed to the next
like they do now!

    As any human knows, it is much more tiring to run over a deep surface
than a hard one and this should equally hold true for the equine hoof. True,
a hard surface may be harder on bones and hooves, but I contend, not so
much, if you train your animals over that type of surface from the very
beginning. Bones are remarkable at remodeling and engineering themselves to
cope with what they train over and that includes hard surfaces. Hooves when
protected with plates and daily care can also handle hard surfaces. I might
also add as a trainer that I have had far more problems going from a hard
surface to a softer, sandy surface than I ever had in the reverse. This
scenario will open your horse up to all types of muscular and ligament
stifle/back problems, etc.

    One other point. For those of you that have hung around the backside
when the trackman for what ever reasons allows his track to get harder than
usual, you know that race times in the afternoon or evening always was
reflected with increases. A simple fact: a harder track improves race times
while a deeper track slows them down. That means less effort is needed on
the part of the horse to travel that piece of ground. When this occurs, our
modern trainers will raise bloody hell for a softer track! This happened at
Prairie Meadows a few years ago as it does at many other tracks from time to
time.

    I contend that one reason why more track records were broken in the
first half of the 20th century was because of harder surfaces. Having
interviewed a number of old time horsemen, they never seem to recall that
their horses were any more likely to break down back then than our modern
horses are now. Scanning through past period literature, one never reads
much about breakdowns or the public’s concern at breakdowns like we do now
in the news. Perhaps the sports writers of long ago had different
sensitivities, but I doubt it. A breakdown is a breakdown, past or present.
If a horse was prepped over a hard surface from beginning to end, you will
see no more bone problems than you would today with the majority of
racehorses running over softer surfaces. Perhaps even less!

    There is more to the surface of our dirt tracks than a hardness or
softness factor! Dirt often breaks away more easily which is definitely a
negative factor and shod or unshod hooves will react the same. Many dirt
tracks are not as smooth as you may think, too. You get the factor of the
horse’s hooves not landing level. Harrows produce ridges, previous horse
traffic produces all types of unevenness.  Both shod and unshod hooves would
land unevenly on such surfaces. I remember a number of times of taking my
horses to the paddock from the barn area and having to get there by going on
the main track. AKSARBEN and Hawthorne were two such tracks which required
that. Even though I galloped my own and my horses seem to travel ok over the
surface, I was always amazed how uneven and rough and difficult it was for a
human to walk over the average dirt track’s surface. Of course, had we done
this same walk over a smoother hard turf course, there would have been no
comparison to the less effort involved in just walking over these two. Speed
and deep going kills, shod or unshod.

Filed under: Uncategorized by admin
No Comments »

Ah, I love the Belmont Stakes! It is my favorite American race at one of my favorite distances, the classic mile & a half. There aren’t many of these around in this day and age of fast preps and even faster careers of both horse and man. I have never been much of a sprinting horseman. During my training/racing career, I only used the sprints as initial prep for the routes and kept my horses in the routes most of the season. Some of you out there that may ask what if I had a sprinting bred horse?  I say to you, there is no such creature in the general affairs of racing.  Sure, as in all things, you may have a certain individual seem to favor the shorter distances. This would be horses particularly fleet of foot that can get away well and finish well from start to finish, but in general, I have found these types rather rare. As one of my heroes, the old grand master trainer, Woody Stephens, observed, there isn’t a sprint horse alive that cannot be extended in distance with proper conditioning. So true! There is really little value in classifying one family or another as a stayer or sprinter.  As a trainer dealing with cheap horses, I came to the conclusion very early in my career that it is much harder to win a 6f race than a  1-1/16 one. Speed in a racehorse is an often very well known commodity and very well paid for, I might add. One cannot go out and buy or claim fast horses cheaply.  Accordingly, when one drops a horse into the sprints, you are often dealing with the best horses from the best stables well financed. On the other hand, route races do not fill that well particularly in the Mid-west and West. These regional trainers favor the sprints with race secretaries often being hard put to fill the longer races. This is the tip-off. Many modern trainers no longer know how to condition horses for the longer races. The routes make them uneasy which is my point. A trainer with modest horses can always do well against the big well heeled stables at the longer distances because natural speed stops being a factor and conditioning becomes all important! A modestly bred and less talented horse that is conditioned to the hilt can win over more expensively bred horses. I have done this time and again!

Back to the Belmont. You would think that a classic race of the stature of the Belmont would attract a large number of distance horses, but this seems seldom to be the case. Yes, you will occasionally get the Europeans sending over distance horses that on paper look like they could easily handle our mile and half, but you just don’t get American three year olds that have raced that distance in their short careers. Three year olds racing much more than a mile is more a rarity than the norm in this country, even if one is pointing that horse to the grand old Belmont. Modern trainers don’t even breeze these three year olds very long distances either. It is back to the modern mantra of hoping a “fresh horse” can stumble or wheeze across the wire ahead of the other equally tired horses. They figure these three year olds can take on the mile & half by simply last racing in a 1-1/8 or 1-1/4 race plus a little genetic ordained staying lineage. Bull shit! Any sensible trainer should know one should not jump one’s horse training schedule a quarter to three-eighth of a mile with no additional preparatory work! No wonder there are so prevalent of breakdowns in our sport.

Take a look at the 12 horses in this year’s Belmont. You have only three horses that have raced 5 starts in 2010 (less than a race a month), five entries in the field have 4 starts, and four with an outrageous meager 3 starts. What horse can be fit to race a classic 1-1/2 miles by racing only 5 times, let alone 3 in 2010? Precious few with no equally demanding breezes. I have to at least give it to John Sadler (Dave in Dixie) for working his horse a mile in 1:39.3 on the 27th. Certainly rare trainers ever seem to work that far before a big race in this day and age. However is a mile work long enough for a mile and a half race with his last race way back on April 3rd? No!  Not only that, but this mile work was a long 12 days away from the Belmont. Nice try, John, but no dice.  It seems 4 and 5 furlong breezes before the Belmont is the rigor of the day,  mostly a week before the event. It don’t get any “better” than that in modern times.  So again this year, you have a field of talented three year olds , not the top, but good enough to be nominated and dropped into a rich race by the big stables hoping to get a classic race feather in their caps. None are fit for the distance and you are essentially hoping your horse will hold on long enough to out struggle the others. It is really impossible to bet a race like this as form will never hold true for any of them. PPs mean little as was true in the previous two triple crown races.

Amanda Duckworth (ESPN) wrote in her Jun 3rd column:

Perhaps more than any other Triple Crown race, the Belmont more often than not comes down to one thing: pedigree.

She has got to be kidding! She obviously knows nothing about the backside and training horses. She tries to prove this absurd statement by showing that the longshot Birdstone won the Belmont in 2004 with his sons, Summer Bird and Mind that Bird also racing well in that long race.  Since when do sons or daughters of winners really mean anything? Think of all the sons and daughters that lose or race miserably by great racehorses.  Race track theologians are often shy on personal practical experiences and Ms. Duckworth seems no exception. Never underestimate a tough trainer that can prepare a tough racehorse for a route of ground. Sunny Jim Fitz and Woody were some old time trainers that knew that lesson well.

My selections? Certainly Zito’s horses look competitive, but I dislike Nick and his training methods, plus I don’t bet the chalk. I like Billy Mott’s Drosselmeyer.  He’s raced all year over a mile which isn’t too bad, if only four times and he has placed well each. I just have a feeling he may do well.

Filed under: Horse Racing in General by admin
No Comments »

I went to see James Cameron’s Avatar like everyone else when it came out last winter. I was particularly smitten with the Mountain Banchee scene in which Jake has to prove himself a warrior by “breaking” and bonding with a flying creature known as a Mountain Banchee. I was not sure or really questioned much why I was fascinated with this particular cinematic section of the saga until I watched it a few more times on the small screen. Then it came to me. I was Jake as are all thoroughbred farm trainers! We all select which colts we want and though we tend not to resort to such brutish force as Jake was obliged to in this scene, the scenario is mostly the same as is the process and the exaltation. After long months of your colt trying your patience every step of the way, he finally acts like a race horse, skimming effortlessly over a smooth race track rhythmically floating. Flying, if you will. Yes, I suspect nothing on this earth comes as close to riding a Mountain Banchee as a young thoroughbred flying over a track on a cool morning.

Of course, there are those animals that will do everything right the first time, but there are a precious few others that fight you every step of the way and in the end there seems to be a deeper bond created when you two finally get it. That was my Mountain  Banchee experience coming back to me which I have long forgotten until that movie. This is what makes training racehorses infectious and forever fascinating. The bond between you and an animal that can simply fly.

Filed under: Race horse conditioning by admin
No Comments »

John Servis, trainer of Smarty Jones says of that horse’s prep for the Preakness:

“Really, I think the secret is you don’t do a whole lot. They ran a mile and a quarter two weeks ago, so they’re not going to get too much more fit than that. From a physical standpoint, I thought my horse was fine. I wanted him tearing the barn down and ready to go after someone. I trained him really light, got him to where he was full of himself.”

Unfortunately, most of our modern thoroughbred trainers seem to feel the same way as Servis and live by this mantra of Freshness. Sure, one’s horse may win under such conditioning, but is it overall good for that horse in the long run? If they manage again to perform well two weeks later in the Preakness, the Belmont will always stop them cold. One can only run well so far on guts and freshness alone. Again I rail on how ignorant our horsemen are at gauging a fit horse and knowing exactly what a fit racehorse is! The above quote exhibits that! Baffert thinks once you get to the derby, you can coast into the Preakness with little work. Accordingly, he gave Lookin at Lucky not one work in the 14 days between the two events.  Pletcher put a easy 3f work into Super Saver on the 10th, 6 days before the big race and a 5f work in Aikenite, 7 days before.  Outside of Baffert and Dale Romans (Paddy O’ Prado) who both did nothing, all of the Preakness trainers have put light works into their horses roughly 6-10 days before Saturday’s race.  In my experience, for the average racehorse that is far too light of a work and far too far away from the effort you are aiming at.  To win the gruelling Triple Crown, you must have a fit horse which is why such classic winners are so few and so far in between and are so much more numerous in a past age of American racing then with today’s fresh horses.

Back 50 years ago, horses were breezed every 3 days or so. This was particularly a mandate for the young or laid-off horse coming back to the races. Now it is more like every 7-15 days. Take Max Hirsch, he would often breeze a horse every-other day. He did that with Assault, who came back after a 6 month layoff using such a training schedule to win the 6f Experimental Free Handicap. Eleven days later he wins the Wood. Hirsch worked High Gun the full mile and a half during the week prior to the Belmont and won by a neck. Preston Burch was a stickler too for works. He took his nice mare, Flower Bowl, who he was prepping for a stake race in 1956.  He told his boy to take her a mile the Tuesday before that race. The boy went too slow, so he got another boy to take her again in 30 minutes a sharp 5f work. That saturday, she went the race of her life winning the Delaware Handicap.

Of course, there are exceptions to everything and a good trainer knows if his horse likes and strives on work or not. A precious few horses do not. I understand that, but most in my experience can benefit from stiff close works.  An intensive program of racing and breezing is the only way to produce a fit horse and maintan that fitness. Thoroughbred men seem to be clueless that days of idlness can dull a horse’s fitness. Servis wants to see them bouncing off the stall walls or bucking/kicking while on the lead. Those displays are never a sign of fitness, but quite the opposite, idleness. A fit horse will never act a fool like that. He will be alert and amused at the things around him, but he will never react in that way.

We will see how fit Super Saver will be with all of Pletcher’s crying that his horse doesn’t have enough time to refresh. I think he could come back and do quite well, even if not really “fit”, but I doubt if Borel can get by with a rail ride at Old Hill Top like he would prefer.  From all accounts, Super Saver came out of the derby sound and finishing his feed tub clean. He and Paddy O’ Prado should both do well even with little work in this field. The entire 12 horse field is very unimpressive to me. They are all competitive in the sense that they are quite equally unfit. I can’t pick one over the other from their PPs or works, so I am going to go with a hunch bet. Paddy O’ Prado is my horse, just because, it may be his turn to win. No other reason. It is all a shame!

1)  Paddy O’ Prado

2)  Super Saver

3)  Aikenite

Filed under: Horse Racing in General by admin
1 Comment »

From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

“There’s on the fence, and there’s on the fence,” Borel said at Churchill Downs on Wednesday. “You know, to me, if you can get right on it, there is traction there. But if you get a half a horse off of it, (the traction) is good and bad, and then they’ll start bobbling, and people don’t realize that.’

     Ah, all I can say to this is brillant! I have always been a student of the rail, the shortest way around a racetrack as many old harness horsemen have been, but it never occured to me till I read Calvin’s quote, how good he really is! I have often told my jocks save ground on the rail where possible and some times they would. Most of the time, their definition of “riding the rail” is one-or-two horses out from the wood and most of the time on a bad race track that part of the track is deemed inferior by most all riders and they head for the middle.  Another excuse to ride wide and lose ground. Now Calvin’s riding inches from the rail where the harrows and floats are hard put to touch is a different story! It is quite possible that under such conditions, Borel has hit the nail on the head and knows a great secret. The dirt is firmer down there inches from the rail where few jocks trust to ride. My hat again goes off to the old boy and his genius!

Filed under: Horse Racing in General by admin
No Comments »

Todd Pletcher after winning the derby:  “The biggest challenge is running back in 14 days that concerns me. Our statistics show we’re most effective running back 35-60 days after a race. In a perfect world, we’d have more time.”

Is Pletcher for real? Unfortunately, he just does not know any better and it is obvious he was an assitant trainer for a quarter horse trainer before he set out on his own. It just proves my point that modern thoroughbred trainers do not have a clue what a fit horse is, let alone how to condition one! What a dumb thing to say! Isn’t it his job as a trainer to have a horse ready to race back in 2 weeks at the very least, barring some unforeseen problem? Certainly, a horse does not have ingrained in its DNA some gene that says that I am only good if I can race every 1-2 months. That training “statistic” as Pletcher describes it is a function of the conditioning foundation a racehorse has in it prior to racing. It is the trainer’s job to have that horse ready and fit to race back in 1-2 weeks.  We have lost the way!

Filed under: Race horse conditioning by admin
No Comments »

I look for a fit horse in any field and the derby is no different. I want a horse that has recently raced and has had a good close work before the first saturday in may to flavor my picks. A route horse may have everything going for it, but if he is not fit and ready to click, he will come to no sucess. The below horses seems to me to be the best conditioned horses in tomorrow’s field going by their PPs.

I like two horses in tomorrow’s much hallowed event:

Super Saver (#4). . . . . . as much as I dislike Todd Pletcher as a trainer, this horse may finally be the one that will get him into the circle. Not only do I adore Calvin Borel,  the rail hugging jock, but this horse should be more fit and ready to win than many of the others. He was a nice second in the Arkansas Derby 20 days ago. Personally, I thnk that is still too far away, but in this day and age, having a derby horse with 20 days since his last start is no biggie. Few trainers like to race closer to the big day. Many have much more distant last starts. I penalize him in only having two starts this year before the derby. His last work was on 4/24, a 4f work in the slop in :48.4, 8 days before May 1st. He has had only one work since his Ak derby win, but what can I say? Most modern horses are pitifully undertrained! Only one breeze in 20 days and that one over a week before his derby effort? This is all not a good criteria to producing a truely fit horse for the derby, but with the jock and the horse’s natural talent, he may overcome the others. Lastly, this horse likes an off track which is probably good from the Louisville’s forecast.

Line of David (#5). . . . . I like this horse a lot and was impressed with his Ark Derby win of 4/10 (20 days before derby). Unlike Super Saver, this horse has two extra races under his girth with 4 in 2010—-three were wins. Good! His last work was on 4/26, 8 days before the derby–a 6f work in 1:15.

    As of saturday morning, I see Super Saver is the favorite. Ugh, I hate chalk! I may have to discount that horse on those grounds alone, not that it should matter. We all need illogical biases don’t we? So I will. That leaves Line of David.

     The sad fact is that all of the horses entered in this deby as in the recent past are unfit horses when compared to how derby horses were prepped 50 or more years ago.  Our modern trainers have lost their way and perhaps this is part of the cause of so many break-downs?  Only two entries have had 4 starts this year before the derby, Line of David and Stately Victor. Most have gotten by with 2-3 starts in 2010 as the norm.  How can you have a fit horse with so few prevous starts at a 1-1/4 mile effort? Sure, good long morning works will help, but I assure you none of these horses have those either. Not one horse has worked a mile or more in this field this year! Truth be known, quite probably none of them have ever had a morning mile work in their lives. They are all running on blood and guts and not conditioning.  The one with the closest published work is Homeboykris at April 28th (3 days off) which ain’t too bad if one considers old timey training, but lordy, he hasn’t started in a race since Feb 27th. That may be a training crime in itself!

     Take Whirlaway for example in his May 3rd, 1941 Kentucky Derby win for his trainer, Ben Jones. His last start to his derby win was the Derby Trial on  April 29th. An interesting 5 short days between his last race start and his derby! Compare this to the last starts of all the above 2010 derby horses! Pathetic isn’t it? He was 2nd in the Derby Trial. `Between the April 24-29th, he put a 10f (1-1/4 mile) work in with the time of 2:07.2. Again I say, try seeing a recent work over a mile from any of our modern derby hopefuls! It ain’t going to happen! Finally, Whirlaway had 7 starts in 1941 before his Kentucky Derby win. Starting on Feb 8th, 1941, he raced 10 days later on the 18th, then another 32 days in between on March 22, then 6 days later on March 28th, followed by 14 days on April 11, then 13 days on April 24th, on to a 5 day rest till his start on April 29th, the derby trial. It all sounds amazing, yet was not that big of a deal back in the 1940s. Horses were raced often and hard.  You can also bet Jones put some hard long works into that horse in his longer race-to-race lay-offs. This my friends is the saga of a fit horse! Blood and guts are nice to have in a horse, but proper conditioning is insurance.

Filed under: Race horse conditioning by admin
No Comments »

It has always blown my mind how Thoroughbred trainers hate the one hole so at the starting gate. Bob Baffert is certainly not thrilled about his horse, Lookin At Lucky, having to start from that position!  He writes:

“Once you get in there, if you are shuffled back one time, then you’ll get shuffled back a second, a third, a fourth as the race goes on. We’re going to find out how good this horse is. If he’s that good, he’ll win it.”

He also is suspect about the footing down on the rail though he does admit if the Derby comes up muddy; the inside post may offer the best footing. That may or may not be true.  To Baffert’s first criticism, I say, Bull Shit! Unfortunately, his views seem to be in the majority when it comes to runn’n horse people. I just don’t get it. If his horse does get shuffled back in such a situation that would be totally the fault of his jock, not the one hole!  You don’t let horses ahead of you that are not contenders. If your horse has slow starting speed,  it will not matter if he is in the one hole or the 6 hole.  You will still have a horse shuffled back in theory to faster horses. If you don’t want to be trapped down on the rail, then move to the outside. That is far easier than breaking from the outside and trying to get to the rail.

I come from a harness racing background and honed my trade in that form of racing till 1989. Harness horse people have always coveted the one hole at the start of a race. It can offer so many possibilities which the thoroughbred contingent seems never to grasp. For starters, being on the inside, you can control the race. Of course, this takes a horse with early speed, but if you have a horse that can leave well, the race is your oyster. No horse is going to pass you unless you want it to! Secondly, as all harness horse people know and seemingly few thoroughbred  jocks, the shortest way around any race track is on the rail, but first, you got to get to that rail. Being in the one hole guarantees that important advantage! There is no chance you will be caught out wide around the turns, if you start out on the rail. Well, presuming you stay there! Many thoroughbred trainers seem to discount the advantage of how a horse next to the rail on the turns can save huge amounts of physical effort and track length. Calvin Borel may be the exception. As a jock, he has constantly employed the advantages of hugging the rail to bring long shots home. Jocks seem to generally prefer to be on the outside, out of trouble and safe should something unforeseen happen. Few are comfortable down on the rail saving ground. Perhaps, rightly so, it can be a very dangerous place to be should a horse go down, yours or theirs. I suspect it is this bias by the jockeys that have flavored their trainer’s views. Few trainers have any practical race riding experience. Most harness horse trainers have. Thoroughbred trainers only know what their jocks tell them and if you get a rider that hates the rail, as most do, you can imagine what feedback and excuses you are in store for.

Drafting is another aspect that few thoroughbred men apprecitate. In order to draft, you need to have a horse in front of you. This is another advantage of the one hole. If you see the favorite challenging you on the outside, you can easily allow that horse to go to the top and be drafted by presumably the best horse. Not a small strategic advantage by any means!

As a thoroughbred trainer with a non-farvorite, I have always told my rider to save as much ground as you can. I would much rather see my horse run a brave race, full of effort and heart  but with no where to go than have him out on the outside, running his guts out and getting no where for his efforts. There is nothing that can ruin a chicken-hearted  or inexperienced horse faster than this latter scenario and there is nothing that can bring a long shot home more effectively than saving ground and drafting on the rail!

Filed under: Horse Racing in General by admin
6 Comments »

I have either trained or been around racehorses for 30+ years and have to say how shocked I was in finally being able to view a horse racing movie that had the very minimum of goofs in it. Amazing! ESPN and ABC aired one of the most realistic racing movies of all time in the 2007  movie, “Ruffian”, I have ever seen and that goes back to the B movies of the 30s up to the modern, “Dreamer” movie. Most all of them are honey cesspools obviously written, directed, produced by people with limited backstretch experience. “Ruffian” gets it mostly right! I would guess Bill Nack is the guiding light to this rarity though I am not too familiar with the credited writers. Maybe they know something too. They must! The track jargon and dialogue seemed pretty true to life for a change. Shepard did a marvelous job portraying an old timey kind of trainer in Frank Whiteley. His attitude and dialogue was perfect! When the Bill Nack character told Whiteley how sorry he was at the burial of Ruffian, Whiteley said: “That’s horse racing.” So true and so realistic! I would have said the same thing. The sugar-coated emotionality common to these types of movies was unbelievably absent. The racing scenes were pretty nicely photographed considering that this was a low budget TV movie. I can only criticize the movie in a few places. The racing scenes were obviously speeded up as is common in most racing movies. Apparently movie makers feel that normal race scenes photographed in real time seem too slow to the movie goer. Hehee. I also fault the bandaging technique of Sam Shepard but, hey, those scenes were pretty skeletal in nature. Lastly, most of the morning track scenes lacked the customary busy activity of a real track, but they no doubt used vacated tracks or tracks under controlled conditions. No biggie.The movie is breath of fresh air to all of the crap preceding it in years past. I can die in peace now.

—————————-

Ruffian

2007,   89 minutes

Considered to be the greatest thoroughbred filly of all time, Ruffian shattered horse racing records with her power. This engaging drama tells the story of her brief career. In 1975, a packed Belmont Park crowd gathers for the much-anticipated match race against the formidable colt Foolish Pleasure. But nearly a mile into the race, Ruffian suffers a tragedy that shocks the spectators. Sam Shepard and Frank Whaley star in this fact-based drama.

Cast:

Frank Whaley, Sam Shepard, Laura Bailey, Nicholas Pryor, Louis Herthum, Christine Belford, John McConnell, Michael Harding, Jon Stafford

Director:

Yves Simoneau

Filed under: Horse Racing in General by admin
No Comments »

As a youngster, I was seduced into the mysticism of the “juiced” race horse. I mean, the stereotype that race horses can be drugged into winning races has permeated every aspect of our dear sport since long ago. It can almost be considered mandatory for every plot in horse racing fiction, be it a novel, a TV melodrama, or cinema, to involve a drugged horse. I am here in this letter to proclaim, it is all a myth! Fiction does not make it so! Race horses cannot be drugged into winning races and, perhaps, more controversially, I doubt that their performances can be enhanced beyond their natural limits! DNA has finite limits. At least, I have never seen any signs of it in my long history of being a licensed trainer. As a young trainer, I did as many inexperienced horsemen are apt to do. I heard the whispers of the “drug of the month” and I used them on my horses. I am not proud to say that I have used about all there is to use in search of an edge, and I was very lucky in never coming up with a positive. After about ten years of this nonsensical search for speed and stamina in a vial, I soon realized that the only ones that were benefiting were the vets, drug companies, and some black market renegades. Such drugs simply do not create good race horses. The myth that drugs are a potent force, finds fertile soil only in those inexperienced minds that have never actually experienced first hand use of such chemicals on horses they have hands-on control over

I have been reading a very interesting book that asks questions about improving physical performance on the cellular level. The book is “The Energy of Life” by Guy Brown. Dr. Brown makes some very important observations on how much performance enhancing drugs really help. Until I read his book, I just knew that drugs were over-rated from my own training experiences. After his book, I had a pretty good scientific reason why my instincts were correct.

What is the very base component of getting a race horse across the line first? Energy! To produce this vital race winning energy involves a very complex group of cellular chemical processes. Usually, it is the machinery of the cell that transforms this energy into ATP (adenosine triphosphate) or the machinery that uses that ATP to do work such as muscle contraction or nerve impulses. This machinery has a maximal rate and no matter how much fuel or chemicals you give the machine, it will not go any faster. However, the rate at which this cellular machinery works is regulated by hormones and nerves and the amount of machinery in the cell is regulated by the DNA. For example, if our horses regularly train, their cell machinery for energy production in the form of mitochondria and energy use, muscle fibers, slowly increases in amount within their muscles, because messages are sent to the DNA, causing it to up-regulate the amount of these proteins to the cell. So there are things we can do to increase our horse’s energy level, but they are usually not as obvious as feeding/drenching our horses with various supplements or injecting specific target substances.

A process consisting of a chain of jobs as seen in cellular metabolism is generally as slow as the slowest component job—not the fastest or the average, but the SLOWEST! There are many individual steps and they all have to go at exactly the same rate or otherwise the whole system is going to get out of step very rapidly. It was learned in the 1970s by Kacser & Burns in their metabolic control analysis studies that if you decreased the extent to which one step limited a process then a different process must become more limiting. Thus, say if your horse’s energy level is limited by vitamins, when you feed your horse a massive dose of vitamins, the vitamins will no longer be limiting, but something else will have become limiting. When scientists started using metabolic control analysis to measure the extent to which the different steps limited overall rates, they found to their surprise that most metabolic pathways did not have a single rate-limiting step, but rather several steps were partially rate limiting. And more importantly, the distribution of rate limitation between different steps changed during different conditions. This has important implications for our horse’s energy level and rate at which it can perform. There is no single step within our horse’s body or cells that limit its performance; rather there are a number of different steps or processes that partially limit its race performance and which steps they are depends on specific conditions. There is no single, central, all powerful step or regulator within the horse’s body that limits and controls its performance and energy level in all conditions. And therefore there is no single vitamin, drug, or treatment that can target this central regulator to improve our horse’s performance massively or charge up its energy levels. Rather there are a large number of processes that limit its performance a bit, and if we do something or treat our horses with something to improve one of those processes, then the overall performance will be improved by a small amount, but something else will now limit the performance.

Personally, I find the betting public, news media, race officials, and especially owners who consider the use of drugs as a way to improve performance to be naïve in the extreme. The myth that the right chemistry will bring riches on the race track is a farce. Neglect the basic horsemanship, the not so basic race conditioning, and no amount of chemistry will save you. Tweak all you want with various supplements, but I suspect you will find that any gains made by chemistry can easily be offset by other limiting factors. These limiting factors are not only to be found in the basic cell metabolism but in the more obvious conditions seen on a race track, shoeing, general health, conditioning, tack, racing luck, race ride, race company, etc, etc, etc. There is always some unforeseen limiting factor. I am not saying not tweak via chemistry, just don’t delude yourself into thinking it really makes too much of a difference. And I am not saying not test or regulate against drugs, but just know in the end, the winner of any given race was not carried across the line by a “performance enhancing” compound. If only life were so simple!

Filed under: Horse Racing in General by admin
4 Comments »