First time on turf - how to prepare a horse

By Bill Heller

Preparing a horse for his first start on turf is trickier than most people realize. Most tracks ban maidens from their grass courses, and many allow only grass stakes-nominated horses who have not made their last start against maidens or claimers to work on the turf course.

On Saturday, June 14th, 14 first-time turfers were entered at Belmont Park; one at Monmouth Park; one at Churchill Downs; nine at Delaware, eight at Philadelphia and three at Hollywood Park. On Colonial Downs' all-turf card, 35 starters were making their grass debuts. Of the 71 first-time turfers across America, only two had a workout on grass.
 

"I don't think it's very important," said California based Hall of Fame trainer Richard Mandella "If they like it, they like it right away. If they don't, they don't."
When asked if he's ever trained any grass stars who hadn't even galloped on turf before racing on it, Mandella said, "The Tin Man. His first start ever was on grass."


Mandella paused a second. "But he had about a year and a half in Kentucky in a big paddock," Mandella laughed. "I said that as a joke, but it's something they grow up doing. It's pretty natural for them.

"

It sure was for The Tin Man, whose sire, Affirmed, had never raced on turf. After overcoming two bowed tendons which required surgery when he was two years old, The Tin Man became one of America's outstanding grass horses, capturing the Clement L. Hirsch Memorial and the American Handicap twice, the San Louis Obispo Handicap, the Arlington Million, the San Marcos, and, at the age of nine, the Grade 1 Shoemaker Mile. He finished his career with 13 victories, seven seconds and two thirds from 30 starts and earnings of more than $3.6 million.



New York trainer Rick Violette, Jr., also trained a Grade 1 grass stakes winner who had never worked on it before winning a race, Man From Wicklow. "He was very disappointing on dirt," Violette said June 7th. "And, actually, he was disappointing on the grass the first few times as well. We finally put blinkers on him and he sprouted wings.

" 
In his first two starts on dirt in 1999, Man From Wicklow, finished fifth in an allowance race and 11th against maidens. Switched to grass, he was seventh, eleventh and eleventh (which could be thought of as a work on grass). When Violette added blinkers, the horse still didn't win, checking in fifth in a maiden race at The Meadowlands. But in his seventh lifetime start, a maiden race at Belmont Park, he finally clicked, winning by three-quarters of a length.



In the winter of 2002-2003, Man From Wicklow won the Grade 2 W.L. McKnight Handicap at Calder and the Grade 1 Gulfstream Park Breeders' Cup Handicap by 4 ¾ lengths, easily the best performance of his life. Not bad for a horse who finished 11th three times before breaking his maiden.

"It can happen," Violette said. "Marquette, who got beat 40 lengths on the dirt, I ran him as a maiden against winners at Gulfstream and he broke his maiden.It can be a dramatic reversal of form."



Both ways. Cigar was an ordinary horse on grass and an extraordinary champion on dirt.Most trainers never get to train such stars, but all trainers have maidens and young horses. Some of them are better on grass; others on dirt. Finding out which they prefer may not happen until later in their career. In the beginning, it's easy to see how inexperienced horses perform on dirt or on a synthetic track simply by working them on it. That's an option not available to maiden grass runners unless they're stabled at training centers with turf courses.
 


Barclay Tagg, who is having a phenomenal spring/summer meet at Belmont Park, says most of his maiden grass winners never worked on turf first. "Absolutely, mostly all of them I had for the last 30 years I trained," he said. "Because I didn't have anywhere to work them on the grass. They don't usually let you have a grass work unless you're down at Palm Meadows Training Center (in South Florida) for the winter. Nowadays, I try to get them all a grass work down there. I don't really think you need a grass work for them, but if you can do it, fine. But at most racetracks you can't do it. They won't let you on it with a maiden.

"

Hall of Fame trainer Shug McGaughey wasn't sure whether his first-time starter Tourism would handle grass or not when she made her debut in the sixth race at Belmont Park, June 6th. The three-year-old filly is by Seeking the Gold out of the Pleasant Colony mare Resort, and she had never even galloped on grass. "This filly here, we couldn't have her on the turf at Belmont; maidens can't go on grass," he said. "So she had never been on it before. But there was a race going seven-eighths the other day, and I had another filly I wanted to run there. So I knew this race was coming up. So I said, `Well, let's go on and give it a try'. Being by Seeking the Gold, she probably should like it."



Just like all of McGaughey's young horses, Tourism had been thoroughly prepared for her debut. She showed workouts in the Daily Racing Form from mid-February through late March at Payson Park in Florida, then seven workouts at Belmont Park. McGaughey rarely works first-time starters quickly, but Tourism's final work was a sharp one, four furlongs breezing in :48 3/5, the 19th fastest of 50 horses working that morning at that distance on Belmont's main track.



Tourism loved the turf. Breaking from the rail and benefiting from an excellent ride by new Hall of Famer Edgar Prado, Tourism got through on the inside and won her debut narrowly.



If Tourism had made her debut at Saratoga, she might have had a grass work first. In New York, maidens are barred from working on grass at Belmont Park, but that's not true at Saratoga Race Course, thanks to the Oklahoma Training Track turf course. "Saratoga is a little different because of the training track," Race Secretary P.J. Campo said. "Maidens can work on it any time. On the main course, maidens are not allowed during the meet. We don't want 100 horses to go over there every week. We work Monday, Wednesday and Friday."



During the six-week Saratoga meet from July 23rd through September 1st, McGaughey will work his first-time turf maidens on grass. "At Saratoga, I will, just to see," he said. "Sometimes, a change in atmosphere helps them."



The day after Tourism scored for McGaughey, George Weaver and Keith O'Brien sent out first-time turfers in a $57,000 New York-bred maiden grass race at a mile and an eighth at Belmont. Weaver's Beyond Challenge had been beaten badly in three dirt starts. O'Brien's Imperial Way had a pair of thirds, a sixth and a fifth in four dirt starts.


Because Beyond Challenge was stabled at the Oklahoma Training Track, Weaver was able to give him a grass work, and he went four furlongs around dogs (pylons) in :50 1/5, 11th best of 16 at that distance on the grass course that morning. Imperial Way had not worked since finishing fifth in his last start.
Neither excelled on grass. Beyond Challenge finished eighth and Imperial Way 10th.



Like Weaver, trainer Tom Bush is more inclined to work first-time turfers on grass at Saratoga. "Every trainer at Saratoga utilizes that option," he said. "Some horses, you like to see them on the turf before you run them."



He wanted that look at Belmont for A Zero Trap, a three-year-old New York-bred colt by Quiet American out of Gold 'n Sugar by Java Gold, who had won his debut by a neck, then finished third and fourth in three dirt starts.
 


Bush gave A Zero Trap a grass work at Belmont before he made his grass debut in a $49,000 non-winners of two allowance race for New York-breds at Belmont Park, June 12th. A Zero Trap breezed four furlongs around dogs in :50 4/5 on a good Belmont turf course, 15th best of 20 that day. Then Bush breezed him on dirt, and A Zero Trap went four furlongs in :49 4/5, 14th fastest of 21.



"I had nominated him to a turf stakes, probably one I won't run in, so I could work him on grass," Bush said the morning of the race. "He hits the ground pretty hard, this horse. He's kind of big and chunky, a heavy, thick kind of horse. My hope is that he can stay sounder on turf if he likes it."
He didn't. The grass work didn't help. A Zero Trap finished 10th.



Regardless, Bush said, "I've actually had a few surprises recently, horses that did well on turf. Sweet Madness, who is by Freud, she fit the profile. She's kind of long and has big feet, too."



Gary Contessa, New York's leading trainer and the country's sixth leading trainer in earnings halfway through 2008, is less enthusiastic about turf works for first-time turfers. "If the turn is open on the day that I was planning to breeze them at Saratoga, I will," he said. "But I don't have to. It's not a prerequisite. The ones that I think are going to run well on the turf generally do anyway. I think horses are either naturals on it or not."



Violette voiced a similar opinion: "Sometimes, it can give you a little bit better educated opinion on whether they're going to adapt to turf or not, but it's not necessary to work them out there. I don't really know that it's an edge. I think, a lot of times, pedigree and the way they look and their running style is more important than works on the grass, because I really do think they either like it or they don't. I really think it goes to, a lot of times, just the female family. If they have some turf there, you might have a good shot they'll like it."



Racing principally in Florida and New York, Violette's horses work mostly on dirt, even those about to make their grass debut. How first-time turfers who have been racing on a synthetic course will fare in their grass debuts is still conjecture. Will they do better than first-time turfers who have raced on dirt? "Well, it seems like more grass horses like the synthetic; I'm not sure about the reverse," Violette said. "You would think it would be true."

There's only one way to find out.

Tom Amoss - the secret behind his amazing success rate

THIS IS A SCANNED IN ARTICLE - FROM OUR PRE DIGITAL DAYS!

This article first appeared in North American Trainer - Spring 2008 - issue 7

Strengthening Young Thoroughbreds' Limbs

One of the major challenges in training racehorses is keeping them sound. Not unlike a human athlete, a racehorse's ligaments, tendons, bones and joints are susceptible to injury throughout its career and, at times, it seems impossible to avoid some sort of musculoskeletal mishap.

A vast number of components can comprise any musculoskeletal injury but many believe the economics of the Thoroughbred industry - namely the preparation of young horses for 2-year-old sales and racing 2-year-olds - are the main culprits for these sorts of injuries.
Training for most race horses commences when they are 18 to 20 months old. The skeleton of a horse often does not reach full maturity until they are four years old so training at a young age might predispose horses to a multitude of career-limiting or -ending injuries.
Shin soreness or bucked shins is an extremely common condition in young racing Thoroughbreds and Quarter Horses (and occasionally Standardbreds.) It involves the front portion of the cannon or metacarpal bone and is the result of rapid bone modeling.
Before a horse begins training, its cannon bones have the same thickness all the way around. When horses start galloping, there is a considerable increase in stress on the front of the cannon bone.  To contend with the stress, the equine body responds by adding new bone to the area in duress. Ultimately, this creates stronger bones but early on this new bone is prone to microfractures similar to the stress fractures that human athletes endure during training.
The severity of bucked shins can vary greatly, but most horses will exhibit pain when the cannon bone area is massaged, will be lame while trotting, and have a short, choppy stride. Another symptom is swelling in this area of the leg.
The condition is usually diagnosed by recognizing the clinical indicators in a horse when it begins its first training and/or racing campaign. Horses suffering from shin soreness must be rested until all signs of lameness have disappeared, which can take several days or many months.
For example, New York-based trainer Barclay Tagg's then 2-year-old colt, Tale of Ekati, had sore shins and returned after a month of light training to triumph in the Grade 2, $250,000 Belmont Futurity on September 15th of last year.
"One shin was very sore, but he got over it very quickly," Tagg said. "I got two real good works into him."
While Maimonides, a 2-year-old, owned by Ahmed Zayat, exited the Grade 1 Hopeful Stakes held at Saratoga Race Course on September 3 with the same affliction, his recovery was expected to take a bit longer. Sonny Sonbol, Zayat's racing manager, said he needed "three to four weeks to get over his shins and start back training and get ready for the winter."
Estimates vary, but it is believed between 65 and 90 percent of all Thoroughbreds in the United States and more than 40 percent of all Thoroughbreds in Australia buck their shins early in training.
About only 12 percent of young English racehorses buck their shins. Unlike the United States and Australia, much less emphasis is placed on 2-year-old racing in England and English horses are trained on straight tracks, so less strain would be placed on the cannon bone.
However, the English are not immune to their young horses being injured. In a study of 314 young Thoroughbreds in Newmarket more than 50 percent experienced some period of lameness, and in roughly 20 percent of those horses, the lameness prevented them from racing.
Also, bucked shins are not exclusively relegated to 2-year-olds but to all horses which are just beginning intense training. Some horses can suffer recurrences of shin soreness after a period of stall of paddock rest. Therefore, bucked shins do not discriminate based on the age of a horse, but depend on how intense the training is and if the horse is undertaking the action for the first time.
Dr. David Nunamaker, VMD, PhD, is an orthopedic surgeon and chair of the research department at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center who had conducted extensive research on bone development from 1982 to the present. Dr. Nunamaker, Dr. William Moyer, DVM, chair of the Large Animal and Surgery Department at Texas A&M University and Dr. John Fisher, DVM, an equine veterinarian and Maryland horse trainer, analyzed their research results and established a training system created to reduce the severity of bucked shins or erase them.
"We found that a horse's bone shape alters in response to its training," Dr. Nunamaker said. "The way most conventional training is conducted, a bone changes in a way it should not and that is why you get into trouble with bucked shins. Also saucer fractures seem to occur only in horses that have previously bucked their shins. This could lead to catastrophic fracture."
Dr. Nunamaker concluded a problem will become evident after 50,000 cycles of trotting and galloping. A cycle is equal to one swift stride.
"The Standardbred doesn't have issues with bucked shins because you never see a pacer do anything but pace while Thoroughbreds train with a variety of gaits, such as walking, trotting and galloping," Dr. Nunamaker said. "Thoroughbreds do not run while they are training and when they do run it's only every 10 to 14 days. The bone remodels to what it experiences - which is not racing."
Speed work is very important because when a horse runs at speed, the angle of strain is much greater. So horses that breeze more often remodel their bones for racing.
Utilizing the research results, Dr. John Fisher adheres to a training program that stresses and stimulates the cannon gradually.
"When a horse is breezed, the bone sees it as an emergency and immediately begins laying down new bone," Dr. Fisher said. "This new bone is weak and needs to be strengthened through later remodeling, which would be triggered by further breezes spaced closer together. If remodeling is not allowed to take place and the horse is asked to do too much before he is ready, the new bone will be weak and prone to injury. The bone-strengthening is entirely based on stress and recovery to gradually increase bone density and strength."
In Dr. Fisher's program, horses transition from a one furlong work at 15 seconds to a half-mile or more in 13 seconds over a 16-week period.
If there are more than four days between short distance works, Drs. Nunamaker and Fisher have discovered the new bone will stop rebuilding and actually weaken, with no additional stress after five days.
Once the program has been finished, a horse is prepared to begin conventional training because he should have accumulated enough bone strength that he will not buck shins. However, if a horse is subjected to different track conditions or circumferences, such as a European horse racing on American dirt, the threat of shin soreness resurfaces.
Even though Dr. Fisher has modified the program throughout the years, he is still quite pleased with its performance.
"We just don't have many injuries at all," Dr Fisher said. "No more tendons, no more suspensories, no more fractures."
How much high-speed work and distance are required to signal the bone to remodel itself correctly and not form weaker bone? Research is still being conducted but Dr. Nunamaker claims the goal is to correctly change the bone at the slowest possible speed over the shortest possible distance.
 
"Maybe two furlongs, maybe one furlong," Dr. Nunamaker said. "Maybe it won't even have to be that far. We just don't know but there is a fine line during a crucial time period as to what is too much and what is not enough."
Once the bone has attained maximum strength by becoming thicker at its stress points, it should stay that way.
"When we looked at the timing of the injuries that occurred in horses that have shin injuries, we found that when the horse reached four years old, it no longer had shin injuries," Dr. Nunamaker said. "It may develop injuries to other parts of its body, but not to the shins. It is in the first two years of its training program, if it starts at two years of age, that it is going to have shin injury problems. After that no more shin injuries."
It is important to note the bones are the slowest part of the body to train. In most cases, the cardiovascular system and soft tissues are prepared for the stress of racing before the bones.
Study results presented at the 2005 Australian Veterinary Association depict shin soreness or bucked shins can be avoided. Certain training techniques place horses at risk for this condition.
The most significant factor was how far the horse trained and how quickly he went. If a horse trained at a speed greater than 33 mph during its first ten weeks of training, he tended to have some shin pain.
"A gradual increase in the weekly distances at these speeds is the key to reducing the number of cases," Dr. David Evans, BVSc, PhD and associate professor of veterinary science at the University of Sydney and one of the researchers on the project, said.
The study also revealed that using short gallops of 200-300 meters at 33 mph or greater can decrease shin soreness; training horses to induce shin soreness will not reduce the risk of contracting the condition during subsequent training; and shin pain occurred much less often in horses that began training at an average age of 30 months.
Dr. Evans acknowledged that much more research was necessary before any authoritative program could be implemented.
K.L.P. Verheyen, DVM, MSc, PhD, MRCVS, of the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) in London, agrees with Drs. Nunamaker and Evans that training methods are associated with injury risk.
"Stress injuries are repetitive loading injuries," Dr. Verheyen said. "Compare it to a paper clip and if you keep bending it, it will break. Interval training (alternate periods of hard exertion and rest) is a better option because high-speed exercise is as not bad as previously thought. It actually stimulates bone to respond, because bone is a living tissue and is constantly remodeling. If the same exercise is repeated again and again, the bone will stop responding, which is what we think is happening with the low-speed exercise and stress fractures."
While more research must be conducted to provide greater insight into how equine bones adapt and grow, even less is known about how tendons and ligaments respond to training. In a series of recent studies, Allan Goodrich, a professor at the Royal Veterinary College and the University College of London, discovered that the tendons of young horses (less than two years) strengthen in response to training. These results raise the possibility that early training enhances the development of the limb's support structures and could diminish injuries during training and racing.
After reviewing training methods and treatments, it is obvious much more research must be completed before any sound strength management program can be introduced.
"We just don't have all the answers yet," Dr. Nunamaker said.

Kimberly French 
(14 February 2008 - Issue 7)

TRM Trainer of the Quarter - Bill Mott

TheTRM trainer of the quarter award has been won by Bill Mott. Bill and his team will receive a TRM product portfolio worth in excess of $1,500. The portfolio will consist of TRM tack bags and saddle pads as well as a large selection of the world famous TRM product range.

On a single afternoon in January, Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott squashed any chance of a letdown following his outstanding 2007 season by winning three races in the Sunshine Millions January 26th. Their combined purses were $2 million.

He was lucky for the opportunity. So was every other trainer with horses in the half of the Sunshine Millions at Santa Anita, which somehow dodged rain long enough to have a day of racing. Races were cancelled at Santa Anita for two days before and after that single afternoon.
Mott won both the $1 million Sunshine Millions Classic with Go Between and the $500,000 Filly and Mare Turf with Quite a Bride at Santa Anita. At Gulfstream Park, site of the other Sunshine Million races, Mott's War Monger captured the $500,000 Turf. That allowed Mott to be ranked second in the country in earnings through the first four weeks of 2008.
‘You imagine days like this,' Mott said.
War Monger had not started since taking the Rutgers Handicap at Monmouth Park, Oct. 24th. The victory was War Monger's third in his last four starts and made him four-for-seven in his career. Mott said, ‘When he switches leads, he's got a nice punch.'
So does Quite a Bride, who upset the 3-5 favorite, Nashoaba's Key, to improve her lifetime record to 10-for-18.

Go Betweem, a five-year-old son of Point Given, improved his lifetime record to seven-for-27 by taking the Classic under Garrett Gomez, the 2007 Eclipse Award winning jockey who also rode Quite a Bride.
Success is hardly new to Mott. When the 54-year-old native of Mobridge, South Dakota, was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1998, he displaced Allen Jerkens as the youngest trainer ever inducted. That was 30 years after Mott bought and trained his first horse, a mare named My Assets he purchased for $320. Mott worked for Hall of Fame trainer Jack Van Berg for three years before opening his own stable in 1978.

He has prospered ever since. Mott's horses are invariably well-prepared when they go into the starting gate, reflecting Mott's dedication to giving his horses the proper foundation before they race. Mott's ability to win with horses off long layoffs is second to none, evidenced by War Monger's winning return.
 
While Mott will be remembered forever for his brilliant management of two-time Horse of the Year Cigar, who won 16 consecutivce races, he has never been celebrated for his work with two-year-olds.

He changed that perception dramatically at Saratoga in 2007, when he ended Todd Pletcher's five-year leading trainer reign by winning 27 races, giving Mott his first Saratoga title since 2001.. Eleven of those 27 victories were with two-year-olds. ‘We might have been a little more aggressive with our twoyear-olds,' Mott said. It worked, as Mott took a huge lead early in the trainer standings then maintained it through Saratoga's 36-day meet. ‘It was gratifying, but the best part has been the last five years not being on top, because you learn a lot more that way,' Mott said. ‘I'm very serious about that. It's been very humbling.'

Others marvel at Mott's horsemanship. Hall of Fame jockey Kent Desormeaux, who rode War Monger to victory in the Sunshine Millions Turf, said, ‘Bill's done a great job of training this horse. When I first rode him, I couldn't get within two lengths of another horse.'

By: Bill Heller
 (14 February 2008 - Issue Number: 7)

Taking Time to Review your Hiring Procedures

The Federal Government has stepped up enforcement and prosecution of EMPLOYERS who hire undocumented workers. Felony criminal prosecution and fines are being imposed for employers who cannot show they have taken the steps required in the hiring process.

If as an employer you have a perspective employee fill out the Form I-9 (U.S. Department of Homeland Security Employment Eligibility Verification form), and you examine the required documents, you will not be fined or prosecuted, even if it turns out that the documents were falsified and the employee turns out to be an undocumented alien. Of course, if you knew the worker was undocumented, you can still be fined or jailed.

Therefore, it is strongly recommended that you follow the procedures that are outlined below.

1. Have the employee complete Section One of the I-9 Form. He/she must sign the form. If the form is completed by someone other than the employee, that person must also sign;

2. You must complete and sign Section Two of the I-9 Form.  To do so, you must examine one document from List A, OR one from List B AND one from List C;

3. You must accept any document(s) from the List of Acceptable Documents presented by the individual which reasonably appear on their face to be genuine and to relate to the person presenting them. You may not specify which document(s) an employee must present;

4. You must retain the I-9 Form for three years after the date the person begins work or  one year after the person's employment is terminated, whichever is later; and

5. Upon request, provide Forms I-9 to authorized officers of the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of Labor, or the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration Related Unfair Employment Practices for inspection.
Another area of concern is "document abuse." This is the term used to describe unlawful practices by the employer related to verifying the employment eligibility of employees and discriminatory use of the I-9 form. An employer with four or more employees may be charged with unlawful discrimination for any of the following reasons - these practices should be avoided:

1. Improperly requesting that employees produce more documents than are required by the Form I-9.

2. Improperly requesting that employees produce a particular document such as a "green card," to establish identity or work eligibility.

3. Improperly rejecting documents that reasonably appear to be genuine and belong to the employee presenting them.

4. Improperly treating groups of applicants differently when completing Form I-9, such as requiring certain groups of employees that look or sound "foreign" to produce particular documents that the employer does not require other employees to produce.
Here are a few more tips that may be helpful

• Be certain you have complete I-9 forms 
 for all new hires, including U.S. Citizens.


• Make sure that all staff that process new 
 hires are trained to properly complete  
 the I-9 process and are trained to properly 
complete the I-9 form. Periodically interview staff to make sure they are properly processing new hires.   
Incomplete or improperly completed I-9   
forms will result in exposure to liability!


• Complete the forms at the same point in 
 the employment process for all employees 
 - after you have made the decision to hire 
 the person.


• The law does not require you to 
 photocopy documents. However, if you 
 wish to make photocopies, you must do 
 so for all employees, and you should 
 retain each photocopy with the Form I-9.


• Periodically review your I-9 procedures, especially prior to the employment of seasonal workers. Conduct occasional "spot checks" to ensure the procedures are being followed and the forms are being filled out correctly.


• Make sure your system is programmed to "flag" I-9's 90 days before the expiration date of any work authorization document!


• Periodically review your record retention practices. Be certain you keep I-9 forms on file for three years after the date of hire or for one year after termination of employment, whichever date is later.

Although following these suggestions does not guarantee that you will be protected against criminal or civil charges, it does minimize the possibility and will help to give you one less thing to worry about. If you would like more information on this subject, please contact me at the California Thoroughbred Trainers office.

Edward I. Halpern
  (14 February 2008 - Issue Number: 7)

Dale Romans - his career and his views on welfare issues

THIS IS A SCANNED IN ARTICLE - FROM OUR PRE DIGITAL DAYS!

This article first appeared in North American Trainer - Winter 2007 - issue 6

​ Spooky Mulder - winning the hard way

By Bill Heller

Came again on rail
            Dug in gamely on rail
            Dug in gamely inside
            Came again inside
            Set pace, resolute
            Resolute, prevailed
            Determined outside
            Dug in between rivals
            Between, came again
 
            Those aren’t your typical, mundane DRF comments. Then again, there is nothing typical or mundane about Spooky Mulder, who has won 31 of those 78 starts. He also has 16 seconds, four thirds and earnings topping $850,000 despite a 1-for-18 stakes record. Spooky Mulder has made his money the hard way: on the lead or pressing the pace in claiming sprint races at 17 different racetracks throughout the East and Midwest under 24 different riders. He is the ultimate claiming warrior.  From June 26th, 2002, when he won his sixth lifetime start in a $12,500 claimer at Churchill Downs, Spooky Mulder made at least one start a month for 35 consecutive months, one month short of three years.While he was most effective at six (17-for-49) and  6 ½ furlongs (6-for-11), he had four wins and three seconds in seven starts at seven furlongs and won both of his starts at one mile.

On wet tracks, he had eight wins in 14. He didn’t let chronic foot problems or a near-fatal infection compromise his career. Courage, durability, versatility and a 40 percent career winning percentage. What else is there for a Thoroughbred to accomplish?

On September 2nd, just two weeks shy of the sixth anniversary of his winning career debut at Turfway Park in 2001, Spooky Mulder shook off a 6 ½ month layoff to take an optional $50,000 claimer at Delaware Park by 3 ¾ lengths wire-to-wire in 1:08 4/5, earning a Beyer Speed Figure of 103. That’s fast, especially for a nine-year-old, but nowhere near his career best of 116 “The one word that would describe him is amazing,” his current trainer Scott Lake said. “It’s the only word you can use to describe him.”

 Lake, once again battling Steve Asmussen for the national lead in training victories, knows Spooky Mulder better than anyone, having claimed him three times, for $25,000, $50,000 and $75,000, and having had him claimed away for $65,000 and $100,000. “When you lose him, you hate it,” Lake said. “You feel sick, but we were running him in spots where he could win, running him where he belongs.” Spooky Mulder belongs in the winner’s circle, and he seems to realize that. “He’s the man and he knows it,” Lake said. “If you ever see him in the morning, he struts.”

 Lake was anything but enamored with Spooky Mulder when he first saw him in the paddock at Canterbury Park in Minnesota on July 19th, 2003. Lake was running Pelican Beach against Spooky Mulder in the $48,000 Claiming Crown Express. “We were standing in the paddock in July,” Lake said. “He was sweating and washed out and I said, ‘Who is this rat?’” Then Lake looked at the Form and saw that this rat had already won nine races. “I said, ‘I have to wait for him to be put back in a claimer,’” Lake said. “Anybody who wins that many races and looks like that has to be a winner.” That afternoon at Canterbury, Pelican Beach finished second to Landler by a head, 3 ½ lengths ahead of Spooky Mulder, who rallied from seventh to finish third after breaking unusually slow.

 Most of his career, he’s been freaky fast. And while he has not acquitted himself well in stakes company, he did knock off 2005 Breeders’ Cup Sprint winner Silver Train in a three-horse race at Aqueduct on April 20th, 2006, when he was claimed from Lake by trainer Pat Reynolds for $100,000. Spooky Mulder won two more starts at that lofty claiming level for Reynolds before Lake claimed him back for $75,000 on Nov. 19th, 2006, at Aqueduct, another race Spooky Mulder won. He finished the year with six wins, three seconds and one third from 13 starts, earning $236,705. Not bad for an eight-year-old claimer. Asked why he claimed him yet again, Lake said, “Because he’s awesome.”

Nearly a year later, Lake believes Spooky Mulder has more victories left in him. “Knock on wood, he has a club foot and a little bit of an ankle, but other than that, he’s remained pretty sound for us,” Lake said.
A son of Brunswick out of Suana, by Jade Hunter, Spooky Mulder was bred by Jeff Allen in Kentucky. Fittingly, Spooky Mulder debuted in a $30,000 maiden claimer at Turfway Park, winning the 6 ½-furlong race by a length and a half. He made just one other start as a three-year-old, finishing a tiring fifth in an allowance race. He returned to the races the following February and began carving out one of the most successful careers a claimer has ever had.  Lake crossed paths with Spooky Mulder in the 2003 Claiming Crown, and, true to his word, did claim him later that year. But Lake waited to do so.

After the third at Canterbury, Spooky Mulder captured a starter allowance at Ellis Park, then finished a badly tiring sixth in a $45,000 claimer at Turfway Park. Trainer Don Habeeb dropped Spooky Mulder to $25,000, and on October 10th, 2003, Lake claimed him. Spooky Mulder finished second by 1 ¾ lengths in that final start for Habeeb and wasted little time verifying Lake’s wisdom in adding him to his stable. Following a game second in a $35,000 claimer at Aqueduct - his lone start without Lasix - Spooky Mulder won a $30,000 claimer wire-to-wire by 13 ¾ lengths in 1:08 2/5 at Aqueduct, November 23rd, earning a Beyer Speed Figure of 116. Spooky Mulder twice won an optional $75,000 claimer, one of them at one mile. That induced Lake to try stretching Spooky Mulder out to a mile and an eighth to contest the 2004 Claiming Crown Jewel at Canterbury. Sent off at 4-1, Spooky Mulder finished 11th by 40 lengths. He’d been sixth by 33 ¼ lengths in a previous attempt at nine furlongs.

Showing no ill effect, Spooky Mulder won his next start, a $65,000 claimer at seven furlongs at Saratoga when he was claimed by Mark Shuman. In his first start for his new connections in a $100,000 claimer at Saratoga, attempting to go wire-to-wire at six furlongs, Spooky Mulder was passed at the top of the stretch, only to surge again on the rail and defeat Secret Run by a neck in a snappy 1:09.  It was a gutsy, signature performance, one which resonated with fans, bettors and horsemen. But by the following April, Spooky Mulder was dropped back to $50,000, and one of Lake’s owners, Ben Mondello, a 34-year-old accountant in New York City, wanted to own the gritty gelding. “I had just started a business relationship with Scott, and he was on his honeymoon,” Mondello said. “I called him up and told him to take the horse for $50,000. He’s a racehorse. He wants to win. This horse doesn’t like to win unless he’s in a fight.”

Mondello and Lake couldn’t have known Spooky Mulder would immediately be involved in a fight for his life.“He had an infection is his upper hoof and it spread all the way up to his tendon sheath,” Lake said. “We sent him to the New Jersey clinic and (Dr.) Patty Hogan.” Hogan called Lake and told him she was concerned about Spooky Mulder’s life, and that any treatment might be costly. “I said, ‘Do whatever you have to do to save his life,’” Lake said. “She said, ‘That’s all I needed to hear.’ She called me at Gulfstream Park eight days later. She said, ‘I think it’s good news.’ She did a phenomenal job saving his life. Mondello agreed: “Patty saved his life.”
           

Spooky Mulder was back to the races exactly three months after the April 10th claim in a $75,000 claimer at Belmont Park. “I said to Scott, ‘What do you think?’” Mondello said. “He said, ‘I haven’t trained him that hard.’”Hard enough. Spooky Mulder won by a length and a half in 1:09. Lake tried to win a stakes race with him, but the best Spooky Mulder could do was finish second in three of them, the Icecapade at Monmouth and the Brutally Frank and Paumonok at Aqueduct. After the last one, January 28th, 2006, Lake freshened his horse and he returned two months later to win a $75,000 claimer. On April 20th, 2006, Spooky was entered in an optional $100,000 claimer. He faced two opponents: multiple graded stakes winner Silver Train and Primary Suspect.
           

 Silver Train had won the Grade 2 Jerome Handicap and the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Sprint in his final two starts in 2005, and would win the Grade 1 Metropolitan Handicap and the Grade 2 Tom Fool Handicap after taking on Spooky Mulder, who spotted Silver Train two pounds and went off at 9-5. Silver Train was 1-2. On the lead, Spooky Mulder was under constant pressure from Primary Suspect. Silver Train shadowed the top pair then tried pouncing on them in the stretch. Spooky Mulder refused to give in, holding Silver Train safe by three-quarters of a length with Primary Suspect a nose back in third after six furlongs in 1:09 2/5.

 “That was the day we lost him,” Mondello said. Spooky Mulder had been claimed for $100,000 by trainer Pat Reynolds for owner Paul Pompa, Jr. “After the race, an owner called me up and said, ‘You might be one of the luckiest owners ever; you just had an eight-year-old gelding claimed for $100,000,’” Mondello said. “I told him, ‘I’d rather give the $100,000 back and keep him.’ It was like losing a family member.” Pompa had discussed claiming Spooky Mulder with Reynolds. “I said, ‘I don’t know where to go if we claim him,’” Reynolds said. “He called me from the sales at Keeneland. He said, ‘There are people bidding $800,000, $900,000 on yearlings here who might never get broken. This is a ready-made horse running for $100,000. Buy him.’”

            Reynolds claimed Spooky Mulder and is happy that he did. “It turned out to be a real gratifying experience,” he said. “He was like a pet. He knew his name. If you said, ‘Spooky,’ he turned his head.”His head was fine; his wheels were not. “He had terrible feet,” Reynolds said. “One was curved and one was clubbed. And he had a history of shoeing problems. But that’s taken care of by a blacksmith. He did not throw a single shoe while I had him.” Reynolds had him for seven starts, three of them wins and one a painfully close second by a head to Around the Cape in the $75,000 Lure Stakes at Belmont. It would have given Spooky Mulder that elusive first stakes victory. “He almost accomplished something,” Reynolds said. “He got beat by a head. The horse knows how to read. If he doesn’t see dollar signs next to it (for a claiming race), he doesn’t think it’s a race.”

            Spooky Mulder’s final race for Reynolds was in a $75,000 claimer at Aqueduct, November 19th at Aqueduct. Under Eibar Coa, Spooky Mulder found himself in a speed duel for six furlongs. Stonewood, a hard-hitter in his own right, was on the rail with Spooky Mulder right next to him. Stonewood held Spooky Mulder off by a half a length through a first quarter in :22 2/5, then spurted clear by a length and a half after a half in :46. But Spooky Mulder came back for more. Then the two were joined on the outside by Morine’s Victory. Spooky Mulder was passed again on the outside by Morine’s Victory, yet came right back in between horses, winning a three-horse photo by a neck over Morine’s Victory with Stonewood just another head back in third. “He was beaten,” Reynolds said. “Anybody who saw that race, even the people who were second and third, couldn’t stop talking about it. They said, ‘If we have to lose, we don’t mind losing to a horse like that.’ Only a horse who knows what winning is would run a race like that. He was an unbelievable animal to be around.”

            He wouldn’t be around Reynolds any more. Lake had claimed him back for $75,000. Reynolds still misses Spooky Mulder. “I treated him every day like the class animal he is, and he reciprocated,” Reynolds said. “I wish I had a couple two-year-olds like him in the barn.” Re-united with Lake, Spooky Mulder won one of four starts before getting a deserved rest from mid-February to September 2nd when he resurfaced at Delaware Park in an optional $50,000 claimer. “His ankle was flaring up on him,” Lake said.

            By the time Spooky Mulder returned to the races, Mondello had claimed Spooky Mulder’s four-year-old, less accomplished half-sister, Samantha Mulder. Mondello claimed the four-year-old filly for $15,000 last June 17th, when she finished sixth in a maiden claimer at Churchill Downs. Lake gave the filly a seven-week layoff and she won her first start for Mondello, a maiden claimer at the same level, by 6 ¼ lengths at Delaware Park. She subsequently finished second and fifth in a starter allowance and $12,500 claimer, respectively.  How would Spooky Mulder fare off a 6 ½-month layoff? He was sent off at 5-1 and wired five rivals off sizzling fractions of :22 1/5 and :44 4/5. He crossed the wire 3 ¾ lengths clear after six furlongs in 1:08 4/5, his 30th career victory. “It’s unbelievable,” Mondello said. “He’s a racehorse. He wants to win. Somebody told me after the race, ‘You might be lucky enough to get to the Kentucky Derby, but you’ll never have another horse like this again.’ He’s probably right. The heart that this horse has, forget about it.”
           

In his next start, the Hockessin Stakes at Delaware Park October 6th, Spooky Mulder uncharacteristically settled in third, then gamely rallied to win by a head in 1:10, finally securing his first stakes victory. Spooky Mulder subsequently finished a tiring fifth by a length and three-quarters in the Vincent A. Moscarelli Memorial Stakes and third in an optional claimer at Laurel Park on Wednesday. November 21st, the day before Thanksgiving.
    Lake is thankful he’s gotten to train this incredible claimer. He thinks he understands the secret of Spooky Mulder’s success: “He enjoys what he’s doing. He’s happy. That’s what keeps him going.”

Racing Power- supporting muscular effort through nutrition

By Dr Catherine Dunnett

The powerhouse for a horse in training is found in its large muscle mass. Whilst genetic makeup within the Thoroughbred breed has a large impact on a horse’s innate racing ability, dietary factors will also influence subsequent performance.

 There are many elements found in a racehorse’s diet that will help to support muscle function. Hydrolysable carbohydrate (sugar and starch), assisted by fermentable fibre, will help to maintain important muscle stores of glycogen (a carbohydrate fuel).  Dietary electrolytes, which are integrally involved in muscle contraction, are essential to offset electrolyte loss in sweat. Key dietary antioxidants such as vitamins E and C and also antioxidant co-factors, such as copper, manganese, zinc and selenium, are also important as part of the body’s antioxidant team which strives to reduce the formation of free radicals or reactive oxygen species, and to limit their damaging effects on the body.  Free radical damage has previously been implicated in the process of exercise induced muscle damage.

GLYCOGEN STORES MUST BE REPLENISHED FOLLOWING EXERCISE


One of the most important functions of the diet is to replenish the horse’s energy stores in muscle on an ongoing basis.    A racing ration needs to support the synthesis of glycogen to maintain the store of this important fuel, which is used in increasing amounts during exercise.  Glycogen, which consists of a large branched chain of glucose units, is stored in both skeletal muscle and the liver and it represents one of the largest potential energy stores in the body. Horses being natural athletes, have a relatively large muscle glycogen store when compared to other species.  As the glycogen content of horse muscle is influenced by the proportion of different muscle fibre types present, this means that there is a genetic influence on the overall glycogen content.   
Fast twitch fibres (Type IIb), which are found in increased numbers in talented sprinting horses, store relatively more glycogen than the slower type I and type IIa fibres.  However, both diet and training can influence the level of glycogen stored in muscle.  Exercise training for example has been reported to increase muscle glycogen content by 30-60% in horses.

Logically, diet should have a significant effect on the storage of muscle glycogen as it provides the building blocks for glycogen synthesis.  Glycogen can be synthesised efficiently from dietary starch, which is another polymer of glucose found in cereals.  Glycogen can also be produced from certain glycogenic amino acids, released from the protein content of feed. In addition, propionic acid, which is a significant volatile fatty acid produced in the horse’s hindgut during the fermentation process, can also ultimately be converted to muscle glycogen.   In terms of the day to day diet, starch is by far the most direct and most efficient precursor for glycogen and so it is therefore not surprising that cereals, which are high in starch, have been the mainstay of racing diets for many years.

In recent years we have seen the introduction of racing feeds that are lower in starch and sugar than traditional racing rations, with a greater emphasis being placed on digestible fibre and oil as energy sources. Whilst there are many health benefits attributable to this type of diet, the effect of changing the level of starch in the diet on muscle glycogen should always be considered.

MUSCLE GLYCOGEN - 
AN IMPORTANT FUEL BUT NOT THE KEY FACTOR IN FATIGUE


Muscle glycogen is a major source of energy (ATP) to working muscle during intense exercise, which is characteristic of racing.  The amount of muscle glycogen used during training or racing will depend on its rate of utilisation, which in turn is affected by the speed and duration of the exercise undertaken.  In general terms, the higher the speed, the faster muscle glycogen is broken down and used. The duration of fast exercise is normally curtailed, which limits the overall amount of glycogen used.  During slower work, although the rate of glycogen utilisation is much lower, exercise can usually be continued for a much longer time allowing more glycogen to be utilised overall (see figure 1).

Total muscle glycogen content can be reduced by about 30% during a single bout of maximal exercise in horses.  However, as muscle is a mix of different fibre types, the depletion of glycogen in individual fibres may be greater than this depending on the pattern of fibre recruitment during the exercise.  Studies, however, have shown that even the IIB muscle fibres, which use glycogen at the fastest rate, are not totally depleted of glycogen following racing.  This supports the notion that although glycogen is an important fuel source for racehorses, glycogen depletion is not the most important factor in fatigue.  However, exercise studies do suggest that power output and exercise performance can be decreased in horses where muscle glycogen has failed to be adequately replaced following a previous race or piece of hard work.  This was the conclusion drawn by Lacombe and co-workers (2001) who reported that horses with replete muscle glycogen stores were able to run for longer periods during a maximal exercise test compared to horses whose muscle glycogen level remained low following a previous exercise bout.  
Whilst there are always horses that will buck the trend, this research emphasises the need to allow a suitable period of time between races, but also between bouts of fast work and subsequent racing to allow muscle glycogen stores to be replenished.

From a practical viewpoint, I would say that the ability of a racing diet to support muscle glycogen synthesis remains important.  In contrast to human athletes, muscle glycogen replenishment in horses is relatively slow.  Following racing or a hard work, research suggests that muscle glycogen can take up to 72 hours to return to pre-exercise levels when a traditional high cereal racing ration is fed.

Certainly research carried out in the past 3 years would suggest that a high glycemic racing ration would be better placed to support glycogen replenishment more quickly following racing or hard work.  There are many factors that affect the glycemic response to feed, which in simple terms describes the relative rise in blood glucose following feeding. The starch and sugar content of a feed, however, is one of the most significant factors affecting glycemic response.  Feeds that are high in starch and sugar e.g. a high cereal-containing mix produce a greater glycemic response compared with feeds that are very low in starch and sugar e.g. a forage only ration. 
Rate of glycogen synthesis following a glycogen depleting exercise bout was significantly higher in horses fed a high glycemic diet compared to those fed a very low glycemic control diet (Lacombe et al 2004, Lacombe et al 2006).  In addition, absolute glycogen concentration in muscle was significantly higher both 48 and 72 hours following exercise in the high glycemic group compared to the control horses and muscle glycogen concentration had returned to pre-exercise levels following 72 hours.   
 
The benefit of a high glycemic diet for glycogen repletion does, however, appear to be time dependent.  Jose-Cunelleras (et al 2006) reported a minimal difference in glycogen repletion in the first 24 hours following a glycogen depleting exercise bout between horses that were fed a high glycemic feed compared with a group where feed was withheld for 8 hours and another group of horses where only hay was fed.   A recent study also concluded that the route of administration of carbohydrate given post-exercise significantly affects the rate of glycogen replenishment.  Horses that were given an intravenous infusion of glucose following exercise exhibited significantly greater glycogen storage rates and glycogen concentration in the first 6 hours following exercise compared to horses fed a similar quantity of glucose orally.  In fact, the repletion of glycogen in response to oral glucose was minimal over this time period compared to the unsupplemented control horses (Geor et al 2007).
Whilst it is difficult to draw direct comparisons with feeding practices used in racing, it is worth appreciating the possible differences in the rate of glycogen repletion when very high glycemic feeds are fed compared to very low glycemic feeds.  The reality in many training yards I would suspect lies somewhere between these two extremes.

LOW GLYCEMIC 
DIETS CAN OFFER RACEHORSES MANY BENEFITS


There are many health-related benefits to feeding a ration that is lower in starch and sugar.  However, one should be mindful of muscle glycogen when considering horses that are consistently fed a low glycemic diet.  Specifically horses may be fed this type of ration because they are behaviourally more manageable, or because a specific condition such as the muscular disease recurrent exertional rhabdomyolysis (tying up) (RER) is present.

A low starch diet is actively encouraged for horses that suffer from RER.  McKenzie (et al 2003) reported that plasma creatine kinase activity (CK), elevations of which can indicate muscle damage, was significantly reduced following exercise in RER horses fed a low starch high fat diet versus a high starch low fat diet.   In addition, lower resting heart rates have also been reported in horses fed a low starch high fat diet compared to the reverse.  A lower resting heart rate may be beneficial especially in RER horses where it reflects a calmer horse as stress has been implicated as a trigger factor for the condition. 

The current thinking on feed for horses with RER continues to be a low starch and sugar diet supplemented with oil.  It is also important that the diet is well balanced, especially with respect to calcium and phosphorus.  Adequate electrolyte provision is equally important, as is the intake of antioxidants such as vitamin E and other related trace minerals such as selenium.  Any potential individual limitation in mineral or electrolyte absorption and retention should be investigated further with veterinary assistance in order that individualised adjustments can be made to the diet.

A SUPPORTING ROLE FOR PROTEIN IN MUSCLE RECOVERY


Whilst we are all no doubt aware that the amino acids that make up protein are important for muscle development and repair, protein and its constituent amino acids have received very little attention in horses in terms of their potential to limit exercise induced muscle damage and aid muscle recovery.

In human athletes, co-consumption of a protein and carbohydrate drink during and after exercise appears to limit exercise induced muscle damage, ultimately allowing faster recovery (Baty et al 2007; Saunders et al 2004).  Recent introduction of ingredients containing partially hydrolysed protein may improve absorption of these amino acids and peptides possibly offering further benefit.

Finally, some nutraceutical ingredients including carnitine and creatine have been hailed as being beneficial to muscle function and recovery in human athletes.  Creatine, which has been studied in the horse, has failed to offer any great advantage, largely due to its poor absorption.  Likewise, carnitine has been reported to improve muscle blood flow during exercise in humans, helping to reduce muscle damage.  However, this aspect has not as yet been investigated in horses and previous dietary studies with carnitine were not unequivocal about the ability of oral carnitine to increase muscle carnitine content.

Breaking In - laying the groundwork with the racehorses of the future

By Frances Karon

While the Thoroughbred racehorse has evolved through methods of breeding, raising, feeding, vaccinating and training, one thing that has remained fairly constant is that they must be broken in with great care and patience if they stand any chance of doing what they were born to do."

We can breed for speed or distance, to race or sell commercially, or to zero in on superior ancestors, but whatever the sire’s covering fee is, it’s like that down-to-earth reminder that our shoes, be they Armani or knockoffs – go on the same way. All horses must be taught to carry a rider on their back and to respond to a bit in their mouth. Someone figured out a long time ago that Thoroughbreds do not react positively to the American cowboy way of “breaking” a horse – literally, breaking its spirit – leading the way for a gentler, more personalized breaking in process. There are subtle differences in the approach but the desired ending is to produce a horse who accepts a rider with the confidence that only good early experiences will give it.

 
In Camden, South Carolina, Mickey Preger Jr. has been breaking young racehorses-to-be for 15 years, though his education began long before. The son of the trainer of 1983 Eclipse Award-winning older mare Ambassador of Luck, Preger grew up on the backstretch of Belmont Park, where his father shared a barn with Northern Dancer’s trainer Horatio Luro for 20 years. Preger later spent years working for Ruffian and Forego’s trainer Frank Whiteley Jr. During Preger’s tenure, Whiteley broke Rhythm, Seeking the Gold and Preach.
 
Preger is based at the Camden Training Center, which used to be the place of choice for many trainers to winter their racehorses. Now, it caters more towards young horses learning the ropes but it has what Preger calls a “racetrack atmosphere in the country. There are enough horses here that they’re acclimated to everything when they leave here – the traffic of the track, horses jogging the wrong way.”
 
Preger circles October 1 on his calendar every year as his target date to begin the breaking in his new stock. The process itself is rudimentary and painstaking. He says, “I would say the way we break them is still very old school.” It is a matter of tackling one idea at a time and giving them three or four days to acclimate to it. Slowly, in this way his horses get used to a bit, lunging, lunging with a surcingle, with a saddle and with stirrups, each as an individual step. At this point they are well into their lessons and Preger will line drive them “until we put a good mouth on them, probably around four or five days. We take our time, and if a horse needs a couple more days we just give them a couple more days of whatever they need.”
 
The horses have already been introduced to a rider jumping on and off both sides, first in the stalls before graduating to the shedrow, jogging figure eights in small paddocks and learning directional changes in larger paddocks. Preger drills the same thing into their heads repetitively, stepping it up a level every few days as they become mentally prepared. In this fashion, the horses reach the stage where they begin jogging over a gallop in the woods before cantering on a polo field to try out lead changes.
 
The babies move on to gallop over a half-mile track, where they will generally remain until just after January 1, after which it is on to the more serious business conducted on the mile training track. When the horses ship out to racetracks around the country, most will be advanced enough to where their new trainers can breeze them three-eighths out of the gate at the end of their first week.
 
The majority of Preger’s clientele sends him homebred horses they intend to race, such as Grade 1 winner Mossflower and multiple graded winner Distorted Humor, but he does occasionally prep one that is earmarked for a late two-year-olds in training sale. His attitude toward the end use of both types is the same. “We don’t really do learning stages any differently, though we might have to speed up the process over the open gallops. You just probably have to kick on a little earlier to make the sales.” The season at the training center ends in mid-May, so the average horse in his care receives seven months of pre-track schooling.
 
An expansive ocean away, near Marlborough, England, ex-jockey Malcolm Bastard performs the same basic service as Preger with some slight distinctions. Bastard deals in a greater number of sales horses than his American counterpart, but also has plenty of horses going directly to trainers. Many of his influx have come out of yearling sales and he begins work as each comes into him and sends them out when they are properly broken, meaning he deals in cycles and can handle a greater volume than Preger’s 20.
 
“They’re pretty easy to break these days, especially if they’re sales prepped, then they’re half done.” Half done perhaps, but far from ready for the racecourse. In the case of a homebred, who will not have been handled to the same extent as a sales horse, Bastard commences at square one. “It goes in the horsewalker and we get it used to that for a few days, and then we put a rug on it.” These stages take a few days each, and once the horse is compliant with the rug Bastard introduces it to breaking tack, consisting of a bit, side reins, a bib martingale and a saddle, in one session. “We are looking after two things. The side rein stops them getting their head too far down and makes them carry it in the right place, and the martingale stops them getting their head up too far.” The ultimate goal, he says, is for the horses “to carry themselves in a nice position.”
 
Fully tacked, the yearlings spend 25 minutes on the horsewalker followed by a short spell of four or five minutes being lunged, with an additional 10 to 15 minutes of line driving in the indoor school adjacent to the lunge area. The duration of this phase “depends on the character of the horse.” This is the key to any good horsebreaker’s program, the point which Bastard is continually stressing, that no step is complete until the horse is fully accepting of what he is being asked to do. “As long as you know what you are doing with them, you gain their confidence while being firm but kind. They’ve got to trust you and you’ve got to trust them, and if you get a good relationship then they come a lot quicker.” Two current three-year-olds Bastard broke in for George Strawbridge as yearlings that attest to Bastard’s ability to establish that trust between man and animal are Group 1 winners Lucarno (by Dynaformer) and Mrs Lindsay (Theatrical), each by sires whose progeny are known to be difficult. Yet Bastard modestly brushes off his skills as “just very straightforward, basic common horse sense. I think everybody finds it straightforward, just hard work.”
 
Their “hard work” sees Bastard and his crew go from line-driving to riding their horses in the pen for 10 or so days, with a second person stationed at the horse’s head for its comfort and the safety of everyone involved. Having already proven themselves agreeable to someone jumping on and off them in the stable, once emotionally stable over a matter of days the horses move out to the indoor arena. As with Preger, regardless of where the horses are supposed to go after they leave Bastard’s stables, “they all get treated the same. With the breeze-up horses we don’t do anything different with them but start to sharpen them up a little bit more.”
 
Bastard retired from race riding in 1990, having ridden primarily for his boss of 14 years, Fred Winter, and began to pinhook his own horses, which eventually spiraled into breaking in other people’s horses. As a young boy, Bastard worked for showjumper Ted Williams, who Bastard credits as “an absolute genius of a horseman” from whom he learned to do things what he calls “the uncomplicated way. A lot of people try to make things complicated but that’s not the way we do it.” The main focus for Bastard is to “try to make things very simple, and the horses get into a routine and they enjoy that routine.”
 
One man who has been innovative in dealing with unbroken or even wild animals is Buck Wheeler. He uses his patented Stableizer to facilitate the breaking process. On a beautiful morning in Kentucky, Wheeler demonstrates on an unbroken yearling at Ramsey Farm. Wheeler joins the colt in the round pen with his gear, consisting in part of a long whip with a plastic bag fastened to the tip and a lasso that elicits a raised brow from the observer, not to mention the nervous colt eyeing him apprehensively. Wheeler secures the Stableizer under the colt’s lip and tightens it above his ears, hitting acupressure points that quickly begin to relax the horse. Wheeler inserts a chifney bit in the mouth because with a chifney, as opposed to a more traditional bit, “it all falls into place, all right in line” where the horse turns with his entire body as one instead of turning with his head with the rest to follow. He begins to lunge the yearling.
 
With every step, the colt is allowed to sniff the new equipment, and Wheeler reassures him with a rub on the forehead and by blowing in his nose that everything is okay. The two become fast friends, the colt recognizing Wheeler as the alpha leader, and whenever the colt is turned loose he trails as Wheeler zigzags around the pen with his back to the animal.
 
Wheeler, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation through his mother, was raised on 8,000 acres of Indian territory, with some 80 horses at his disposal. “I learned from the Indians – they weren’t called trainers then, they were just horsemen.” His father put him on a horse and said, “You’re going to learn to ride like the Indians before I buy you a saddle.” Wheeler laughs and fills in his adult interpretation of his father’s philosophy: “I think he was just too tight to buy the saddle. But one thing I realized later on in life was that he was absolutely correct because it learns you to be part of that animal. You are literally part of the horse. You can feel things that happen before they ever happen. You learn to watch their eyes, you learn to watch their ears, because those are their telegraphs.”
 
Perhaps most spectacular is what Wheeler does to close out the training period. To show how relaxed and desensitized the yearling is, Wheeler stands in the middle of the pen with the horse turned loose against the fence, and he twirls the lasso over his head and ropes the colt around his neck. The colt shies backward at first and Wheeler flicks it around his neck a second, third and fourth time. After the second, the colt stops flinching and simply watches with interest as Wheeler reverses the steps and untangles the rope from some 15 feet away.
 
“Because of the euphoria that’s induced by the endorphins he’s remembering this as a pleasurable experience instead of something that he’s being forced into, or having a bad attitude.”
 
The premise is elementary. The endorphins released by the pressure points on which the Stableizer rests enable Wheeler to handle the horse from all sides, getting him comfortable with having a rope tangled around his back legs or the plastic bag on the whip blowing in his face and over his body. When it is time for the saddle, Wheeler encourages the gray colt to satisfy his curiosity before he puts it on his back and cinches the girth by himself and with little effort. The stirrups dangle well below the horses belly; Wheeler threads his lines through them and drives the horse around in a circle. The yearling is frightened by the strange sensations and noises for the first two or three turns around the pen before he puts his head down and trots calmly and with a straight head as Wheeler steers him from behind with his fingertips.
 
The Stableizer is a shortcut to dealing with horses of all ages and in any capacity but is best described as an aid to promote good experiences for the animals. “You don’t have to go out there and jerk and holler and scream and fuss around. It’s the physiological aspect of what it does” with the endorphins. “If you hurt a horse in their training process – and it doesn’t matter if they’re little or big – they remember that, and sometimes it’s ten times tougher to go back in and try to break that fear.”
 
Trainers of the caliber of Clive Brittain and Carl Nafzger have observed Wheeler in action and are proponents of his Stableizer. Street Sense is Wheeler’s current poster boy, though Nafzger’s Unbridled and Lady Joanne and Wayne Lukas’ classic winners Grindstone and Editor’s Note have modeled the Stableizer as well. This is a successful tool that honors Wheeler’s Native American teachers by inventing a new way to emulate their old approach. His method is not necessarily different than the ways in which other people break horses, but assisted by the Stableizer he is able to accomplish the successful introduction of a rider within an hour of working with an unschooled horse. Or mule, zebra, llama – all of which on whom Wheeler has used the Stableizer.
 
Preger sums up his opinion of the breaker’s role in the racehorse’s career: “If a horse is going to perform well he’s got to be happy and healthy, right? I like to give credit to the people that train horses at the track. We work as a team, put it that way. It all has to work together.”
 
Although there are variants among people who break horses on global and even local levels, the certainty on which all will agree is that the horse’s emotional wellbeing during the learning stages is tantamount to its ability to perform to the best of its capacity.

Tooth Trouble - why regular dentist visits are essential for racehorses

By Kimberley French

The mouth of a Thoroughbred is the principle means of communication between the horse and his rider. Other aids are used as well, but for many, the bit is what determines direction, rate of speed and position or frame in which the horse moves.

The design and function of the horse’s mouth is such that it provides a perfect vehicle for use as a “steering device.” The interdental space allows a bit to lie comfortably without interfering with the normal position of the jaws when they close. Horses are the only domestic animals that have their mouths used in this fashion.

 Dr. Jack Easley, DVM, MS, Diplomat ABVP, who specializes in equine dentistry and resides in Shelbyville, Kentucky, insists the domestication of horses is the prime reason they require dental care.

 “Typically, horses keep their heads on the ground and eat grass 16 hours a day,” Dr. Easley said. “But we keep them in a stall with their heads up and feed them hay, oats and sweet feed. Stabled horses tend to have more problems with periodontal disease and abnormal wear because their teeth have not adapted from their natural forage diet.”
 Dr. Easley recommends preventative dental care long before a young horse is introduced to a bit. “An oral examination should be performed the day a foal is born,” Dr. Easley said. “You want to make sure the jaws match and there is no deformity in the head.”

A foal's deciduous premolars are all in use within the first few weeks of life and can soon start to wear abnormally if they do not mesh properly. While there are orthodontic devices and surgical remedies to correct truly severe over- and under-bites, they are expensive, difficult to maintain and have variable rates of success.

A foal should be examined again when it is weaned to make sure no teeth are missing from trauma, such as a kick in the mouth, and that all teeth are still properly aligned.

Unless there is an obvious problem, such as holding the head to the side, loss of feed while eating, nasal discharge or swelling of the face, jaw or mouth, a horse does not need to be examined again until it is ready to be bitted, which for a Thoroughbred is usually when the horse is a yearling or a 2-year-old.

When a horse is nine months old, all 24 baby teeth are in place. At this age, most horses will also erupt two wolf teeth and the first permanent molar set erupts behind the baby premolars. By the time the foal is a yearling, he has erupted 24 to 30 teeth and all of the deciduous teeth have been “in wear” long enough that their edges are likely very sharp. Deciduous teeth are softer than permanent teeth and wear sharp edges much faster. It is not uncommon for yearlings to have ulcers or lacerations on their cheeks and tongues from these razor-sharp points.
The first consideration prior to placing a bit in a horse’s mouth is to be sure there are no abnormalities within the mouth that may cause discomfort.

“Trainers should have their veterinarians do a performance float of their horse’s teeth before he is broken,” Dr. Mary DeLorey, DVM of Kettle Falls, Washington, said. “They will remove all sharp edges and round the front corners of the first cheek teeth, both upper and lower. This allows more room for mouth tissues and reduces discomfort when the reins are tightened and bit pressure is increased.”

A wolf tooth is a pointy little tooth located in the bit seat of a horse’s mouth. Much like a human appendix, the wolf teeth are evolutionary holdover, with no real function. The crown and root of the tooth are usually quite small.
A horse can get up to four wolf teeth, which are almost always removed during a performance float because they can interfere with bit placement. They often become “blind” or unerupted and can be felt as little bumps in the gums.
A horse's mouth undergoes the largest turnover of deciduous to permanent teeth between the ages of 2 and 3 1/2 years. He will lose two sets of deciduous incisors and shed two sets of premolars, all to be replaced by permanent teeth. He will have already erupted his second set of permanent molars, and the third set may be getting ready to erupt by 3 1/2 years of age.

According to Dr. Jon W. Gieche, DVM, the shedding of baby deciduous teeth is a complex process that can be hastened by normal chewing forces and delayed or accelerated by abnormal chewing forces. If chewing forces are reduced, breakdown might be slowed. If the adult tooth is not present, breakdown occurs anyway, but at a reduced rate. In some teeth without adult counterparts, the deciduous tooth might remain functional for years beyond its normal life.

Premature loss of a deciduous tooth results in abnormal development of the adult tooth and should only be removed if the adult tooth is present or a loose deciduous tooth can easily be wiggled.

If chewing forces are abnormal, tooth attrition is abnormal. In such a situation, eruption is uneven, with some teeth erupting faster than others. The faster erupting teeth become longer than others, resulting in hooks, ramps, steps, and waves. Without outside intervention, these conditions become progressively worse. They can result in many other complications such as cavities, periodontal disease, and pulpitis (inflammation of the dental pulp, which is located in the central cavity of a tooth). This can lead to premature loss of teeth.  

Dr. Easley compares this scenario to human babies cutting their teeth and thinks it’s essential that young Thoroughbreds receive oral exams every six months. “Oftentimes, we are asking horses to perform while they are experiencing the pain and headaches that are similar to a baby’s teething,” Dr. Easley said. “Babies are cranky and can’t sleep at night when their teeth come in. A horse is going through the same thing; it just can’t cry to let us know it’s in pain.”

These signs could indicate a young horse in dental distress:

∙ Loss of feed from the mouth while eating, difficulty chewing or excessive salivation.
∙ Weight loss or loss of body condition.
∙ Large or undigested feed particles (long stem or whole grain) in the manure.
∙ Head tossing, bit chewing, tongue lolling, fighting the bit, resisting the bridle. 
∙ Poor performance, such as lugging in, failure to stop or turn, even bucking.
∙ Foul odor from the mouth and nostrils or traces of blood in the mouth.
∙ Nasal discharge or swelling of the face, jaw or mouth.

While cheek teeth fractures are an unusual occurrence, they can be responsible for many dilemmas for a horse, from difficulty chewing to bad breath and can cause behavioral problems when pressure is placed on the sides of a horse’s face from the reins.

In an attempt to gather more knowledge on the treatment, management and frequency of this condition, the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland, sent a questionnaire to veterinarians and equine dental technicians. The survey results concluded that 147 horses suffered 182 total fractures. More than 70 percent of the fractures occurred in the upper mandible or jaw and where discovered in roughly .07 to 5.9 percent of all horses examined.

Weight loss and food impaction in the inner cheek are acute complications linked to cheek teeth fractures. Thirty-three percent of the horses examined during the study were unable to eat properly, 29 percent experienced biting and other various behavioral problems and 12 percent had halitosis. However, 39 percent of horses that had sustained a cheek tooth fracture presented no symptoms and were discovered through routine dental care.

The most common method of treatment was extraction of the small dental fragment. Other methods of treatment included extraction of the entire tooth; eradicating sharp edges on the fractured tooth; reducing the height of the opposing tooth; referring the case for other treatment; or not treating the tooth in any way.

After treatment, 81 percent of the diagnosed cases had no further symptoms, 13 percent had no clear-cut outcome and only 6 percent still had continuing complications.

In order for horses in training and racing to remain happy and healthy, it is critical to ensure they are able to work and perform in comfort. Comprehensive dental care delivered regularly by an experienced veterinary professional may be one of the easiest ways to maximize a horse’s performance and optimize his health for a lifetime.

Tampa Bay Downs - from afterthought to success

By Bill Heller

Slowly, yet surely, Tampa Bay Downs is evolving from that “other track in Florida” into a viable winter/spring option for good and even great horses and horsemen.  “We were an afterthought,” Tampa Bay Downs Vice-President and General Manager Pete Berube said. “But we’ve been able to dispel that stigmatism the last few years.”

            Maybe it was the lush turf course added in 1997. Or the continuing development of a three-year-old stakes program highlighted by the Grade 3 Tampa Bay Derby, which attracted Bluegrass Cat in 2006 and Street Sense and Any Given Saturday in 2007. Adding a 22-acre, state-of-the-art golf practice facility - with wagering available in the pro shop - and the Silks Card Room didn’t hurt.

            The bottom line is that track ownership and management has made a commitment to make the only track on the west coast of Florida an attractive destination for horsemen from December through May. “It’s changed, and it’s a good thing,” said trainer Jane Cibelli, who has been at Tampa Bay Downs since 1994 and was the eighth leading trainer there last year. “There was no money here before. Horses came from small tracks where the competition wasn’t so tough. Now those horses are having a tougher time. You see a better class of horse.”

            You don’t get much classier than Bluegrass Cat, Street Sense and Any Given Saturday. Bluegrass Cat was attempting to give trainer Todd Pletcher his second victory in the Tampa Bay Derby following Limehouse’s win in 2004, but he was upset on the track’s Festival Day by Deputy Glitters. Bluegrass Cat then finished second in the Kentucky Derby, Belmont Stakes and Travers Stakes.

            In the 2007 Tampa Bay Derby, Pletcher’s Any Given Saturday and Street Sense, trained by Carl Nafzger, staged an epic head-to-head battle through the stretch before Street Sense prevailed by a nose. Street Sense went on to win the Kentucky Derby, Jim Dandy Stakes and Travers. Any Given Saturday finished eighth in the Kentucky Derby then won the Grade 2 Dwyer Stakes, the Grade 1 Haskell Invitational and the Grade 2 Brooklyn Handicap in his first start against older horses.

            Pletcher, seeking his fourth consecutive Eclipse Award as the country’s outstanding trainer, cited two reasons he continues to use the Tampa Bay Derby as an early Kentucky Derby prep for his top three-year-olds. “It has the reputation as a very safe track,” Pletcher said. “And, more important for me, is that they offer a mile-and-a-sixteenth opportunity. To me that’s really important. With developing three-year-olds, you want to go that mile-and-a-sixteenth, and the Tampa Bay Derby is a good one to do that. In some ways, it worked out well for Bluegrass Cat and Any Given Saturday, as well as for Limehouse. They didn’t win the Derby, but I think that it had a lot to do with their positive development.”

            Track management, of course, couldn’t be happier to host Pletcher’s three-year-old colts in Tampa. “Todd’s been able to have success over here,” Berube said. “I’m glad were in his rotation. But it didn’t just happen. It’s been a plan we’ve had for a number of years: developing the three-year-old program. It can only help us in the future.”

            In the past, Tampa Bay Downs couldn’t even settle on its own name. The track opened in 1926 as Tampa Downs, then became Sunshine Park in 1947 and was frequently referred to as “the Santa Anita of the South.” In 1965, the track was renamed Florida Downs, which stuck until 1980 when the name was changed back to Tampa Downs. When  evotook over as owner in 1986, the track was rechristened Tampa Bay Downs.

            Thayer, a 66-year-old attorney and native of Tampa, is also the president of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, New York and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Tampa General Hospital Foundation and the University of South Florida Foundation. Previously, she served as president of the Thoroughbred Racing Association from 1999-2001 and has owned Thoroughbreds with her brother, Howard Ferguson, since 1986.

            Under Thayer and Berube’s stewardship, Tampa Bay Downs has prospered. Berube, whose retired dad Paul was a long-time president of the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau, joined the Tampa Bay Downs management team in 1995 as comptroller. He was promoted to vice president of finance in 1998, then to assistant general manager in 2000, and finally to his present positions on May, 2001. He defers credit for Tampa Bay Downs’ growth: “I think it was having the ownership that’s willing to re-invest in the facilities.”

             The ownership was also willing to create new facilities, none more vital to Tampa Bay Downs’ growth than the installation of a 7/8-mile turf course with a ¼-mile chute. “Probably the wisest investment we ever made was putting in the turf course in 1997, and it was done by in-house staff,” Berube said. “Within a year, it paid for itself.”

            That’s because turf races attracted larger fields, which quickly led to increased handle, especially through simulcasting. “It really put us on the map,” Berube said.

            So has Tampa Bay Downs’ program for three-year-olds, which continues to benefit from the absence of mile-and-a-sixteenth dirt races at that other Florida track, Gulfstream Park, because of its remodeled configuration.

            To maximize the appeal of its three-year-old races, Tampa Bay Downs increased the purse of the Sam F. Davis Stakes, a prep for the Tampa Bay Derby, from $50,000 to $150,000 in 2007. Next year, it will go for $200,000, which Berube hopes will induce the graded stakes committee to recognize the race as a Grade 3. “It should be a graded stakes,” Berube said. “It hurts us.”

            That’s because graded stakes earnings are the deciding factor in determining which horses get to start in the Kentucky Derby.

            Tampa Bay now has two graded stakes, both Grade 3: the Tampa Bay Derby and the Hillsborough, a turf stakes for older fillies and mares. The Florida Oaks was a Grade 3, but lost its graded status. “It’s a frustrating process,” Berube said.

            Regardless, the track re-packaged its two-year-old stakes races in December and three-year-old stakes leading up to the Tampa Bay Derby. “We’re trying to build a strong three-year-old program,” he said.

            Doing so entails maintaining a balance between stakes purses and overnight races. “We understand where our bread and butter is, and that’s in the overnights,” Berube said. “I think there has to be a balance, and, since I’ve been here, we’ve maintained a balance, about 85 percent to overnights and 15 percent into stakes. But you have to be able to attract top horses. And the public has responded.”

            So have horsemen, who made a record 333 claims last year during the 94-day meet. “The increase in the number of horses claimed is a positive sign in the barn area, indicating a solid horse population,” said Racing Secretary Allison De Luca, who will be starting his second year at Tampa Bay this winter when racing resumes December 8th.

            Last year, leading trainer Jamie Ness arrived at Tampa Bay with eight horses and returned to his base at Canterbury Park in Minnesota with 27.

            “I’ll tell you what, I’m a claiming trainer,” the 32-year-old native of Heron, South Dakota, said. “I pay attention to every circuit. It seemed like there are good horses to claim in Tampa. I decided to go out on a limb, pack up and try it two years ago. It worked out very well. I had a good first year. Last year, I had a great year. I claimed a lot of horses. I’ve probably claimed and lost more horses than anybody there.”

            He’s going to have to go some way to make a better claim than Lookinforthesecret. Ness, who won last year’s training title with 38 victories, claimed Lookinforthesecret for $12,500, January 5th, 2007, and won three stakes with him: the $75,000 Turf Dash Stakes at Tampa Bay last March 16th, and two others at Canterbury. “He’s a once-in-a-lifetime claim,” Ness said. “I take notes on every horse. It’s been a pretty good ride with him.”

            He is understandably delighted to be part of the growth of Tampa Bay Downs, even if means more difficult competition. “It’s gotten tough,” he said. “For the facility and the weather, the track is good. The turf course is second to none, and the main track is good, too. It’s deep and sandy. It’s very good for horses.”

            It’s good for Tampa Bay Downs’ business as well. “The bettors love to bet Tampa because there are full fields,” Ness said.

            Last year’s average field size of 8.85 led to a record all-sources daily handle average of more than $4.1 million on live races. Records were also set for single-day attendance - when 11,014 showed up on Kentucky Derby Day, a number enhanced by a cooler-bag giveaway - and for all-sources single-day handle when $10.9 million was wagered on Festival Day, last March 17th. Average attendance of 3,437 was down a tick from 3,501.

            “Last year was kind of the changing of the guard with a new racing secretary, and a lot of new stables came in,” Ness said.

            They may just keep coming.

            Stakes purses for the 2007-2008 meet will be a record $2.6 million with total purses a record $16 million. On December 29th, Tampa Bay Downs will offer the Cotillion Festival Day, featuring a variety of races for two-year-olds on both grass and dirt, highlighted by the $65,000 Inaugural Stakes for colts and the $65,000 Sandpiper Stakes for fillies, both at six furlongs on the main track.

            Festival Preview Day on February 16th features the $200,000 Sam F. Davis Stakes at a mile and a sixteenth, the $150,000 Endeavour Breeders’ Cup for older fillies and mares at a mile and a sixteenth on turf and the $75,000 Suncoast Stakes for three-year-old fillies at one mile on dirt.

            The $300,000 Tampa Bay Derby is the marquee attraction on Festival Day, March 15th, which also offers the $200,000 Florida Oaks for three-year-old fillies at a mile and a sixteenth on dirt, the mile-and-an-eighth $175,000 Hillsborough and the $75,000 Turf Dash at five furlongs.

            Six $85,000 stakes races for Florida-breds will be held on Florida Cup Day, April 5th.

            The attractive stakes program will allow the track continued growth. Already, more people, both horsemen and fans, are focusing on Tampa Bay Downs than ever before. Asked what he’d like people to think of when they hear the name Tampa Bay Downs, Berube said, “A great track to race on, a very forgiving surface and just a very horseman/customer friendly racetrack.”

Willie Mullins - a trainer with strong opinions

I’ve come to Willie Mullins’ yard in County Carlow, Ireland, expecting to see some strong horses and to hear some strong opinions. With Hedgehunter trotting past me up to the gallops, I’m certainly not disappointed in the first instance. This is already second lot. Willie is behind schedule - “problems earlier on the gallops” - and should be under pressure. His phone won’t stop ringing, he’s got an interview to give and a runner in the first at Gowran Park. But Willie Mullins appears to have all the time in the world. I get the impression he’s unflappable, but in fact he simply knows how to prioritise. His horses are given all the time they need, without question.

The horses circle and he watches them for two or three circuits. You might think there’d be no evident change in condition from the previous morning, but any change is discernible to Willie. As they canter past for a third time he begins to call out instructions. “Two on the big gallop; one; one; two; two on the short; one on the short…” The lads hold up the relevant number of fingers in confirmation and exit the ring as instructed. The art of conditioning a racehorse comes right down to the minute attention to detail Willie has just exhibited, though he makes it look effortless. Perhaps, by now, it really is second nature to him. Few trainers are so deeply in tune with their horses and it shows, not only in the overcrowded trophy shelves in the kitchen, but as we walk back through the yard, the equine heads following his progress intently and ignoring, as one, the visitor. 

Of course, Willie’s greatest asset is his staff. Like most yards these days he employs a very cosmopolitan mix, with men and women from Ireland, the Ukraine, Poland, England and France. “To get staff from the EU a school needs to be set up to train them and provide them with the necessary skills,” Willie points out, “whereas you could go straight to countries outside of the EU, such as Russia, South America and Pakistan, where racing has been established for a very long time and the staff have a vast experience with thoroughbreds and already possess the skills we require.” 

And now, away from the horses, it’s time to hear those famous strength of opinions, to find out what really hinders Willie’s job as a trainer; what frustrates him about today’s industry regulations and what political changes he’d like to see made within the racing establishment. Willie sits back and smiles. But, like his horses, he is never going to get wound up.

“There’s been so much tinkering with the rules over the years and you’re never going to get a rule to suit everyone,” he says realistically. “I’ve got to the stage now where some days it will suit you and some days it won’t, and I don’t think there’s anything that really annoys me as much as maybe things used to. I just find you win some, you lose some. And the governing bodies are doing their best to make rules to suit the times we live in. If there is a problem then I think it’s the long delay in implementing change. With telecommunications being so fast it’s hard to understand why this should be. I often think if we have a problem and something needs changing it should be changed within six or eight weeks, but in actual fact by the time it goes forward to the governing body and it gets discussed it takes about two years. But I think HRI is better at changing things that need to be done quickly, it’s far more receptive and probably more professional than previous governing bodies.

“I think we are quite lucky in Ireland with our governing bodies. HRI has evolved from HRA, which got the running of racing from the Turf Club, and we’re also very lucky that our government views racing as such a strong Irish tradition. Consequently a lot of people in the government and the opposition have a huge interest in racing and our prize money levels have dramatically increased over the past ten years as a result.”

Asked if there is any one thing he would change about racing, Mullins seems surprisingly content. “In the general spin of things, probably harmonisation of rules in Europe and the rest of the world,” he says, after much thought. “Flat trainers travel more than National Hunt trainers, and jockeys travel all the time, so it would be better to have harmonisation within the rules, especially the rules of race-riding. That seems to cause most controversy. When punters are viewing a head-on film and stewards in different countries reach different conclusions, maybe it could be better explained to punters. But I think the Irish and English system is quite good at the moment, while the French seem to still have an old-fashioned type of view. Certainly, I would rather see more harmonisation in European rules.” 

When it comes to harmonisation of rules, medication seems to be another issue at the top of the list. “I think it’s fairly right in Ireland and England, where all horses are tested, the winners and other random horses. America has a different system, but then maybe it suits their racing. I’m not too familiar with the problems of dirt racing and keeping horses sound. They seem to have a lot of problems with bursting, that may just be the barn system and the horses don’t get enough air. It’s not as big a problem certainly on this side of the world. Obviously I had trouble with morphine contamination and, you know, I was amazed at the different interpretation of the rules by different governing bodies, even though the rules appear to be the same, with zero tolerance. But some countries’ interpretation of zero differs from others. And then there’s the way the different laboratories give the results of their testing; some have a different method of testing, which can lead to a bit of confusion. But we can see things being harmonised all the time and that can only be good for racing.” 

Which leads to the question of travelling. Has it got any easier? “Certainly. The bureaucracy has got easier; it’s just a matter of getting used to it. Maybe if it’s your first or second time going abroad you can get caught out with little rules and regulations and things, but it’s a matter of just setting in place the A, B and C of what you’ve got to do and it becomes second nature. When we have a horse entered in England my secretary has a particular protocol to carry out and it works out well enough. When you have things like foot and mouth and any other diseases it makes things difficult. You just need to plan in advance. It’s difficult, but once you know what you’re doing it’s not insurmountable.”

Not insurmountable, perhaps, but does it pay? “In France they have prize money down to seventh; in England and Ireland we prefer to give help to people travelling, even though our prize money’s only down to fourth,” Willie points out. “I would rather see our prize money in bigger races go down to sixth and maybe even further down. It would also help to prevent four or five runner races. You take the Irish Derby, for example: prize money goes down to tenth. That normally ensures you have at least ten runners and probably eleven. And that’s a big help for sponsors and I would prefer to see that in some of the National Hunt races. Our prize money should go down to lower places, it’s an incentive. Our top horses are the top horses in their sphere and even if they’re not in the first three they should still be getting prize money. You go through a lot of horses before you get a good one and they should be rewarded.” 

“In Ireland we probably have too many owners and too many horses at the moment. We’re in a situation where we’re balloting horses and we haven’t enough races or prize money for the horses that we have in training. In order to keep our prize money levels up we can only have the amount of races that we currently have, otherwise we dilute the prize fund - and we had enough of that years ago. Everyone made an effort to get into proper prize money, which we have now. But because people now can buy a horse for three or four thousand and race for ten, we now have too many horses. Racing is all about mating the best to the best to produce the best and I don’t see why we should provide opportunities for those who don’t quite make it. Every horse is entitled to a few runs, to establish whether they’re good or bad, but I don’t think bad horses are entitled to big prize money just because someone puts them in training. There has to be a cut-off point. We just can’t keep having racing for every horse that’s produced. The onus shouldn’t be on racing to provide opportunities for him. 

“We’re unique in Ireland in that we have enough owners and horses, thanks to the work HRI and Thoroughbred Marketing have done, and our government has also encouraged people, providing grants to upgrade our tracks and upgrade our racing. You always need new owners coming in, but we’ve plenty at the moment and we’ve an oversupply of horses. I don’t want to knock the breeding industry, I don’t care if they breed twenty thousand horses a year, but we can only cater for maybe six to eight thousand in Ireland. So I think we need to raise the bar a little bit, which our authorities are doing, so that horses that are good enough have a competitive chance of earning their owners prize money. Racing has to regulate its own standard and we are able to keep a standard because we’re a small country. There are plenty of other countries in the world where lesser horses can be exported to, lots of young countries starting up racing, and that’s where I see those horses going. Hopefully if China ever gets going there’ll be a huge market there.”

On a more domestic level feed merchants have been sending out alarming letters across the country and it seems feeding may have to become more cosmopolitan, too.

“This year we’ve had an extraordinary year with the harvest being so bad and very little hay being saved,” Willie explains, “a lot of trainers in Ireland are buying American and Canadian hay, and I’m told that there wasn’t a huge amount of hay saved in France either because it was such a wet summer. And our costs this winter will rise dramatically. Hopefully it’s just a blip for one year and we’ll have to ride it out, but feed costs are always rising and the cost of labour is always rising, too.

“We have found it very hard to get staff over the past few years, particularly with the Celtic Tiger causing a lot of people to go into other industries. We have had to import staff from both inside and outside the EU, and we’re constantly in consultation with the department of foreign affairs about importing non-EU staff. Horse riders, certainly work riders, is quite a specialised skill and while you can teach someone to ride a horse in maybe a matter of months, bringing them up to the level required to ride work and school is something that’s only gained after years and years of experience. Consequently we find that we’re employing people from Russia and Pakistan and South America, where there are thriving racing industries and lots of people with these skills who are quite keen to come and work in England and Ireland. 

“The EU is getting bigger, but we still find that there aren’t enough skilled people. The staff are being soaked up in England and France before we get them. We’re at the end of the line, on an island out in the Atlantic! A lot of Polish and Czechoslovakian people are going to France and Germany first. That could be why we find we have to go further afield. The most difficult part is just the red tape in bringing them in. You want a person next week or the week after and find that it takes three or four months to actually get these people in. Even then, it’s constantly being changed by civil servants. At the drop of a hat they might stop importing people or they might only let a certain amount of people come in, which has to be divided among everyone. They might only let fifty to a hundred people in during a certain three-month period. I can see their point, too, because a lot of trainers were importing non-EU people as riders when maybe they weren’t riders and they were just being used as cheap labour. When that gets back to civil servants of course they say, ‘here, this is a racket!’ A lot of responsibility is with our own trainers who maybe imported people they shouldn’t have.” 

Recruiting staff is all the harder these days due to a general increase in weight throughout the population. “Weight-wise in Ireland we’ve raised the minimum weight to 8st 4Ib and it’s helped, but a lot of the lightweight jockeys have been put out of business and have gone to England. You can’t just keep raising the weights, I imagine people are just going to keep getting bigger and bigger and there’s always going to be a certain amount of people who can do the weights. You’re never going to stop jockeys from wasting, if you raise the weights up to 10st then fellows who are 11st are still going to waste down to 10st, it’s just a fact of life. But what’s happened now in Ireland is that the better jockeys have the whole thing cornered and it’s harder for the younger lads to get a foot on the ladder. 

“In the last few years we have given riders longer to ride out their claim, which I think has stopped the turnover of riders. Middling riders can keep a claim and keep getting rides, whereas beforehand they lost their claim at maybe forty winners and if they weren’t able to ride without their claim the younger riders got the chance. With a greater turnover you’ve a better chance of getting new stars coming up. With riders keeping a claim for a long time trainers are always willing to put them up: ‘he’s not too bad and can claim five.’ If they lost their claim quicker the jockeys who hadn’t the ability to ride without their claim would be found out quicker.”

All of which makes perfect sense and it’s easy to see why Willie Mullins is held in such respect. Feed, staff and depth of woodchip, every trainer has his own method. But it’s the minute attention to detail that sets the trophies on the shelf.

Åge Paus- It's hard to keep a good man down

He was riding in flat races in Norway at the age of eleven. He rode his first race over hurdles at thirteen, and one year later he became champion jump jockey. Yes, it may have been on a small circuit more than 50 years ago, but it was already clear that Åge Paus was a horseman a bit out of the ordinary. He was. It was also quite clear that the kid from Oslo could go on to make his mark on a much bigger stage. He did. Some forty years later, Paus trained Group One winners in France, before things went badly wrong in 1981.

After a battle, “that took me three years and left me absolutely skint,” he had his licence, which had been wrongfully withdrawn, back. Paus had to start all over. No longer particularly impressed by the French racing authorities, he went to New York, where he trained for a short spell, before returning to his native Norway. “Training back in Norway was also a new challenge,” he says, “as I was dealing with quite moderate horses compared to my days in Chantilly.”  Indeed he was. A classic winner in Scandinavia does not exactly compare to horses winning races like the Marois, Morny and Ispahan in France. Paus was competing at the top level. A good friend of Francois Boutin, he trained for Robert Sangster, Charles St. George and Mahmoud Fustok, and Lester Piggott often flew over from Newmarket to ride his horses.

His story is as bizarre as it is fascinating, and as frustrating and enjoyable in hindsight. Who is this horseman, who turned 70 in October? What was his background, and where is he today?  To the last question first: Paus is still working with horses but no longer training. He and his partner Elle Bitte Ihlen work long hours daily treating horses. Paus turned his attention to chiropractic some years ago. They were based in Lambourn for four years, “and we had plenty of work,” he explains. “Most trainers have seen the value of this work now,” he says. “For example, when Brian Meehan got around 80 newly bought yearlings into his stables, he asked me to check each and every one of them, before they were put into training.” Working in England is ideal, in many ways, but not in every way. “Elle Bitte was keen on the idea,” he remembers, “she kept telling me that the UK was such a small country and it would not be a problem to get around - we were soon fed up with being stuck on the M4 and the M25 though,” he says, “and we moved back to Norway.”  Today, the couple works with Thoroughbreds, harness horses and show jumpers in Norway and Sweden. Their services are in great demand and they make a good team. “So we should,” Paus laughs. “We were madly in love as teenagers but our lives took separate ways, until our paths crossed again 15 years ago and we got together again.”

As a boy Age would ride his bike for well over five miles to ovrevoll racecourse, where he fancied riding those highly strung Thoroughbreds instead. “My weight was only 35kg,” he recalls, “so I was really too light, but I was given the chance, and rode races from when I was eleven.”

He took out a trainer’s license in Norway in 1959 and in 1965 he moved his operation to Sweden, where they had more racing. Paus soon had a string of between 80 and 90 horses in his care. To put things into perspective, the Thoroughbred population of Norway is around 450 horses today.

He bought horses in England and France and that is how he met Francois Boutin. “It was quite amusing,” he recalls, “how we first met. I was at the sales in Newmarket in the late 60’s, and one of Boutin’s owners was selling a horse called Irish Royal. I liked him a lot and I bought him. Boutin was upset, as he had planned to buy the horse in himself. When I realised this, I approached him and said that if he thought so much of the horse I would be happy to put him back into training with him.”

This conversation led to a long and fruitful friendship with Boutin. Shortly afterwards, Paus delivered one horse at Boutin’s stables, and bought five. The French trainer was probably more than happy that he had failed to buy that horse back in. 
“Boutin repaid me big time,” Age continues, “he was the one who made me realise that I should move to France. Things were going well in Sweden. Over a period of ten years, I was champion trainer seven times, but I needed new challenges. And Boutin was very helpful when I made the move in 1974. We took only five horses from Sweden, so it was very much a case of starting from scratch.”
On his trips to England, Paus had also become friendly with Richard Galpin, and through him he got two horses from England into his ever growing stables in Chantilly. They were Mendip Man, who Paus trained to win the Prix de l’Abbaye, and Sun Of Silver, who became a Group 3 winner. He was owned by the famous bookmaker Jack Davies. Paus got a flying start to his international career. He was not French, so the locals may not have been too keen on his success, but then again, he looks more French than Scandinavian, and his French was soon fluent too. Within a year he had between 90 and 100 horses in his care. Men like Sangster, Getty and St. George were also impressed, and put horses in training with the Norwegian. “At one point, I had 47 horses for Alan Clore,” he recalls, “who was the son of Sir Charles Clore, the founder of William Hill Bookmakers.”

Then came a horse called Nadjar. Paus bought the colt at the Deauville yearling sales for 120,000 francs in 1977, on behalf of his long time friend Gunnar Schjeldrup. The son of Zeddaan was out of the Orsini mare Nuclea, who was a half-sister to the German Derby winner Neckar. Nadjar was a stakes winner at two and but for the top class Irish River he would have been a classic winner. Irish River beat him in the Poule d’Essai des Poulains, like he had done also in the Prix de Fontainebleau. Nadjar trained on at four, when he became one of the best horses in Europe. He defeated Foveros and In Fijar to win the Prix d’Ispahan by five lengths. He followed up by beating the top class English miler Final Straw in the Prix Jacques le Marois, then ran second in the Prix du Moulin. Hard on his heels followed the filly Pitasia, who Paus trained to win the Prix Robert Papin, Prix Morny and Criterium des Pouliches (now Prix Marcel Boussac) at two, and the Prix de Malleret and Prix de la Nonette at three, when she was also third behind the subsequent ‘Arc’ winner Three Troikas in the Prix Vermeille.

“As a trainer, you must find the right owners, that was no different in the 70’s,” Paus says, “but of course, the best way is to win Group One races, and the owners will come to you.” Nelson Bunker Hunt bought Pitasia after her career in France and after a while Paus also had good connections in USA. Mahmoud Fustok of Buckarm Oak Farm had his own stables and trainer in France. One day he approached Paus and asked him to “find me a good horse.” Paus did that, and another good relationship had been formed. 
He trained in France for seven years, leasing stables belonging to the Countess of Batthyany, an influential breeder in Germany. Things had been going will for seven years in Sweden, and the first seven years in France were even better. They were also to be the seven last, however, as disaster struck in 1981. That spring, Paus won the Prix Greffulhe with the outstanding colt No Lute, a son of Luthier out of the top class miler Prudent Miss (Prudent II). He had been bought for just 640,000 francs at Deauville as a yearling. Just like Nadjar, he was a dream fulfilled. His name was soon associated with what can best be described as a true nightmare in the life of Age Paus though, one that lasted three years and changed his life forever.

“No Lute tested positive for steroids,” he tells us, “and he was disqualified. I had been using steroids through the winter, but never through the season or close to races. I was testing my horses meticulously all the time myself, as I had been taking regular blood samples when racing in Sweden. When I trained in Chantilly, we always took two tests of each horse, and sent one off to a lab in England and the other one off to a lab in Sweden, to get a double check. I wanted to know as much as possible, every day, about the wellbeing of my horses. Avoiding mistakes is so important in this game.”

The test was positive though, No Lute was disqualified and Paus stripped of his license. A few weeks later No Lute, ridden by Pat Eddery, outclassed his rivals in the Prix Lupin. The racecard gave Robert Sangster, one of the colt’s part owners, as the trainer.  After this win No Lute was sent to Henry Cecil in Newmarket and Sangster’s ‘career as a trainer’ was thus cut short – shorter than the battle his previous trainer was about to fight to clear his name. Paus left no stone unturned in his strive to get the license reinstated. “The results of the test were out of this world,” he says, “I felt that in no way could I let this go unchallenged.” 
Paus went to the police and pressed charges against “Mr. X,” meaning that he also told the police to suspect himself for foul play. “One big problem,” he says, “was that although vets in France were shaking their heads when presented with the test results, not a single one of them were willing to be an expert witness in a court case. Not just that, but the French legal system did not allow such expert witnesses from outside of France.”

Did he find such expertise abroad? He did. Paus travelled to the University of Kentucky, where he was assured that these traces of steroids could be produced naturally by a horse. Experts in Kentucky sent the tests off to two other universities. Paus wanted a second opinion, and he wanted a third opinion. All three reports came to the same conclusion. So, the married man and father, well aware of the fact that he soon needed to be earning a living again, made haste for Newmarket and the Animal Health Trust, where the original test had been analysed.

“I was well received there,” he recalls, “and I felt that I would be able to turn the whole situation around. I was asked to leave the matter with the AHT for a week and get back to them. When I did, the tone was not at all the same. I was told that they were willing to investigate the matter, but that it would cost around 300,000 pounds and that I would have to foot the bill. That was not possible, as I was nearly broke. But for help by friends and owners, I would not have been able to go on.”
Paus had the analysis, reports and conclusions from three highly respected authorities in USA, but in Europe he was running into a brick wall.  The situation was not much better than it had been on the day he lost his license. It is also part of his story that a couple of years before No Lute was disqualified, his stables in Chantilly were attacked by arson. Not once, not twice, but three times. When the actor Alain Delon learnt about his story, he wanted to make a film about Paus’s life. “They did a script, but when I read it I said no, it was simply too bad,” he says.

In the autumn of 1981, another horse who would play a crucial part in this drama entered the stage. His name was Vayrann. He was owned by HH The Aga Khan and trained by Francois Mathet. Some six months after No Lute was first past the post in the Hocquart, Vayrann was first past the post in the Champion Stakes at Newmarket. Vayrann’s post race test came back positive, showing the exact same result as No Lute’s. This time, no hasty decisions were made. The Jockey Club ordered an inquiry, and it took months. 
“I was contacted by the Aga Khan’s office,” Paus explains, “as he wanted to borrow my files from USA. Of course, I had no problem with that but my condition was that the Aga Khan would have to help me clear my name if the decision in England was to go in his favour. This he agreed to, and they had copies of my files. Again, my problem was this, whatever the findings would be in the UK, the French legal system did not allow expertise from abroad in a French case. My case was purely French, so there I was. The ongoing investigations in England were still so important to me.”

The Aga Khan paid for extensive tests of a group of horses in England, and the horses chosen for this exercise were horses that belong to The Queen, as they were under a 24-hour surveillance. The tests showed that the Americans had been right. Vayrann was not disqualified from his win over Cairn Rouge in the Champion Stakes and, eventually, in 1984, Paus was handed his French license back.

“I was advised by legal experts to sue the Societe d’Encouragement for damages,” he says, “but I also knew that if I did, they could appeal the case all the way to the Supreme Court. In other words, it might take the best part of ten years.” 
Understandably, Paus was no longer completely charmed by France, and when Mahmoud Fustok offered him a job in New York, it was easy to accept. Paus moved his family to the Big Apple, and began training a small string of Buckram Oak Farm-owned horses at Belmont Park. “I had around 25 horses,” he recalls, including a number owned by Mr Haakon Fretheim, who had owned the famous Noble Dancer. The problem was, he had mainly offspring of Noble Dancer, who was nowehere near as good as a sire as he had been as a racehorse. Noble Dancer had been fourth in Ivanjica’s Arc, when trained in Norway by Terje Dahl, Age Paus’s boyhood friend, and the colt went on to be a turf champion in North America.

“My time in New York was interesting,” he recalls, “but not very successful.”

In 1986, Paus returned home, or at least back to where he was brought up, and the small racing community outside Oslo was simply buzzing before his arrival. “Paus is coming back to train here,” was the whisper; “no way,” many said, “that can’t be true.” 
But it was, and he soon made his mark on the Scandinavian circuit, transforming the handicapper Flying Galivant to a winner of the Danish Derby in a matter of months, and training winners at a high strike rate. Truth be told, Flying Galivant would probably have finished last in each and every race contested by the Paus-trained stars in France but, as all horsemen know, it is not exactly easier to win races with moderate stock.

Today, Paus is working as a chiropractor and it is not all a new thing in his life.  “During my years of training in France, I met a Dr. Aldridge at Longchamp,” he tells us, “educated in Japan and Australia. He told me about his work with athletes and football players, and offered to teach me his trade. He thought it might be interesting to use it on horses. He also introduced me to laser treatments, and let me borrow his equipment. I picked it up at his practice after racing, and worked through the night treating horses after they had run, then returned the equipment in the morning.”

Having obtained this skill and knowledge also helped Paus through the three years when he could not train for a living, as he worked for other stables in this capacity.

Paus does not see his work a chiropractor as unique, “but I use laser at the same time,” he says, “which may not be all that usual.” Very simple mishaps can cause big problems for a racehorse, “a horse can become cast in his box, and it rules him out of training, never mind racing, for some time,” Paus comments, “and the horses know when they get help. Nine out of ten horses are easy to treat, as they feel good and become relaxed. I use the laser after having treated the horse, sometimes I use it before we begin as well, to loosen the horse a bit. We also use laser from both sides simultaneously. At the end of the session, I often make use of acupuncture.”
This treatment helps many horses but it must also mean they need a recovery time after the session?
“Oh, yes,” Paus answers. “a horse may need a day or two of rest after we have worked with him. Therefore it is important to cut down on feed, and they also drink a lot during these hours of recuperation. “

He also explains how he prefers to take a look and examine the horse straight after activity. His experience is that the main causes for problems are simply being cast in the box, taking a bad step in a race, and neck problems, which are often there when the horse is a yearling. In his opinion, horses that rear up and become stuck in the starting stalls should be taken out of the race, because “it can take very little to make bad damage.” He also says that jumpers have more tendon injuries, and that his work in Scandinavia has shown that harness horses suffer more frequently from back problems.

“Trainers in Scandinavia seem to be better with these matters,” he says, “they often have quite moderate horses to work with, and to get results, they need to be a bit smarter.”

Good for them then, that they have cosmopolitan horseman Mr Paus on their side. 

Global Superbet - Can it take horseracing to a bigger stage?

Twenty-five years ago John R. Gaines in Kentucky came up with an idea, the Breeders’ Cup series. Gaines felt that Thoroughbred racing needed a high profile day, which would make it possible for the sport to compete with NFL, NHL and NBA in the media picture. Everyone involved in racing agreed, just as much as they agreed that Thoroughbred breeding and racing needed new innovations, offering opportunities for more international competition with chances of winning bigger purses.

Has it worked? Partly, and the Breeders’ Cup has most certainly been more a star actor than just another face to the stage. This year, the International Federation of Horseracing has been working on another new idea, of a totally different nature. Again, the reason for exploring new products for the sport is that we are badly in need of legs to stand on in the increasingly competitive betting market. While turnover on horseracing, according to figures released by the bookmaking industry, has levelled out, it has increased markedly in other sports. In Europe, football is the sport attracting the biggest betting figures.

One big difference between the two sports, as far as betting is concerned, is how international football has become. The Champions League, the UEFA Cup, World Cup Finals, European Cup Finals and their qualifying rounds, and the Copa America, combine for a huge, huge betting market – just in Europe. Add in markets like Hong Kong and Australia and the total figures are truly staggering. With football fans from all over the world logging on to bet on and tuning in to watch these big international matches on a weekly basis, it is almost unbelievable that no betting firm has come up with a weekly “Football Superbet.” For instance, a multi-leg wager where you need to predict home win, draw or away win in, say, ten or twelve high profile games. With a global, massive pool, it would become a lottery for the thinking fan.

Strange as it may seem, quite a few in this world still prefer to use their brain, their own knowledge, when betting. They do not want to bet on numbers games where the odds are stacked heavily against them. Without products to stimulate them, these brains will soon no longer be potential players, not when it comes to horseracing betting, that’s for sure. They will either turn their backs on betting altogether or they will look for other challenges. There is no longer a shortage of alternatives. Poker and bridge, to name but two card games, are tailor made for internet wagering involving thinking players. And these products are considerably cheaper to produce, and run, than horseracing. There is no comparison.

Let’s get back to the idea of a superbet. While other sports do not seem to have grasped such an idea, horseracing is, for a change, a couple of lengths ahead. This year, the International Federation of Horseracing began developing and testing a new bet, called the “Global Trifecta.” This wager is very much in its infancy, and it has been a complicated baby to conceive, but it is an excellent idea that ought to be given all the backing it can get. It has already been tested with international pools on a small number of flat races this season, but with a “soft launch approach,” according to Totesport’s (Pari-Mutuel operator in the UK) PR manager Damian Walker. If it can be refined, and marketed, in the right way, it has every chance of becoming a big success. Not just as a betting product, but also as a tool to promote the sport of horseracing worldwide. “Mauritz Burggink, at the IFH in Paris, is the man behind the idea of a superbet,” Damian Walker explains, “it is all quite simple. With bigger liquidity in the pool, there will be bigger dividends, and a bet like this can compete with all the lotteries. A lot of work has been done already, and the ultimate aim is to have a Global Superbet every week. We have tested it, but I must stress that the betting on a few races in 2007 has been nothing more than ‘dipping a toe in the water’ as there are various complications to overcome. Not least the fact that different countries have different IT-systems, and local laws also affect what we can and cannot do.”

Walker explains how punters in big markets like Australia, Hong Hong, USA, South Africa, Singapore and Europe were this year given the opportunity of betting into a global trifecta pool on some Group One events. “The product cannot be properly tested without real bets, though testing such a product must begin on a relatively small scale,” he says, “and that is why we have given this a quiet launch. I am convinced that this will be a big success, and it can change the world of betting on horseracing dramatically.

The progress of this project will be high on the agenda when representatives meet in Tucson, Arizona this December.” The global trifecta - where one has to select the first three home in the exact order - was opened for betting on the Prix de Diane at Chantilly in June. This is not a high profile race internationally, my guess is that a large proportion of racing fans in Australia, Hong Kong and USA have never heard of the race. Walker agrees, but a guinea pig is a guinea pig, and he has some interesting figures from this race. “The turnover was 60,000 euros,” he tells us, “and the dividend was 1,767-1. If the bet had been settled on the UK pool alone, the dividend would have been just 929-1. This shows what a difference a bigger pool can make.” That may be, but the pool was nowhere near what it will, hopefully, be one day, and it was too small to provide the operators any sort of hard conclusions. To the customers, however - the punters - a 60,000-euro pool is big enough to enable them to assess the value of the product.

Did this trifecta pay over the odds, under the odds, or just about normal? Well, UK punters probably would not have a clue, as they are absolute beginners when it comes to trifecta betting, most of them not even that. Most gamblers in the USA, on the other hand, would have been able to take a quick glance at the result, the odds for the first three home, the number of runners, and say whether a 1,768-1 return was good or bad value. The Diane had 14 runners and was won by West Wind, who returned 9-2. She beat Mrs Lindsay (14-1), with Diyakalanie (40-1) third. Almost as a rule of thumb, a North American exacta, on a race like this, will return at least the product of multiplying the tote win odds on the two horses involved. Plus some if the shortest priced horse is second, minus some if the shortest priced horse in the winner. In this case that would be 5.50 (9-2) multiplied by 15 (14-1), which is 82.50.

So, with a 40-1 shot finishing third, was 1,767-1 good value? Finding a race to compare this to in the USA is not at all difficult. The Breeders’ Cup Mile has a habit of returning trifectas that include both a winner at a fair price and a real longshot, and also excludes the favourite. And it is a race with a pool made up of punters from all kinds of corners of the world. The 2003 edition of the BC Mile produced an almost identical trifecta to the one seen in this year’s Diane. Six Perfections (5-1) beat Touch of The Blues (12-1) and Century City (39-1). The race had 13 runners. The trifecta returned 2,627-1. Which is a whopping 48% higher than this year’s global trifecta on the Diane. Although interesting enough, this is not at all a fair comparison, as the trifectas on the Breeders’ Cup races nearly always pay well over the odds, simply because the majority of the pool is made up of punters with little or no knowledge of racing. The pool on the Diane was almost certainly made up of punters who knew racing well, and also knew enough about the sport to know that the bet existed. 1,767-1 was therefore a very good return, indicating that it could easily have paid 2,600-1 with a bigger pool. For the record; the trifecta pool on the 2003 BC Mile was $2.3 million. A whole different ballgame, and also where one is aiming to take the global superbet.

NOT NECESSARILY A TRIFECTA

“The global superbet does not necessarily have to be a trifecta,” Walker continues. “There is a good chance that it will be a carbon copy of the Triple Trio, a highly successful bet in Hong Kong.” The Triple Trio is a multi leg bet where one has to select the first three finishers, in any order, in three consecutive races. At last year’s Hong Kong International day, when the bet was made up of two handicaps and the Hong Kong Sprint, the dividend was 301,707-1 No space here to take an analytical look at the combined odds of all the nine horses involved, but it makes sense to mention that the three winners paid 14-1, 5-1 and 3-1. A win treble at these odds would return 359-1.

It may be a pure coincidence but it is interesting to note that the Triple Trio returned 840 times the win treble, which is not at all 840 times easier to predict. We can understand why a bet like this is a real alternative to playing the lotteries. On the other hand, offering a global triple trio may have its disadvantages, as one is then asking punters to analyse three races, possibly staged in three different countries. Nobody, nowhere, will be confidently familiar with the form of all the horses. Thus, perhaps a trifecta on one race is a better way to go. “Another issue we need to address is the cases when the bet is not won, and creates a rollover, or jackpot if you will,” Walker comments. “Punters in one country may not be too happy about their money moving on to a different jurisdiction, where they will be at a disadvantage when getting involved.”

When betting on horseracing, local knowledge does count for a lot, but these are changing times, and he or she who can find the right angles on and the right understanding of international racing will stand the best chance of collecting on a global superbet. Nevertheless, without the local customers - the two-pound, two-euro or two-dollar punters joining in - the pool will never be massive enough to compete with the lotteries. Perhaps there is a simple solution to this problem. The weekly races will probably have to be scheduled in advance, but “reserve races” could be assigned the following week in the country where the race or races take place, meaning that, when there is a rollover, the global bet stays in one place until it is won. Of course, this could take weeks, especially if the bet is a triple trio, though perhaps not if it is a one-race trifecta.

Has an American style superfecta been discussed at all? “Yes, it has,” Walker replies. “The global trifectas we have had this year have mainly been like lab testing, and various models will be discussed and analysed before we land on one model. We are testing technical solutions just as much as we are testing the nature of the bet.”

COMPETITORS WILL EMERGE

I love the idea of a global superbet, but wonder, will it really happen? Will it be a success? This is early days, but, please, make sure that those two words are not too easily swallowed too often within horseracing, in particular when it comes to creating and promoting new products. We have heard them so many times before. Sometimes those ‘early days’ become ‘all time.’ Horseracing authorities and regulators, in Europe in particular, so often come across as so incredibly conservative and as such a stubborn bunch, that the one word that springs to mind is ‘immature.’

Racing still seems to be run from offices that are, if not totally then at least seriously partly, lagging behind the rest of the world. I would be delighted to be convinced that I am wrong about this, as I also fear that this state of affairs will be one of the biggest stumbling blocks for a new global superbet. Things are simply moving way, way too slowly. Take the lack of European racing rules, a topic that came to the fore after this year’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. Of course, this has been discussed before, but nothing seems to happen. Why not make a couple of quick moves, why not just do it? Make those changes. Toss a couple of coins if need be to settle a couple of disagreements between the English and the French, and get on with it.

Bookmakers taking more and more and more bets on football, and fewer and fewer on racing, do not care about the lack of a sensible set of international racing rules. They are busy making money, and giving the gambling market new, lucrative products, which is precisely why the development of a new global bet must be speeded up. Why? I’ll tell you why. Because as soon as this concept becomes more high profile, through proper marketing and media coverage, bookmakers will grab the idea, adapt it to some other sport, maybe even other sports, and create a new product within a matter of weeks. All of a sudden, racing will be behind, again.

The International Federation of Horseracing may be a couple of lengths ahead with their development of a global pool bet at the moment. A couple of lengths, however, is not exactly a comfortable and commanding lead on a playing ground which is changing so fast, and is so volatile, as the betting market. Not when you are involved in the race for the betting dollar, euro, or pound. Unless you are by far the biggest, financially strongest player, it can actually be a disadvantage to lead the way. It is only an advantage if you are smarter, considerably smarter. Let’s hope we are.

Oiling the Wheels - using oil as a supplement in the diet of racehorses

Historically, oil has not featured highly in the diets of horses in training, or indeed those of other horses. The natural oil content of pasture and other forages is quite low at between 2-3% on a dry matter basis, yet despite this, horses digest oil extremely well. Oil added to the racehorses’ diet is tolerated well, with no major palatability problems having been reported. There are many advantages to feeding an oil supplemented diet to horses in training. For feed manufacturers, the addition of increasing amounts of oil in a feed formulation allows the addition of energy or ‘calories,’ without any contribution towards the starch and protein content of the feed.

This means that lower starch feeds can be produced, whilst maintaining the total energy content of the feed. This type of diet can help prevent the digestive system from being overwhelmed by the presence of starch in the diet. Additionally, beneficial effects of this type of diet on behaviour have also been reported and horses that are prone to tying up may also gain. Oil supplementation can also potentially bring other beneficial effects e.g. on coat condition and on respiratory health or mobility and performance. However these additional desirable effects are likely to depend not only on the quantity of oil within the daily ration, but also on the nature of the oil included.

OIL - MORE ENERGY THAN MOST INGREDIENTS IN FEED

The energy or calorie content of oil is higher than any other ingredient commonly used in the manufacture of racing feeds, as seen from the Table 1 below. In a direct comparison with oats, vegetable oil such as corn oil provides about 70% more energy for a given weight. From a trainer’s perspective, top dressing oil onto an existing ration allows an increase in the energy density of the feed i.e. more calories for the same volume of feed. This is particularly useful for fussy feeders helping to keep their meal sizes relatively small. Ingredient Energy (MJ/kg) Corn Oil 38 Oats 12.5 Racing Mix 13 Hay 7.5

Table 1 - Estimated energy content of different components of a racing diet. Oil is usually added into the diet in oz or ml rather than in kilograms. So for a more practical comparison, a coffee mug of oil, which is equivalent to about 250ml (225g), would provide about 9 MJ of energy, which is equivalent to about ¾ of a flat scoop of oats (750g). There are many types of oil besides corn and soya that have been fed to horses over the years. Vegetable oils derived from rapeseed or canola, sunflower, safflower, coconut and even peanut have been previously fed. Fish oils such as tuna oil, salmon oil and cod liver oil have also been used. Cod liver oil should, however, be used sparingly due to the high fat soluble vitamin content.

Other high oil containing ingredients that are commonly used in racing feeds, or in some cases to top-dress racing diets, include rice bran, linseed meal, full fat soya and naked oats (see Table 2). Whilst the oil content of all of these ingredients is relatively high, the starch content varies quite significantly. In terms of oil delivery and starch content, linseed meal would clearly be a good choice for oil supplementation where a low starch containing diet was desired. Ingredient % Oil Content % Starch Content Ricebran 16-20 15-27 Linseed Meal 37 5.5 Full Fat Soya 20 4.5 Naked Oats 10 53 Table 2 - Percentage oil and starch content of typical components of a racing ration * Information taken either from actual analysis or from Premier Atlas Ingredients Matrix

EFFECTS ON BEHAVIOUR

There has been some suggestion in the scientific literature in recent years that feeding a ration that is high in oil and fibre and low in starch can have a beneficial effect on behaviour, in terms of reducing excitability. Studies on Thoroughbreds with recurrent exertional rhabdomyolysis (RER) reported decreased excitability and nervousness, as well as lower resting heart rates, when they were fed a low starch high oil containing diet, compared with an isocaloric diet that was low in oil and high in starch. This effect, however, is likely to have been mostly due to the reduction in starch intake from cereal, rather than the oil content per se. The use of increased amounts of oil in the diet does, however, facilitate the reduction in starch content without leaving an ‘energy gap.’

BENEFICIAL PROPERTIES FOR TYING UP

More recently, stress has been implicated as a trigger for RER in susceptible horses and so the potentially beneficial effects of oil supplemented diets that are also low in starch and high in fibre have been extolled. Accordingly, lower plasma concentrations of creatine kinase (CK) following a standard exercise test have been reported in response to such diets, in comparison to traditional racing type diets that are high in starch and low in fibre and oil. Specialists on RER have successfully advocated the use of such diets for horses in training that are at risk from RER. In addition, there is a strong argument for the use of such diets during pre-training and the early part of actual training. Significant oil supplementation during full training, if the starch content of the diet is also drastically reduced, is more controversial due to the metabolic effects that can be induced and so the potential effect on subsequent exercise performance.

METABOLIC EFFECTS OF OIL SUPPLEMENTATION

Putting this section into context, the metabolic adaptations to oil supplementation have been reported to occur when relatively large quantities of oil are fed, typically where near to 20% of the total dietary energy intake is provided by oil. For a cube or a mix fed at, for example 6kg per day, this would require a 10% declaration of oil for that feed. For comparison most racing feeds would contain oil at the level of inclusion of 5 - 8.5%.

A high level of oil supplementation has been reported latterly to decrease resting muscle glycogen concentration and improve the use of fat as a fuel source during low and moderate intensity exercise (trotting through to slow cantering) through metabolic adaptation at the muscle level. This offers the possibility of sparing muscle glycogen stores during low intensity exercise training, but equally may impede muscle glycogen replenishment following hard work or racing, which may disadvantage (see European Trainer Issue 19 Racing Power - Supporting Muscular Effort through Nutrition). The effect of oil supplementation on high intensity exercise performance such as racing is very controversial. Some studies show little or no effect, whilst others have shown a beneficial effect. As a result the scientific community are divided and so the jury is still very much out in this respect.

OTHER HEALTH BENEFITS OF OIL SUPPLEMENTATION

Dietary oil also provides a source of what are termed essential fatty acids, namely linoleic acid, which belongs to the omega 6 family of fatty acids and α-linolenic acid, which belongs to the rival family the omega 3’s. Most ingredients found in a racehorses’ diet are rich in the omega 6 type of fatty acid with much less omega 3 fatty acid present. The role for dietary omega-3 fatty acids which has been proposed in maintaining joint and skin health, and in supporting immune function, fertility and respiratory health, makes them an attractive nutraceutical ingredient for racehorses. The use of linseed meal has recently increased in proprietary horse feed and supplements. However, although α-linolenic acid is a precursor of the longer chain more bioactive omega 3’s, eicosapentanoic acid (EPA) and docosahexanoic acid (DHA), the efficiency of conversion is quite low.

Therefore nutraceutical ingredients that provide a more concentrated source of either or both EPA and DHA are becoming more widely used. Ingredients such as micro-encapsulated and deodorised fish oils e.g. tuna oil, as well as green lipped mussel, and more recently plant sources of DHA in the form of algae are now more commonly seen in equine products, primarily supplements. Few studies into the efficacy of omega-3 fatty acids have, however, been published in horses. In a preliminary study using ponies with sweet itch, a beneficial effect of linseed on inflammatory skin conditions was proposed. Encouraging results have also been reported for the effect of supplementation with a combination of EPA and DHA on arthritic horses. In humans there is some evidence to support a protective role for omega-3 fatty acids in human asthma, a condition that is not unlike recurrent airway obstruction (RAO) in horses, but the results are not indisputable. A recent supplementation study with omega 3 fatty acids in horses, however, did not significantly alter clinical indicators of pulmonary function, although the leukocyte counts in epithelial lung lining fluid were reduced in the omega-3 supplemented horses. This may suggest an effect of supplementation on pulmonary inflammation.

HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH AND CAN THERE BE TOO MUCH?

The answer to this question is not straightforward as if you are intending to top dress oil onto feeds, the quantity required will largely depend on how much is present in the basal diet already. Certainly, where the oil is being used to increase the energy density of the diet and reduce the inclusion of starch rich ingredients, a level of 250-300ml per day to replace a kilo of oats or other racing feed would not be inappropriate, where the basal diet contained a low level of oil. For horses that struggle to maintain condition, addition of 100-150mls of oil daily into the existing ration is likely to help. One should always remember, however, that oil does not provide any protein or vitamins and minerals and so must be fed in conjunction with a balanced diet, particularly with respect to antioxidant vitamins such as vitamin E. Oil should always be introduced to the diet slowly and the daily amount spread over several meals. In addition, any adverse affect on dropping consistency may be a warning that the level of oil in the total diet is too high and the level should be reduced. As far as the neutraceutical omega 3 fatty acids are concerned, we know much less about the quantities required, but hopefully research will continue in this area to investigate their potentially beneficial effects.

TRM Trainer of the Quarter - Francois Rohaut

The TRM Trainer of the Quarter goes to Francois Rohaut. For a trainer to win a big race outside his home country is quite a feat, to win two on different continents on the same day is remarkable but to win three, all on the same afternoon, in countries as far apart as Germany, Spain and Canada.

James Crispe (European Trainer - Issue 20 / Winter 2007)

TRM Trainer of the Quarter - Larry Jones

TheTRM trainer of the quarter award has been won by Larry Jones. Larry and her team will receive a TRM product portfolio worth in excess of $1,500. The portfolio will consist of TRM tack bags and saddle pads as well as a large selection of the world famous TRM product range.

Finishing second may be like kissing your mother - as Jones said after watching his gallant three-year-old colt Hard Spun finished second to Curlin in the $5 million Breeders’ Cup Classic, Oct. 27, at Monmouth Park - but it’s better than no kiss at all. And if you are destined to finish second, there are no better times to do it than in million dollar races.

Jones, wearing his ever-present white cowboy hat, saddled one other horse that day, Proud Spell, and she finished second to undefeated Indian Blessing in the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Filly. Proud Spell had won her three prior starts, including the Grade 2 Matron.

Those two seconds capped a breakthrough year for the 50-year-old trainer, whose $5.7 million in earnings ranked 13th nationally through early November.

“It’s something you only dream of,” Jones said, Nov. 9th. “I never expected it to happen to me.”

It didn’t happen by accident.

By: Bill Heller
 (01 December 2007 - Issue Number: 6)

Jones, whose other Breeders’ Cup starter, Ruby’s Reflection, finished 10th in the 2002 Juvenile Filly at Arlington Park, is an accomplished horseman whose grandfather and father had horses on their farms. His first ride was on his grandfather’s mule at the age of 3. Jones then rode horses regularly on his dad’s cattle farm, then Quarter Horses at bush tracks in Kentucky, Tennessee and Illinois. He turned to training in 1980 after he purchased a filly, Ala Turf, for $800.

Jones didn’t win a stakes race until 1995 with Capt. Bowl, another horse who cost $800. He improved his stock gradually and won Grade 1 stakes with Island Sand and Wildcat Bettie B, but Hard Spun took him to another level.

“I’ve got to put credit to the horse,” Jones said. “He was a very easy horse to train.”

Jones trained him brilliantly. After Hard Spun won the Grade 2 Lanes End Stakes easily, he finished second in the Kentucky Derby, third in the Preakness and fourth in the Belmont Stakes. Jones freshened him and he finished second to Any Given Saturday in the Grade 1 Haskell at Monmouth.

Rather than backing off with Hard Spun, Jones asked the son of Danzig to cut back from a mile-and-an-eighth to seven furlongs in the Grade 1 King’s Bishop Stakes on Travers Day at Saratoga. First Defence headed Hard Spun in mid-stretch, but Hard Spun responded instantaneously, surging again to win by a length and a half. “Probably 98 percent of the horses in the Breeders’ Cup you wouldn’t do that, but Hard Spun is a real fast horse,” Jones said. “With his natural speed, it was easy.”

But how would Hard Spun respond to being stretched out to a mile-and-a-quarter for the Breeders’ Cup Classic? Hard Spun took the lead early and then attempted to take his eight rivals wire-to-wire over the sloppy Monmouth Park track, zipping his first half-mile in :45.85. He opened a two-length lead after one mile before he was confronted on the inside by Kentucky Derby and Travers winner Street Sense and on the outside by Preakness and Jockey Club Gold Cup winner Curlin. Hard Spun put away Street Sense, but had no answer for Curlin, who won by 4 ½ lengths. Hard Spun held second by 4 ¾ lengths over Awesome Gem, who beat Street Sense by a length for third. “I was very proud,” Jones said. “Curlin is special. You’re always hoping for better, but believe me, we couldn’t have had a much better day,” Jones said.

Or a much better year. “It’s been wonderful, you bet,” Jones said.

News from North California - Saving Bay Meadows

The appeal by the “Save Bay Meadows” Committee was heard before the 1st District Court of Appeals on September 19. By all accounts, a decision is due by the Court before the end of the calendar year of 2007.

If successful, the citizens group will push that the Bay Meadows development be put to a vote by San Mateo residents as to whether they want the proposed project to move forward. If the appeal is denied, it basically ends any hope that Bay Meadows will not be developed in the near future. It seems almost certain that Bay Meadows Land Company would start their project in the fall of 2008.
 
After months of meetings and industry input, the CHRB awarded 2008 race dates for Northern California. In what seems to a certainty, Bay Meadows will hold its final thoroughbred race meet from February 6 through May 11. In addition, the San Mateo Fair will race from August 6-8. The CTT worked hard to get Bay Meadows to agree to stay open for stabling and training in the fall of 2008. There is a real possibility that construction could commence shortly after the finish of the San Mateo Fair. Bay Meadows management has agreed to work with the CTT in establishing training hours that will work to ensure the safety of both horse and human during any possible construction times.
 
The new Tapeta racing surface that was installed at Golden Gate Fields is being embraced by the trainers thus far. The first horse set foot on the surface on October 5. In fact, a horse even worked a half mile that first morning! The trainers seem to be extremely pleased and encouraged that the surface is kinder and safer for their horses. Michael Dickinson, the creator of Tapeta, has told trainers that his goal is to reduce the amount of injuries by 50 percent. Now, that is a worthy goal!
 
Golden Gate Fields management was clearly thrilled with the first three days of entries taken as they awaited the first race run on the Tapeta surface. The number of horses entered for the first 3 days averaged 8.5 per race in comparison to the average field size in Northern California this year of 6.9. The first race run on the surface was on opening day of the Golden Gate fall meet, and a flat mile race was clocked in a very respectable 1:38:1.
 
The fair circuit was finished for the year with the running of the Fresno Fair in early October. The management of the Fresno fair should be thanked as they spent considerable funds to install rubber bricks throughout the paddock area. The Stockton Fair has announced that they are in the process of securing funds to install a new turf course at their facility. If all plans go accordingly, the first turf race will be run at Stockton during their Fair of 2009.
 
Pleasanton is aggressively seeking funding to install a synthetic surface. Once Bay Meadows closes, the CTT is very hopeful that this facility will become the second barn area (besides GGF) in the Bay Area to accommodate the stabling needs for our horses. If all goes well, Pleasanton will have installed a new surface by the end of the fall of 2008. Good luck to them…

Charles E. Dougherty, Jr. CTT Deputy Director (First Published: 01 Dec 2007)

Jerry Hollendorfer - interview with a racing legend

By Steve Schuelein

Jerry Hollendorfer is the classic case of the big fish in the small pond. Small in stature but giant in achievements, “The Dorf” has become a training legend in Northern California. During the past 21 years, Hollendorfer has led every meet at Bay Meadows and Golden Gate Fields. That staggering total reached 61 this year following his 33rd straight Bay Meadows title and 28th consecutive Golden Gate crown.

Since taking out his license in 1979, Hollendorfer has cranked out winners at such high frequency that he ranks fourth on the all-time list for career victories. Closing in on the 5,000-victory plateau with 4,890 at midyear, Hollendorfer trails only Dale Baird (9,379), Jack Van Berg (6,378) and King Leatherbury (6,202) in the career category. His career earnings have exceeded $90 million. But Hollendorfer, 61, is not a story of running up statistics with bottom-shelf claimers. When given the occasional horse of talent, Hollendorfer has shown his ability to shine at the highest level. He first came to national prominence with King Glorious, winner of the Hollywood Futurity in 1988 and Haskell Stakes in 1989, both Grade 1 stakes. In 1991, he won another pair of Grade 1’s, the Kentucky Oaks and Coaching Club American Oaks - with Lite Light. To prove the first Kentucky Oaks victory was no fluke, he won the prestigious race for a second time in 1996 with Pike Place Dancer.

Hollendorfer’s stable rolled along to $5-million years during the decade since and produced several more stakes winners. On the Kentucky Derby undercard this year, Hollendorfer struck again with another Grade 1 victory, Hystericalady in the Humana Distaff Handicap. Hollendorfer reflected on his career recently during an interview with Steve Schuelein.

What was it like growing up in Ohio, and how did you become interested in racing there?

      
I grew up outside Akron, where it was pretty rural. We had a few acres and a pony to ride. My father worked for Chrysler, my mother for the Baptist church. When I went to Revere High School in Richfield, I did a little wrestling at 112 pounds with modest success and worked at a market. I went to college at the University of Akron--now called Akron State--and graduated with a B.S. in business administration. I was always interested in going to the races in my younger years. I went to Ascot Park in Cuyahoga Falls and Thistledown and liked to go to the trotters at Northfield.

LeBron James grew up in Akron too. Has he done as much for basketball as you have done for racing?

I think LeBron’s got me beat a mile. Everyone from Akron is proud of LeBron.

What brought you to California and when?

After college, I visited a friend in San Francisco. I liked the climate right away. I went back, packed the car and drove out.

How did you get started in racing?

When I came out, I wasn’t working and wanted to see the backstretch. My degree was in marketing. That didn’t interest me enough, but the horses did. I was interested in finding out what was going on on the backstretch.

What trainers did you work for, and what did you learn from them?

I went to work as a hot walker for Dan Wilcher, who had a horse named Rigatoni King. I was working for him when he left for Southern California and recommended me to stay here with Jerry Dutton. Working for Dutton was a great experience. He made you work hard but you could learn, and he never asked you to do more than he would do. I worked my way up from hot walker to groom to foreman to assistant trainer and pony boy with him. Later I went to work for Jerry Fanning in Southern California and then back to Dutton in Northern California. Trainers don’t teach. You have to learn by observation. Dutton had a training pattern, and Fanning had a similar one. I do a lot of similar things. I kind of believe in keeping a horse on a schedule, something I learned from them. In addition, I always liked to see what other people do, especially the more successful trainers. I always pay attention and try to retain the good things they do. But it’s an ongoing learning process. I try to make adjustments every day to be a better trainer.

Early in your career, did you ever aspire to approach these heights?

In our barn, I just try to do what works well. You reflect back, and it’s just something that transpires. You accept more horses along the way, and the barn grows. Along with that, you have to be real lucky to get good people to work for you.

What do you remember about Novel Sprite?

She was a filly I claimed for $16,000 at Golden Gate Fields, and she ended up making over $400,000. She was named National Claimer of  the Year (in 1986) and gave me my first stakes win (in the San Jose Handicap). The first stakes winner always sticks with you. She was a very good horse. I credit her with giving me a big boost.

You’ve called King Glorious your best horse and winning the Hollywood Futurity your biggest thrill. Are those comments still accurate?

King Glorious was my first big horse, and the Hollywood Futurity was worth $1-million, a good race to win. (Chris) McCarron rode a great race, although I was a little worried about an inquiry because of an incident at the head of the lane. But he didn’t come down. I got a big kick out of it because Ted Aroney, owner of Halo Farms, has always been very supportive. Ted bought his mare out of a sale when she was in foal with King Glorious. I had him from the start. He caught everybody’s attention right away. He was a great-looking horse and very fast. He was a Cal- bred and only lost once. Aroney was offered a lot of money for him and sold him to the Japanese.

What do you remember about Lite Light and the Kentucky Oaks wins with her and Pike Place Dancer?

I began training Lite Light in the spring of her 3-year-old year after she was purchased privately by M.C. Hammer, the rap star. He was from Northern California, Oakland, and named his stable Oaktown Stable. (Track publicist) Sam Spear introduced me to him. Ted Aroney found out Lite Light was for sale and suggested I should try to buy her for him. After Hammer bought her, she won the Santa Anita Oaks with her old trainer, Henry Moreno. Then I put her on the stakes trail, and she won the Fantasy at Oaklawn Park and the Kentucky Oaks. We had a great rivalry with Meadow Star that summer. She got beat a nose in the Mother Goose but came back to win the Coaching Club American Oaks. It was quite amazing to work for a music star because of his large entourage, which included bodyguards. Everyone recognizes the star. I was able to stay in the background while Hammer did his thing. You never expect to repeat the performance of Lite Light in the Kentucky Oaks, and I was fortunate to win that race twice. I bought Pike Place Dancer at the Keeneland September yearling sale for $40,000 and was lucky to get her for that price. She was a half-sister to Petionville, a year younger than him before he became a stakes winner. I sold a half interest to George Todaro, with whom I have had a great successful partnership. She beat the boys in the California Derby before she won the Kentucky Oaks.

As good luck as you’ve had in the Kentucky Oaks, you seem to have been cursed with as much bad luck in the Kentucky Derby.

It’s the hardest race to win, and I’ve enjoyed trying. You can’t let it get you down. I’ve gotten to run three horses in it and been there with two others. Eye of the Tiger finished fifth (in 2003), and Cause to Believe and Bwana Bull didn’t run well (in 2006 and 2007). Event Of The Year had a hairline fracture in his knee after his last work before the Derby, a real good work (in 1998). Everyone was quite taken with his looks. He had a lot of media attention. He had a big chance. That one hurt. Globalize was entered (in 2000), and the next day, when the pony picked him up, he bit the pony, and the pony kicked him in the hock. He needed to be stitched (and was scratched). A lot of horses get close and don’t make it. That only adds to the mystique and aura of the Derby.

How do current graded stakes winners Hystericalady and Somethinaboutlaura rank among the better females you have trained?

They give a good account of themselves every time you put them in. They came to me quite differently. I bought Hystericalady at the Keeneland September yearling sale. She is by Distorted Humor, who I liked at the time. I bought Somethinaboutlaura privately (in February, 2006). She wins on turf and dirt, long and short, and is happy all the time.

Any other horses or races that have produced special memories?

There are so many. I enjoy the everyday contact with the horses. I enjoy winning, and I enjoy the work it takes to win.

You have dominated Northern California racing like no other. How important is it to keep the winning streak alive?

I don’t know how many more meetings I can stay on top. They’re getting closer. I won the last one by only eight races. It seems like we have to work harder and harder to stay on top. It’s getting more difficult to keep winning.

What are your thoughts on the current state of affairs in Northern California?

I’ve been here a long time and seen a lot of things. Bay Meadows going away is in no way a positive. We’re in a state of transition and flux, and I hope things work out. I hope the young guys coming up have as good a setting as I have had all these years. I’m pretty flexible. If my horses continue to fit, I’ll continue. If not, I’ll do something else. I could go to Southern California or another state. The fairs get in the way of my program during the summer. That’s why I race at Hollywood Park and Del Mar then.

Should racetracks embrace slot machines?

I think the state of California should have them because there are people there to gamble. It would help the house handle. There are a lot of slot machines in nearby states such as Nevada.

You’re fourth in career winnings nearing the 5,000 mark. What goals do you have left?

I don’t know. I would like to win 5,000. That’s an attainable goal. It’s hard to plan if you should cut back. As long as the people working with me want to keep doing it, I’d like to keep doing it. It takes a lot of dedication, but a lot of trainers keep going on. I can’t imagine a guy like Dale Baird winning 9,000 races. He must be the iron man of the world. I’m comfortable trying to compete. If I ever get uncomfortable, I will have to rethink it.

Tell us about your stable and key personnel.

I stable mostly in Northern California at Bay Meadows and Golden Gate Fields and ship to the fairs during the summer. I have about 100 to 110 horses in Northern California plus 25 to 30 in Southern California. I have been and in-and-outer there the last few years but would like to keep a division there. I spend a lot of time at Del Mar. My wife Janet works with me all the time and is a great catalyst to make things work in my barn. She is my right hand. Janet was on the racetrack as a teenager in Southern California and I met her while she was working for Mel Stute. Andy Wilson handles my off-track horses, and Cristy Wiebe oversees the Southern California division.

What are your thoughts on the workers’ compensation insurance situation?

It has been vastly improved through the efforts of various different groups. Great progress has been made. A lot of people on the backside - both trainers and workers - are a lot happier. The AIG group has been looking after things in a more intensified manner.

Who have been and are your most important owners?

Everybody’s important to me. I have been successful building small and large partnerships. My main partner, George Todaro, has stuck with me for more than 20 years. (The Hollendorfer-Todaro partnership led California owners in wins last year). Halo Farm (Aroney) has been with me that long. Peter Abruzzo was instrumental in bringing me to Chicago two years in a row.

 
What is the origin of your nickname “The Dorf?”

Ivan Puhich, a jockey agent, started calling me that in Northern California, probably one day when he got mad at me.
What is your training philosophy?

I like to keep horses as fit and happy as I can.

Are the current medication rules fair?

My only opinion is if you want to measure anybody’s business in nanograms and picograms, it makes it very difficult. The testing procedures are correct but they measure in such small amounts, I don’t know how fair that is for somebody trying to do the right thing. But they have to have some rules.

What do you think about the new synthetic surfaces being installed?

I’m a very conservative person. To my way of thinking, I wouldn’t automatically change all the tracks. It may be the best thing, but something may come up. We’ll know in time. But they shouldn’t change them all over until they’ve done more testing.

Do you have any hobbies?

I’m just a horse trainer. That’s all I do.

In at the deep end - Mike Back, the trainer and mechanic

By Frances Karon

Fair Meadows racetrack in Tulsa, Oklahoma is sheltered under the shade of the city’s imposing skyscrapers, yet once there the eye is riveted by the busy jumble of pick-up trucks and horse trailers, cowboy hats and shiny belt buckles. The stabling area is well stocked for the mixed racing meet. Walk down the barn and pick a nose to scratch from among the heads stretched over the doors of their cedar chip-bedded stalls: Quarter Horse, Paint, Appaloosa or Thoroughbred.

One of the truck-and-trailer rigs belongs to 37-year-old Mike Back, who has hauled his filly Hard Bargain to Fair Meadows from his home in Adair – an hour away – for a half-mile workout, once around the 4-furlong “bullring” track. This is his first of two treks to the venue today for what will be a total of four hours on the road. Later, he will run Irishrunaway in the 3rd and Bagadiamonds in the 9th races on the 12-race twilight card. Back greets his rider and leans against the rail to watch as Hard Bargain skips over the red dirt surface. “He didn’t let her roll,” says Back. “Having a big, tight hold of her made her start throwing her head around a little bit, wanting to buck. I was wanting to see her set down and work. She was just doing a lot of jacking around.” He meets them at the gap, and when they get to the vacant stall he’s found for her in the barn he pays the rider, lets Hard Bargain draw some water from a bucket he has brought from home and hoses her down. Behind the barn, he surveys the eight four-horse Equicisers, chooses one and snaps the lead onto her halter. All of the walkers have two or three unsupervised horses on them already. On one, a gray Quarter Horse has stopped flat, refusing to yield to the tug on his head. He has that unmistakably ornery look in his eye, and you feel sorry for the bay attached to another arm of the mechanized hotwalker; there will be no cooling out for him this morning. Occasionally a passer-by will scoot the gray horse along, but inevitably he will stop again as soon as he’s left on his own. In a half-hour he completes three circles. On the other side of the enclosed area, Hard Bargain goes quietly, rhythmically placing her hooves on the worn path of the small circle. When her breathing has regulated and her coat has dried, Back unhooks her, loads her on the trailer and begins his long journey home.

Training horses is Back’s second career. His day job, the one that pays the bills, is as a mechanic for American Airlines, where he has worked for 18 years. “I couldn’t afford it without my job,” he says. He has taken a vacation day to shuttle horses to and from Fair Meadows today but doesn’t seem to mind. “I get excited at these races. It’s my Kentucky Derby.” He gets philosophical for a moment. “Otherwise, if you can’t do something that drives you, why go through life?”

Returning to Adair, Back turns Hard Bargain out into a pen. Except for the ones running later, his horses are lazily sunning outside. The set-up on his 160-acre farm is simple. Where possible, he has used whatever was on hand to save money, and inside his barn many of the walls are made up of sturdy wooden boards with colorful letters stenciled on them: “Mike Back for School Board.” (He was successfully elected.) There is a breeze billowing through the aisle and fans whirring over the stall doors to cut through the Oklahoma humidity. Three of the farm’s horses are in training; one is a pregnant broodmare he’s keeping for a friend; and a field towards the rear of the property houses one gelding who was badly injured during a race last month – a horse ran up on his hind tendons – and a few ex-racehorses that didn’t make the grade. “It’s a business and if one can’t run that’s fine but I won’t ship them off to the killers. I’ll find a home for them. I may have to keep them a year.” All the horses are happy and well-tended: this is not a bad place to be a horse. Training is done in the round pen, 15 minutes a day. “When you get one [fit enough] all you’ve got to do is just stand there and they’ll go 15 minutes strong. You’ll know when they’re ready for a work or for a race.” He smiles, telling a joke on himself. “I have the poor man’s Equiciser. I’m the motor in the middle. Except I can only do one at a time!” After their workout, each will be handwalked for 10 minutes before being set loose to play in the paddock.

By major racetrack standards, Back’s method is unorthodox but he is not alone in training this way: round pens have begun to appear at various racetracks. At Lone Star, he says, they “charge ten bucks to get in it, and it’s full every day. There’s a waiting list. Some people, when I tell them [how I train], they kind of frown and say that it’s hard on their knees because they’re always turning. Well it’s hard on their knees, too, when you put a 140-pound exercise rider up. Danged if you do, danged if you don’t. It works for me, and I’ve got the tracks close enough that I can take them there and blow them out.”

 
Fed by slots at local Cherokee and Choctaw owned casinos, prize money in the state is “almost double this year.” Tonight’s Thoroughbred portion of the racecard is capped by a $14,000 maiden special weight. “Oklahoma is the perfect place. Pretty good purses. Run year round, from February to December. The purses are getting better every year. Makes the competition harder, so you’ve got to have a better horse.” In Oklahoma alone, there are three racetracks within a two-hour drive of Back’s farm, though he will go as far as he needs to. “If I can win a race I’ll go across the country, if I could win a race and it was worth it. I’ll drive across the country for a minute and a half of racing! It’s ten hours to Fonner in Grand Island, Nebraska; that’s a long drive and there’s not much to see across the canvas, long and boring, but the people are great. Drove to Retama down in San Antonio a couple years ago, got there in 11 hours and they cancelled the races because of rain. That was a nice long drive back home!”

Back was introduced to racing when his father bought a racehorse for $500 in 1990. The horse won three races for them and Back had a first taste of what he would grow to love, admitting that horseracing “is just a very addicting sport.” Still, he didn’t get more involved until six or seven years ago. He had bred a few foals out of a mare and was having trouble finding a trainer. “I put an ad in the Tulsa paper, in the horse classifieds. And this guy called me, he worked the railroad and trained horses. He lived in Arch City, Kansas, so I drove up there one weekend, took the horse up and met him.” In a twist of irony, airplane and train joined together in their passion for the original mode of transport: the horse.

 
That railroad engineer, George Blatchford, trained for Back before encouraging him to apply for a trainer’s license. Blatchford had by then retired from the railroad and moved farther away to Oklahoma City, and while continuing to train horses off his farm was not always able to saddle Back’s starters, many of whom were now trained by Back in all but name. “George has been just like a dad to me. He told me I could do it myself, that I could do what he’s doing and not pay somebody $40 or $50 a day. And he was right.” When Back became a licensed trainer in October, 2005, he won his very first race, with Dr T’s Miracle. “Should have quit,” he says, full of logic but short on sincerity. “I’d have been ahead. I should have said, ‘hey, I’m 100%, what more could you want?’”

In the nearly two years since his maiden victory, breaking into the training ranks has proved a challenge. “A lot of your trainers at the track don’t give up much information. They think it’s a big secret. I kind of have to learn on the fly, you know?” But Blatchford steps in to give a hand or a push in the right direction whenever possible. “He really is a big help,” says Back. “Why do I like him?” asks Blatchford. “Well, because I know he enjoys the horseracing. I mean, it’s nice to make money with them but he does it as a sport. He does good and he tries hard. He’s always willing to learn. We’re so helpful to each other. He goes out of his way to help me and I go out of my way to help him. He’s just a great person to work with. He doesn’t have as good horses as I’ve got. You’ve got to have the horses. We’re at the bottom of the pole here, and we’re doing it because we enjoy it. Most people, it’s a business to them.”

Turning into Fair Meadows for the second time that Friday, Back heads for the two stalls that Blatchford has saved across the shedrow from his own pair of runners. As the sun sets over Tulsa, Irishrunaway settles into his stall like the veteran he is – this will be his 40th lifetime start, fourth for Back – but Bagadiamonds gets riled up. The upper half of the stalls have bars on three sides like a cage to give the horses plenty of socialization, and the sorrel Quarter Horse gelding next to her is acting coltish. Blatchford immediately pulls out one of his laid-back geldings and switches stalls with Back’s filly. The swap has helped; the filly, while still on her toes, quiets down, if only a little. Blatchford’s horse ignores the hysterics of the gelding beside him.

Blatchford’s presence at Tulsa tonight was a lucky break for Back. In Oklahoma, no one is allowed in the paddock without a license, so finding help is a chore. “You got a license?” he asks while we’re in his truck. “It’s like that, I just have to ask. If one of my buddies like George isn’t here I have to find somebody and pay them, especially if the races are back-to-back. It’s almost a nightmare, but I make it work. Once my oldest son, Taylor, turned 16 we got him a license, and that’s been a big help. He always goes with me and helps me anyway but until this year he couldn’t go in the paddock. I just kind of make do with whoever I can find.” Sometimes, he has to make do without. “A lot of times I’ll saddle them by myself just because I don’t have any help. It’s not real easy but you have to do it. I can’t do that with all of them.”

Over the course of the day it has dawned on me that when Back does his taxes there is not enough space on the “occupation” line: airplane mechanic/owner/trainer/psychologist/groom/hotwalker/van driver. It is easy to see why, for every Mike Back, there are countless people who can’t make it work. “It’s tough,” he says. “It’s a tough thing to break into, for a little person. And the politics of the track, they’ll just kill you!”
Once when Blatchford was listed as the trainer they had a horse leading the race into the last turn. “He was a dead winner,” says Blatchford – until the jockey pulled him up. Unsaddling, the rider told them the horse couldn’t breathe and Back couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I said, ‘there’s nothing wrong with that horse.’ I went to the stewards – I was so mad – the next morning I went back over there and said, ‘What do you want this horse to work?’ He said to work him 3/8’s and I said, ‘I’m going to work him a half.’ And he had a bullet work. Brought him back two weeks later and won a race with him. But if it hadn’t been for George pulling some strings I’d have never gotten anybody to ride him.”

Another of Back’s charges got a DNF not long ago. “Why? Well come to find out later the jockey had gotten thrown that morning, his back was hurting. I didn’t know that. The steward had had four complaints that day. The horse was going to run in the money. Instead, it put me on the vet’s list. I had to go work the horse, I had to take the horse in front of the vet, for nothing wrong with him. I can not afford for that to happen. So now I have a horse that’s got a DNF, and I’ve got to find somebody to ride him. What are they going to think? They’re going to think there’s something wrong with this horse.” With effort, he convinced a jock agent his horse was sound, the jockey took the mount and rode him to two consecutive third-place finishes. Back felt vindicated but the sting of what he might have lost remains. “It’s out of your hands once you put them on a horse. They could be costing me a race that I need to keep going through next week. That’s the whole killer, is they don’t realize how much I have riding on every race. It’s not a life-or-death deal but it’s a trying-to-get-by-to-next-week deal. Next week’s $200 feed bill and next week’s $150 this-and-that. It all quickly adds up.”

Back searches for new horses regularly. “I’m just looking for the next good horse that I could win a race with.” When studying claimers, he keys in on entries from “the bigger trainers, a horse that they’ve dropped to the bottom, that’s not working in their program,” but who’ve shown a little bit of ability in the past. “It’s so hard when you claim one. That could make or break you right there. You’ve got to be willing to lose your money. It’s an investment for the long term. I look for a horse that’s sour from the track, take one that’s not happy and just let him be a horse.” He singles out the gray Irishrunaway, who came to him through a trainer friend in Louisiana. “When I got him, I gave him some feed, a little TLC, a little time out, just to make him happy. He’d done absolutely nothing in his life. But now he’ll try, he’ll give it everything he’s got. I’ve run a second and a third with him in three outs.” His fondness for the horse – for all his horses – and for using his good instincts to learn what makes each one tick is plain to see.

He found Hard Bargain, a winner of three races for her previous owner, on HandRide.com, a website he visits frequently. “I called a guy and swung a deal with him. It was the only horse he had. She’d won a bit of money and won races last year but he had a new baby and he just couldn’t afford it anymore. And I said, ‘Yeah, I know what you mean!’” The married father of four (with a very supportive wife) drove to Henderson, Kentucky, looked the filly over and bought her. Back has pursued the online angle aggressively, e-mailing the representatives for many of the racehorses listed for sale, offering to train them unless he spots an obvious red flag indicating that there’s something wrong with their horses. “I’ll just shoot them an e-mail and they’ll either say yes or no. Most of them write back saying ‘you’re too far’ or ‘we’ll see what happens if we don’t get him sold.’ My ultimate goal is to be hooked up with somebody that wants to send horses that don’t fit the bigger circuits. I’m working on it. I just haven’t got that connection yet.”

Years ago, before he was training, Back was involved in the private purchase of an A.P. Indy colt out of Wayne Lukas’ stable. “He was my pride and joy. People would just ooh and aah when they’d see him at the track,” he says, and from the catch in his throat you know you don’t want to hear what comes next, that the horse died in a barn fire at a friend’s nearby farm. “I almost got out of it then, cause I just loved him. I wish I had him knowing what I know now, which is not a lot – but knowing what I know now and how I do it, I’d win a bunch of races with him.” His leather halter is hanging up in Back’s house.

Blatchford accompanies him to the paddock and helps with the saddling. At Fair Meadows the owners don’t use their own silks; the house silks match the numbered saddlecloths. The only statement Back is allowed are the crimson blinkers emblazoned with his initials in white – the color scheme of the University of Oklahoma Sooners. After putting Mario Galvan up into the saddle, Back and Blatchford join friends in the stands. They are easy to find; the cool weather and free admission have failed to attract many people, and the crowd is remarkably sparse. The regulars are surprised at the low turnout. Irishrunaway was left at the gate on his previous outing, and Back is worried tonight before the start of the 6½-furlong, $7,500 claiming event. He has the gelding’s owner, Linda Searles, on the phone to give her the play-by-play. His share of the $3,564 winner’s purse would make a huge difference to Back; he has “never had a paying owner” and Searles and Back have a purse-splitting agreement in place, where she has no out-of-pocket expenses. “It helps her out and gives me a horse to run so I can get my feet wet.” Searles, who lives in Louisiana, is the kind of person whovoluntarily offered to pay for half the gas when Back took Irishrunaway to Nebraska in May, where he was second. She says, “Mike is a hard-working young man, and he’s honest, which is very important to me. I hope he will get that big one so that he doesn’t have to work two jobs.”

 
For all practical purposes, Irishrunaway’s race is over as soon as it begins: he spots the field too many lengths at the start, and must make up ground going around two very tight turns on the bullring. The announcer gives him an optimistic call on the backstretch: “Irishrunaway is eating up ground!” His long stride carries him wide around the second turn and it almost as soon as they straighten out of it they hit the wire. With so much going against him, Irishrunaway finishes a creditable third. Back is encouraged. “When I run third I’m happy. I’m disappointed that I’ve run third but I’m just tickled to death, I’m the happiest guy in the world. I don’t like to get beat but if my horse runs hard, I’m happy, I’m satisfied.” More than that, this check will pay for fuel: oats and diesel, horses and horsepower. That genuine effort provides Back with what will be the highlight of his evening as he leads the gelding off to cool him out on the Equiciser. Hours later, in the maiden special over a mile, Bagadiamonds is a passive observer under Galvan and the bright lights. She fretted her race away in the stall, and as they walk down the track her dark coat blends into the blackness of night. Only the white of her right hind leg, star, shadow roll and tall trainer give her away. Blatchford has gone one better: the gelding who had the studdish horse in the next stall over (he finished fourth in his 300 yard dash) has run second in his race.

Irishrunaway is wound up, as though he were mad at himself for not being able to get there. He will, one day. For now, he squeals at Bagadiamonds…in the stall, through the barn, in the trailer. They leave for home; it will be close to midnight before they are tucked up in their stalls beneath the sleepy chickens and roosters perched in the rafters.

A window into the day of the trainer whose story is seldom told: to wonder why he does it is to be immune to the thrill of horses thundering into the homestretch, to not get goosebumps when Dave Johnson roars, “And DOWN the stretch they come!” Mike Back does not hesitate for a fraction of a second when asked if he would like to train horses full time: “Yes. Definitely. If you’re not getting excited about it, you’re in the wrong business.”