46zilzal
04-23-2010, 11:20 AM
Yesterday I got real early and headed out to the track for morning workouts (and to get my new license for the year)...If you have never attended, it is great with the morning air, bustling activity, lots of hopeful talk, meeting old friends etc etc.
Strange, but I recalled a few pages from William Quirin's third book Handicapping by Example and his second Handicapping: the State of the Art.
First (from by Example, p. 260) "More often than not, the workouts provide relatively insignificant information and can at times be misleading, The clockers miss some workouts and record others incorrectly. Indeed, the public remains ignorant of so much information on each workout - what the trainer hopes the horse will gain from the workout, for example-that the true significance of a workout is often beyond its comprehension."
In the other (from State of the Art), and I cannot just yet find the page for reference, he describes THE WATCH DOG scenario....Wherein a horse cannot stay with the speed of the race, and does not have the later moving ability to hang too far off of it either so the horse is stuck with the old adage "damned if you do, damned if you don't." This was exactly the scenario that beat Cigar in the Pacific Classic: he could not run with Siphon and his style precluded him from staying too far off the pace......He was doomed by the pace scenario.
Quirin remains, like Cramer, a gold mine of tidbit information that is required reading for the novice and old fogy alike....My copies of his books have gained weight over the years from all the underlining...
Strange, but I recalled a few pages from William Quirin's third book Handicapping by Example and his second Handicapping: the State of the Art.
First (from by Example, p. 260) "More often than not, the workouts provide relatively insignificant information and can at times be misleading, The clockers miss some workouts and record others incorrectly. Indeed, the public remains ignorant of so much information on each workout - what the trainer hopes the horse will gain from the workout, for example-that the true significance of a workout is often beyond its comprehension."
In the other (from State of the Art), and I cannot just yet find the page for reference, he describes THE WATCH DOG scenario....Wherein a horse cannot stay with the speed of the race, and does not have the later moving ability to hang too far off of it either so the horse is stuck with the old adage "damned if you do, damned if you don't." This was exactly the scenario that beat Cigar in the Pacific Classic: he could not run with Siphon and his style precluded him from staying too far off the pace......He was doomed by the pace scenario.
Quirin remains, like Cramer, a gold mine of tidbit information that is required reading for the novice and old fogy alike....My copies of his books have gained weight over the years from all the underlining...