The reason there are super trainers

[pandy]

Originally Posted by InsideTheRaces.com

A 10% win rate is not hard to achieve.
I claimed my first horse in 2004. I knew nothing about caring for race horses. I jumped right in over my head and fired my trainer after a month and claimed a couple more from super trainers over the 3 months. I rented a farm trained them myself with the help of a exercise rider. I entered the horses under a 1% program trainers name. After a year I had 5 horses and was winning at 10%. I could have won more I just didn't want to lose my horses by dropping them down. If I could do what I did with zero background other than handicapping it's not hard to believe that trainers can win at 25-30%

Good point. I've never trained a horse but I've always felt that anyone who simply loves horses and takes care of them can train their own horses and do okay. If I was going to try this, I would try to find an experienced groom because they can spot things that may be wrong with the horse. As you say, one of the biggest keys is whether or not you are willing to risk losing the horse.

I also agree with you that many trainers simply don't do enough for their horses because they either can't afford to, or they don't want to spend the money. It costs money for legal drugs, new shoes, or even to use modern techniques such as hiring a massage specialist...also, it costs money to rent stalls on a farm for turning out or using a swimming facility, etc. The low rent guy is going to keep his horses in the stall longer.

[SuperPickle]

Originally Posted by InsideTheRaces.com

That's right super trainers are not cheats for the most part.

Stillriledup have you been to the backside from 5 am - 11 am to see what happens?

From all your postings I assume you play this game for a living, am I correct?

I would frame it more like their success is more than drugs. You simply can't just dope horses to 30%. There is more to it than that.

One of things I always point about Jacobson is he immediately assesses what he has and play the horse where he needs to place it. He'll claim something for $25K get it back to the barn and looks under the hood and if he thinks its a $10K horse he runs the horse back for $10K. He's generally able to do this because he owns the horse a lot of the time. He understands that what kills your profit is claiming horses and have them slowly go down the tube. Guys drop them one notch at time and no one claims them at all or when they get to the bottom.

Guys like him and Ness are better at taking a quick tiny loss on a horse but dropping it quickly when most guys wait till its too late.

[cj]

Originally Posted by InsideTheRaces.com

I don't post much but I just got done reading the Karl Broberg thread and thought I would reply to it but thought it was better to start a new thread.
http://www.paceadvantage.com/forum/s...&page=15&pp=15

I'll try to keep it concise and to the point with a few comparisons to show/prove my point.

Most of you are handicappers and have never seen the backside of a track. Bottom line, 80% of horse trainers have no business being in business period.
I'm sure all of you have been to the track or a OTB and have watched horseplayers placing wagers with info from the track program or no program at all. I'm sure all of you have thought wow these are the clowns I'm betting against.
The backside of the track is no different from what you see at the windows of the track or OTB.
For the most part the trainers love the horses and love the game just like the idiot playing numbers in the OTB. They are there everyday doing what they do.

Super handicapper
Has better data, follows trainer and jockey stats, watches replays, is prepared before placing bets, and only bets when they think they have an advantage.
Handicapper
Shows up and maybe buys a track program, no plan, scrambles to place bets based on little or no information.

Lets say a trainer claims a horse here's what might happen

Super Trainer
Pulls the shoes off the horse and soaks feet for a hour or two each day.
Gets the horse's teeth done.
Chiropractic work done.
Gets new shoes for the horse after a couple weeks of no shoes
Legal medication to reduce swelling or pain.
*Proper hay and feed (very few trainers test their hay for nutritional value)
Proper exercise
Round pen time so the horse can really roll and stretch the muscles.

Trainer
Put them in the barn.
Put them on the barns regular schedule.
The regular schedule for most trainers is.
Feed the horse a diet that has not been tested for nutritional value.
Maybe get the horse out of the stall in the morning because you can't or don't want to pay for exercise riders.
I could go on but I won't

Bottom line if you go to the backside in the morning (6 am) you can see who runs a professional operation and who doesn't.

The other aspect of the super trainer is they have owners that don't care if the horse gets claimed. If the owner won't run where the super trainer wants it to run they have about 24 hrs to get their horse out of his barn.
The regular trainer just wants the day money and doesn't want to lose the horse. Reason being he makes money off the day money because he's skimping on care. The super trainer spends the day money on the horse and only makes money when the horse wins.

When you look at how the super trainer takes care of the horse and how they place the horses in races it's not very far fetched how they can improve horse and win more than a regular trainer.
Are some cheating? Maybe?

I could go on forever about the difference between a super trainer and a trainer.

It's like any business, 20% make 80% of the money.

I'm ready for the fallout bring it on!

You probably noticed I said a lot of this in the Broberg thread. Having spent quite a bit of time at Remington this past year and many years at Charles Town, it is easy to see why some guys win so much. There are a ton of guys training that are hopeless. When they happen to get a decent horse, the smart guys snap them up.

It isn't always drugs and cheating that moves horses up. I'm not naive enough to think nobody cheats, but I don't think that accounts for most of the move ups. When I see guys taking horses from top trainers and moving them up, that is when I start questioning to myself what is going on.

I will add that it isn't always the "super trainer" running the show...it is often times the owner.

[pandy]

True about the owner. Calabrese win a high percentage regardless of who trains his horses. They all become super trainers once they get Frank as an owner.

[SuperPickle]

Originally Posted by cj

You probably noticed I said a lot of this in the Broberg thread. Having spent quite a bit of time at Remington this past year and many years at Charles Town, it is easy to see why some guys win so much. There are a ton of guys training that are hopeless. When they happen to get a decent horse, the smart guys snap them up.

It isn't always drugs and cheating that moves horses up. I'm not naive enough to think nobody cheats, but I don't think that accounts for most of the move ups. When I see guys taking horses from top trainers and moving them up, that is when I start questioning to myself what is going on.

I will add that it isn't always the "super trainer" running the show...it is often times the owner.

It's kind of funny you brought this up but I happened to notice this weekend Barbara Hopkins also has horses with Ramon Moya and just started claiming horses in New York with Danny Gargan. For those who don't know she's the big owner behind Ramon Preciado. All of those guys hit at a 20%+ rate.

You really can't underscore the value of the owner.

Again it's not as simply as drugging horses.

[cj]

Originally Posted by SuperPickle

It's kind of funny you brought this up but I happened to notice this weekend Barbara Hopkins also has horses with Ramon Moya and just started claiming horses in New York with Danny Gargan. For those who don't know she's the big owner behind Ramon Preciado. All of those guys hit at a 20%+ rate.

You really can't underscore the value of the owner.

Again it's not as simply as drugging horses.

Danny Caldwell is another example. He could probably hire clueless me to train his horses and I'd win at 25%. The guy does his homework.

[GatetoWire]

Originally Posted by Boulder

Here just a couple Rudy Rod in NY, Jane Cibelli, band from Tampa for 1 year and came to NJ and could win. Below teens. A guy from Penn. Nat. I believe his name was Mc Carsky? There are more but like I said when they caught there numbers drop like a rock.

Again I am a strong believer in common sense.

You can add David Jacobson to this list.

When NYRA put Jacobson and Rudy under 24 hour surveillance they both experienced huge drops in win %.
Jacobson went from red hot, winning races in bunches to not winning a race for 28 or 29 consecutive days.

I sure he just forgot to check to see if his hay was good.

[big frank]

The owners are the key......They pay the vets who give the drugs to these horses......The super trainers wouldn't even know how and when to give the drug......as far as super trainers , things are getting crazy at Gulfstream....Navarro horses are running like they have a rocket strapped to there backs........And today Ness had a horse off the claim run off the screen in a 5f turf sprint.....won by 10 ......how often do you see a 5f turf race won by 10 ???? and he wasn't dropping , he was on the rise......to me you could make adjustments and move a horse up , that is logical ......but it is when a horse moves WAY UP is when there is no question juice is involved.....Navarro had a 12 claimer win by 10 in 1.09 flat today in hand....and what about his horse Defer Heaven.......has 3 straight blowout wins in blazing times....yesterday won by 8 in 44.3 1.08.3 1.21.3 for 7f in hand.......by the way i have played all of these examples to win.....so it is not sour grapes ,, best of luck

[VigorsTheGrey]

I'm a long time race fan new to the blog. I assure you, I am not so informed as most here but I do enjoy blogging....One trainer that has come to my attention in recent days is Jorge Navarro. I know very little about him or his methods with horses but he does get the winners home...There was some news about Monster (energy drink) corp signing a deal with Zayed and others on marketing with American Pharoah. Is Monster Racing Stables (who Navarro trains for, I believe) the same group as Monster drink group?

[RXB]

Nobody doubts that these supertrainers take care of their horses and spot them properly. What we doubt is that they could win ~30% without doping on top. Lance Armstrong couldn't just blow off his training and eat pepperoni pizza because he doped. He did the training AND the doping in order to win.

[eqitec]

One conclusion I've drawn from my research is that super trainers such as T. Pletcher or C. Brown get the job done via consistent, regular, standardized training regimens. It's very rare when one of their starters doesn't show the familiar # and pattern of workouts leading up to their starts (see attached data.)

While this is reassuring to me, it doesn't exclude the possibility that other factors (e.g., shoeing) or substances (nutritional, etc) are also critical to their super training outcomes.

The attached are are excerpts from my research in this area for 3 trainers.
Pletcher's data is from 257 winners.
Navvaro's data is from 79 winners
Ness's data is from 100 winners.

You can see that Pletcher is at one extreme and Ness at the other. Navarro is somewhere in the middle. In Navarro's case his training regimens are standardized enough for me to worry less about how he gets winners than I did before my research.

Granted that the kind of owners who support Pletcher or Brown have a high degree of patience allowing full training regimens to occur before horses they own are started.

In the case of how Ness gets his winners, the data suggests that other training factors may be influential when compared against super trainers such as Pletcher or Brown.

Also, some super trainers such as Pletcher, are using good automated stable management systems such as T-Lore or iStable which enable their remote management of 100s of horses across the country where assistant trainers execute the standardized training regimens without fail.

[no breathalyzer]

Originally Posted by big frank

The owners are the key......They pay the vets who give the drugs to these horses......The super trainers wouldn't even know how and when to give the drug......as far as super trainers , things are getting crazy at Gulfstream....Navarro horses are running like they have a rocket strapped to there backs........And today Ness had a horse off the claim run off the screen in a 5f turf sprint.....won by 10 ......how often do you see a 5f turf race won by 10 ???? and he wasn't dropping , he was on the rise......to me you could make adjustments and move a horse up , that is logical ......but it is when a horse moves WAY UP is when there is no question juice is involved.....Navarro had a 12 claimer win by 10 in 1.09 flat today in hand....and what about his horse Defer Heaven.......has 3 straight blowout wins in blazing times....yesterday won by 8 in 44.3 1.08.3 1.21.3 for 7f in hand.......by the way i have played all of these examples to win.....so it is not sour grapes ,, best of luck

Seems legit