Another (Pletcher) one bites the dust

[the little guy]

Originally Posted by cj

Kauai Katie scratched today, leaving Teen Pauline, another Saratoga grad. She ran rather poorly to say the least.

Not that you said it, but Todd only had Teen Pauline this year. She broke her maiden, and bombed in the Spinaway, for Steve Asmussen.

[rastajenk]

Well, when he does ruin her, it can be said that you heard it here first.

[FantasticDan]

Originally Posted by cnollfan

I look forward to betting against them. I have three on my bet-against watch list that seem to have disappeared -- anybody know the status of these horses?
Corail - last race I know of was 8/1/12 at Saratoga
Darwin - 10/6/12
Zaikov - Gulfstream 3/15/13

Zaikov, an extremely talented colt by Distorted Humor out of Wait a While, ran again and won in Dec. 2013 after shin surgery. He was on the bench for all of 2014, and had resumed training this past Sept. Unfortunately, he sustained a fractured humerus while training yesterday at Belmont and was euthanized.

[Wiley]

This probably needs a thread of it's own, but here is an interesting article on horses taking a 'bad step' causing catastrophic breakdowns. I hope most trainers read it.

http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-raci...-bad-step-myth

[DJofSD]

Just now saw this thread for the first time.

My initial thought: whatever troubles have befallen the horses in Todd's barn, isn't this the same black cloud that followed DWL around for years and years?

[cj]

Pretty amazing, to me at least, the Pletcher has a grand total of one horse over the age of two running in the Breeders' Cup.

[Tom]

BC needs to be moved to end of August - while he still something left. When I heard that was all he had, my first thought was......GOOD.

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by cj

Pretty amazing, to me at least, the Pletcher has a grand total of one horse over the age of two running in the Breeders' Cup.

I still think cranking horses way up early in their careers increases the probability of these kinds of problems.

Someone should do a study among the trainers that are known for training top horses.

1. % of time the trainer wins with first time starters.

2. average number of career starts for his horses overall, that won as FTS, that didn't win as FTS.

3. Average figure of FTS

You could always break it down a bunch of ways that may be better, but you can see the gist of what I am getting at with something basic like this.

[Tom]

I have heard of studies where 2yos who race more actually do better latter on. Maybe it Byk who talked about it?

I think the new trend of keeping them on the shelf then going for it all is the problem. Horse who used to race frequently were able to maintain condition and deliver A races when called on. Nowadays, a safe bet is eliminate anything that ran a very good race last time.

"One and done, two and through" is on a sticker on the edge of my monitor where I cannot miss it every time I do a race.

[DJofSD]

A certain amount of stress or concussion is needed for the growth plates in young horses to form properly. It has to do with the amount of calcium being deposited in order to form a good bone structure. It's a combination of diet and exercise which results in a horse which can stand the rigors of racing.

[classhandicapper]

I read similar articles about stress concussion and horses needing races, but there may be a difference between running some races and cranking them up so they go 44 and change and 109 and change to win at Saratoga by a block.