Quote:
Originally Posted by The Indomitable DrugS
Why shouldn't there be some concern?
Everything in the Pletcher barn gets hurt or falls apart... he can't even keep them together for a full season on laughably easy schedules.
If he trained war horses like Equipoise, Assault, and Stymie - those horses bodies would fall apart quickly in his program. No equine is tough enough to withstand being in that barn.
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He may train them too light and the effort of the race is too much. Also most of today horses have a pre-race vet bill that would choke a rhino. It takes a week to get them back to galloping while horses of old were back out at the races in 5-7 days, even the really good ones.
Stymie and Assault and the like wouldn't have ever gotten tough enough under his program to be "who they were." Also, common today is the "Saturday horses breeze on Sunday" routine. Look up the worktabs of most of TAP's stakes horses, they work either sat or Sun with almost no deviation. There is no individualized program of "this horse does well with a breeze 8 days out and a sharpener at 2f two days before..."
When TVG started the show "The Works" leading to the Derby is was Sunday-Thursday. Now most of the final pre- Derby works are done by Monday of Derby week. many are done by Saturday prior.