Quote:
Originally Posted by The Indomitable DrugS
The "hated the surface" stuff is often bogus and basically a trainers excuse when they can't find a better excuse.
It's valid when a horse tries a new form of surface - but something was obviously in play other than John Henry not liking the type of dirt on FG's track. His last race at FG and first at KEE seemed to be a very indentical type of performance.
He seemed to turn around greatly in that time frame between April 11th and May 21st.
Here's the video of his turf debut win:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDoabBz_JhM
His jockey wasn't exactly riding him with great confidence. |
In the late 1970s, a 2yo coming from JD/EvD with stakes credentials would be competitive in the sprint allowances and sometimes the sprint stakes early in a FG meet. John Henry bombed in a November sprint stakes at FG, performed okay in two December allowance sprints there, then bombed again in the Sugar Bowl. Things weren't much better in his first tries around two turns.
John Henry's first trainer, Phil Marino, probably was interested mainly in winning juvenile stakes at JD and EvD with John Henry and trained him accordingly. You had to have some early zip to win at 4-1/2 and 5fs at those bullrings. That was obviously not John Henry's style, so perhaps at some point he stopped responding to Marino's training regimen and his form really soured. Maybe he just needed a new trainer and a different surface.
Steve Haskin wrote a fairly-detailed book about John Henry, so it might be worth it to ask him what he thinks turned John Henry around.