John Shirreffs MO with his stable stars

[classhandicapper]

Great stuff.

I've always felt that a great way of measuring trainer skill is their ability to get a horse to peak for their major objective. Most horses are not going stay at their absolute peak for more than 2-3 races (some only 1) before they start to head south or become more in and out as they decline. You have to keep them fresh to get a peak. (see Havre de Grace, Questing, Awesome Feather, Rachel Alexandra etc.... Even Royal Delta was a little in and out after peaking so soon)

Shirreffs is great at it and so was Whittingham.

That's what made Shirreffs handling of Zenyatta so amazing.

He had her cranked through most of her 4YO season, but when he brought her back at 5 and 6 he knew he was dealing with an older mare that he wanted to peak in November when she would need it against boys. So he sent her out a little short and hoped she would win anyway because she was so much better. The combination of ridiculously slow paces, being less than 100%, and a couple of misjudged rides almost got her beat by weak horses, but the plan was well executed. There are very few 6YOs still firing close to peak efforts after 19 starts "on the exact day you want them to". That took incredible training skill.

Of course, your horse has to be good enough to win, but that's an entirely different matter. It's always a huge plus to know that the probability of your horse firing its "A" race is higher or lower than average - and that's very correlated to trainer skill. The "A" race of an inferior horse often beats the "B" race of a superior horse that peaked too soon.