If you don’t want to read any farther, the answer is the trainer is critical to the success of a horse.

In my blog piece about jockeys a few days ago, I mentioned my bias in favor of the horse. If a jockey has the best horse in a race and basically allows that horse to run its race, the vast majority of the time that horse will win.

On the other hand, everything about the horse is in the hands of the trainer. The list of jobs the trainer has is enormous. He has to figure out everything from diet to how to keep a genetically high strung animal from being a head case. The trainer is father, mother, coach, babysitter, amateur doctor, and the best friend a horse has. The horse may have an inherent ability, but only a first-rate trainer can get the maximum results.

If you read some of the reports from the recently completed Welfare and Safety Summit, you realize just how critical the trainer is. How often and how hard he works the horse is incredibly important to the horse’s long term health. The most important thing that I saw come out of that conference is that you have to have the perfect combination of races and gallops to properly strengthen and remodel bone.

The best trainers not only know this, but they know exactly how to accomplish it. Just like jockeys,

The best trainers get the best horses.

There are a bevy of statistics available through TimeformUS and Formulator. If you want to know how a trainer does on a Thursday in September when the temperature is 83 degrees and the horses is coming out of the six post, I’m betting someone has that information.

The problem with handicapping trainers is that we don’t really have interior access to the less public information. Oh, we knew that Alan Jerkens was “the giant killer” because he had a career full of victories over odds-on horses. But we weren’t exactly sure what he did that brought out the best in horses. Was it diet? Some special training technique that he stumbled into? His farrier?  Some concoction of vitamins and herbs he got from a shaman? No, we just took it on faith that every time Jerkens started a horse he was dangerous.

Remember Oscar Barrera, great claiming trainer, a man the Daily News referred to as “the miracle man?” Ray Paulick wrote this about Barrera

“Barrera would claim a horse from an early race on a Wednesday and, if the entry box for Friday was still open, might run it back two days later for a higher claiming price – often winning. He would run that same horse again in another three or four days. And again. And again. Barrera once won six races in a single month with the same horse.”

We never knew for sure whether he had mastered some secret of training, or he was the Linus Pauling of horse medication, but we knew that if he entered a horse three days after claiming him or moved a $40000 plater up to a Grade 1, we bet the horse on faith.

One piece of advice. Even with trainers like Alan Jerkens, you can’t just bet blindly. When you hear someone crow, of course I won – it was Jonathan Sheppard on the turf, take it with a grain of salt. Sheppard may help, but you still have to dig farther than that.

What are the key things to know about trainers?

• Winning percentage is one thing, but what we really want to know are the sub-statistics. Sprints or routes? Turf or Dirt? Sprints on the turf? Claimers or allowance horses? Two year olds or older?
• How does a trainer do when he raises/drops a horse in claiming price?
• Does the trainer select the right spots for his horse? How many times have you seen a horse break his maiden in a $20000 claimer, move up to allowance company and have five miserable races in a row. The trainer needs to place his horse in a spot that will allow him to succeed if he runs his best race.
• A trainer who is a “big fish in a small pond” moving up to a major track is always dangerous, especially if he has a record of successfully making that move. Check out the 9th race at Saratoga from July 21. You familiar with Brad Cox? He is a 27% trainer from the midwest who came into Saratoga and won with the 22-1 Overton Square. I think these sorts of examples abound. The point is that sometimes small trainers just want to be part of the pageantry of big league racing, but sometimes they have a live runner and they want to pick up the largest part of a $47,000 purse. That buys a lot of oats.
• Trainers like Todd Pletcher race their horses lightly. They can do that because they are expert at training a horse up to a race. But not every trainer can replace the experience of a race with training. Many modern trainers feel tremendous pressure to show a high winning percentage, so they only try to run race-ready horses. Other trainers believe they must stress a horse gradually. You hear a lot of handicappers talk about “third off a layoff.” Pay close attention to those trainers that race their horses into top condition, and pay attention to whether it is first, second or third off a layoff.
• Look at the workout pattern for certain trainers. Bob Baffert likes to work his horses quickly, often to the point where he is criticized for leaving a horse’s race on the training track if he loses. Every trainer has a preference for how hard or long to work horses. Know what it is and use it to your advantage.
• While we are talking about that, how in the world are you supposed to know how well meant a first-time starter is off three ordinary four furlong workouts and a five furlong workout? You’re supposed to know whether the trainer has a documented history of success with that training pattern.
• Look at horses in the paddock. Do they have healthy coats? Are the horses so keyed up they’ll use up most of their energy before the race?
• Look at the medications the trainer uses. Trust me, it is a much longer list than Lasix and Bute. Do you know the medication rules for your state? They are readily available on line. The New York State Gaming Commission actually has an equine steroid administration log. If your state doesn’t make medication logs available, then you need to make a stink with your local racing commission.
• Does the trainer have a specific go-to jockey in a specific type of race? Everyone knows Pletcher-Velasquez or Baffert-Garcia. But will the trainer go elsewhere when he has a horse he needs ridden in a specific way?
• The Racing Form and TimeformUS publish statistics on how well a trainer does first after a claim. But can we break that statistic down farther? What happens if the trainer moves a horse up or down after a claim? How about if he runs the horse back in a week? How about if he waits two or three months? The micro statistics are just as important as the macro statistics.
• How does a trainer do early in a meet? Inevitably some trainers bring their horses ready to run and others need time to get into the swing of the meet. Look at previous meet statistics and use that information to your best advantage. It is one of the few statistics you actually have to do some legwork to find out.

I’ll say something I say a lot. If the only information you use is the information everybody has, you are less likely to get a price on your horse. Either you need to put information together in unique ways, or you need to put together unique information.

Tell me what I missed? The great thing about a blog is it can always be edited!