The first race at Belmont on Sunday September 7 was a bottom level claiming event. I was really sold on an exacta of the 5, Wild Kay, and the 4, Inaflash. Inaflash had been on the sidelines since May 15, acquiring a new trainer since that date. He also was listed as wearing one bar shoe.

There was some interesting conversation on Twitter regarding Inaflash and his bar shoe, to the point where  some players had some hesitation about using Inaflash. And that was the real issue. None of us knew exactly why he was wearing the bar shoe, and we were forced to bet (or not bet) based on our assessment of the layoff and the bar shoe.

Inaflash won the race with Wild Kay second, triggering a $40 exacta in a race where it didn’t look, at least to me, like the finish could have been anything other than those two horses. Even though I hit the race, I probably underbet it because of concern about the bar shoe. What I needed to know was

• Why did Inaflash take a 4-month vacation? Was he injured? Just needed a rest?
• Why was the trainer adding a bar shoe?
• If he had an injury, could we be sure it was fully healed?

Perhaps it was good handicapping, or perhaps it was good luck, but after the race I thought there really shouldn’t have been a need for me to guess about the trainer’s intentions or the actual condition of the horse. I shouldn’t have had to wonder whether I should be worried about the bar shoe. There should have been an information source that told me why the horse had been laid up for four months and what the condition of his foot was.

What I would propose is that DRF or BrisNet should have an easily accessed data base that has trainer comments for any horse that has been away from the races for more than 90 days, and to be clear, the trainer should be required to comment on any layoff of that length or longer. It should be a simple matter for the trainer to state why the horse had been laid up. It should note any surgeries, including gelding the horse. It should include information on whether a filly or mare foaled during the time off. It should explain any injuries the horse had sustained and the status of treatment.

I’m not talking about long paragraphs. Something like this.

Inaflash

• Injured his right front foot, was treated and the foot is fully healed. We are adding a bar shoe today to protect the foot.

No trainer is going to keep a healthy horse on the farm. Of course Inaflash had some sort of injury, but the handicapper didn’t know exactly what it was or how serious it was.

Training a horse is different today than it was 50 years ago. Back then trainers raced horses into condition. In fact most handicapping “systems” started out with the first rule being, eliminate any horse who has been away from the races 30 days or longer. Given that trainers are so much more adept at getting horses ready to race off works, long layoffs between races are more and more common. We need to know if the layoff is because of illness, surgery, injury or just some necessary time away from the races.