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A Study in Horse Tiredness and Recovery - Shipping

Original article written by Regina Moore posted 9 years 4 weeks ago

Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a single example of a horse I’ve ever known being injured from a ship. I just know that the accumulated tiredness from excessive shipping can make a horse vulnerable, so that the next time a ship-tired horse has the smallest degree of exercise, it can get injured. Excessive shipping can also affect racing performance.

A year and a half ago, I took on a new player to mentor. His first question to me was, “How come all my horses always finish last?” It took me a while to decipher the puzzle of his stable, because he was giving his horses plenty of rest between races, and not doing anything crazy with exercise, like giving a timed work the day before a race, or galloping three times in a day, etc. It took me getting a calendar to match up the events on the History tab with the racing activity on the Performance tab to figure out what he was doing wrong.

Turns out, he was shipping his horses numerous times between races. When I asked him about it, he said he changed his mind a lot about which race he wanted to put a horse in, and every time he entered the horse in a different race, he would immediately ship it to that track. So, the horse took a van or plane ride every time the player changed his mind, and was therefore exhausted on race day. I told him that there was nothing wrong with scratching from one race and entering in a better spot, but he shouldn’t actually ship his horses until three or four days before the race he’d finally settled upon. Shortly after correcting the problem, he had his first win.

That’s an example of how accumulated shipping can badly tire out a horse.

One of my earliest memories from when I first joined SIM was on the Forum, when the Steward expressed frustration that so many players were “afraid to leave their comfort zones” and wouldn’t ship a long distance for an appropriate race. That was a clue that I shouldn’t be afraid of shipping my horse a long distance, and I never have been. It’s rather astounding to me, the number of players that are wussy about the idea of a long ship. I can understand it from a financial standpoint, but not from a tiredness standpoint.

On the other hand, I’ve known the Steward to also outright state that a horse is going to be overall more successful, if one can find appropriate races for that horse in one region of the world, and not have to make frequent long ships.

So, where is the middle ground between there being nothing wrong with shipping a horse a long distance for an appropriate race, and too much shipping affecting the horse’s ability to perform at his best?

The answer to this question is very difficult to pin down, and I’m not finding a black-or-white answer.


SOME EXPERIMENTS
Two unraced 2yos (bred for steeplechasing) were shipped from Oklahoma to Youngster Park in Japan, at a cost of $990. Both dropped to Level 2 as soon as they started the ship, then were at Level 3 the next day, and a fully rested Level 4 the following day. This is line with earlier observations of a horse recovering from a long ship.

These ships happened on a Saturday, and both horses were entered to run the following Friday at Youngster Park. So, on Monday, they were both a fully rested Level 4, having recovered from the ship.

On Tuesday, I sent one of those horses on a $540 side trip to a farm in India. He was still fully rested as soon as he shipped, so that ship appeared to have no effect on tiredness, even though it was just a day after having fully recovered from the $990 ship. On Thursday, he shipped back to Youngster Park for his race, and dropped to a Level 3. He was a fully recovered Level 4 when he raced on Friday. So, that side trip didn’t seem to affect the horse much. But what was interesting is that, after racing on Friday, in what was his first start, the horse took nine days to fully recover from his race. While nine days isn’t unusual in and of itself, I wasn’t expecting that long of a recovery for a horse that didn’t have a hard campaign, since he’d never raced before. He spent four days at Level 1, three days at Level 2, and one day at Level 3. So, I’m thinking the fact that he raced on top of some multiple ships did affect his recovery time from the race, even though he was fully rested for the race itself.

The other horse that went to Youngster Park also took a side trip before his race, but it was just a $100 trip to the nearest farm, and then back to the track the next day. He remained at a fully rested Level 4 thoroughout the side trip. After his race, rather than shipping him to the nearest farm, I shipped him halfway around the world to the farm Haras Cozumel in Uruguay, at a cost of $1870, to see what would happen. In other words, since the horse was going to a farm, he was getting farm rest, which should help his recovery; but on the other hand, he was getting a long ship on top of having just raced. That ended up being quite an exhausting combination. The horse was Level 1 tired for a full seven days after his race. He was Level 2 for three days, and Level 3 for one day. It took him twelve days to recover from his race, despite being shipped to a farm.

So, the above experiment would confirm the prevailing wisdom in SIM is that one should ship to the nearest farm (or thereabouts) after a race. With stakes horses that have their schedule planned out ahead of time, some players will ship a horse to the farm nearest the track for its next start, rather than the farm nearest where it just ran. If the next start is far away – say, $1000 ship or more – I’d be hesitant to do this, unless the horse had three weeks until his next race. It seems like it would be wiser to have the horse be fully rested in about seven to nine days at the nearest farm, and then ship it the long distance to the track for its next race, where it would likely be recovered from the ship within two days, rather than leaving it vulnerable at a Level 1 tired for an extended period of time.

Some might blame both the above long recoveries on the horses being only 2yos. I’m skeptical of that being a prevailing factor, since I’ve yet to otherwise see any indication that age or type of horse impacts how quickly it recovers from activity. Also, a factor that would seem to otherwise favor a fast recovery for both horses is that they hadn’t raced before. But the accumulated shipping took something out of them, for sure.

In fact, speaking of 2yos, I have with a dirt sprinter that wasn’t originally a part of this tiredness study. I entered the horse in race in Mexico for her debut for Week 2 Monday. Once on her way to Mexico (from my farm in Oklahoma), I decided I’d rather debut her in a race at Arcadia, Week 2 Friday. So, I “undid” the ship to Mexico. But I forgot to scratch her from the race in Mexico. So, the next day, the auto ship sent her back to Mexico, which was $170. That was Sunday. I wondered if I’d be messing up her debut, by shipping her yet again, though it would only be to Southern California, a short distance. She had vetted Level 2. I decided to ship her to a farm next to Arcadia, hoping the farm rest would help her recover. So, upon shipping her to the farm nearest Arcadia, she vetted Level 3! She’d already recovered a level, by virtue of being shipped to the farm. On Monday, she was a fully recovered Level 4. On Tuesday, the auto ship sent her to Arcadia, and she was still Level 4. She raced on Friday and won.

Here’s another 2yo that I messed up with. He’s a turf sprint colt that was shipped to Australia at the beginning of the year, took two days to recover from the long ship, and finished second in his AUS-bred debut. He was back to Level 4 in seven days. His second race was two weeks after his debut, and he won an open MSW by 7.5 lengths against his only challenger. This time, it took him nine days to be fully back to Level 4. This is where I went stupid. I meant to enter him back in a stakes in Australia, on another two-week turnaround, and I accidentally entered him in a stakes in Adolescent Acres in northern California. On the Tuesday prior to his Week 5 Friday stakes, the auto ship sent him on the $1220 trip to Adolescent Acres. That typically dropped him to Level 2 but, untypically, he was still Level 2 the next day. Since I was pondering scratching, I was relieved to see him at Level 3, the Thursday before the race, since that meant he would be a fully rested Level 4 on Friday. He finished third in the stakes, and a week after the race, has moved up from Level 1 to Level 2 in recovery. I expect it’ll be another two to three days before he’s fully rested.


Shipping impacts horses, in terms of frequency and distance. My observations haven’t changed my general beliefs about shipping. I don’t see any reason to be afraid of a long ship, since most horses are going to be fully recovered the second day after the ship, assuming they were fully rested at the time of the ship. But accumulated long trips can take their toll on how fast a horse bounces back.



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