The Time Eric and Laura Are Better Than You At Everything

Original article written by The Steward posted 12 years 0 weeks ago

Note: Written from and posting while on a plane, so if there are a plethora of typos I apologize - I can't see the screen since the person in front of me is leaning back practically in my lap....

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Somewhat rude title aside, I never fail to be amazed the year in and year out, Eric and Laura succeed like crazy and know more about the SIM than they should, keeping us on our toes and forcing it to evolve. A large part of it is time - both time spent on their horses, and time spent with the SIM overall (we're looking at over decade-long veterans here), but part of it is common sense and shrewd training skills. Here is an article to out them a bit, but I'm not too worried about it, as I'm pretty sure that even after reading this, they'll still be better at everything.

1. Laura Isn't Afraid to Hide
If Laura goes to enter her two-year-olds and finds out that Commander has entered one of her races, she will get the heck out. Does that sound like ducking? Sure. But there's a time to duck, and that's basically any race that isn't your main goal or a major event. Take the case of debut maidens. You only have so many chances until you're playing serious catch up and/or you have to admit your horse just doesn't "have it." Why run against a horse who has thrown down a :57 workout as a yearling when you can go find a field where your best opponent is a :58.4 kind of horse. The biggest argument I hear against this is, "Well I should find out early if my horse is good enough for xyz." That's nice. You should also break your maiden so you can go on your merry way, and running second with an 80 behind Commander isn't going to do it. Then you either wheel back and try again 2 weeks later, in which your poor horse bounces, or you have to wait 3 weeks, and now you're already behind where you want to be. Don't be afraid to take a serious look at your competition. Let the veterans beat each other up, that's not your job. Your job is to surprise them on the big days.

2. They Both Know What is Going On
A lot of the time, even from me, you'll hear, "Synthetic? I know nothing about that." Or, "Paints? Like... blue?" Eric and Laura take the time to check out a lot of the results, a lot of the time. They know what horses and what trainers are winning the stakes, and they know what sires are popping up in the 2 year old rankings early on. They see things and take note, such as, "Wow, Same/Ultra/Whoever is having a great year. I'll get some mares to him" instead of just asking on the forum, "Who is good?" at the end of the year. They can name a handful of good horses in every division, even the ones they care nothing about, because it just might be useful information one day, even if it's only to immediately weed out horses they aren't interested in during an auction.

3. Eric Uses Turkey
Although I'm not keen to give away his secret, I'm not sure too many will listen anyway. Eric is my go-to fix it guy for a reason, and that reason is Turkey. If I have someone else running a horse for me, and that horse is vastly underperforming, I will send it to Eric for a start, maybe two. And Eric will immediately ship the horse to Turkey (as an example, or any other similar strange place) and get the horse to bang out a few wins, no problem. It's not that Eric is juicing them, he's just going after the simple goal of WINNING. He doesn't care who he is beating or how the race is run or whether or not he'll make a chunk of change with the earnings. He's trying to get wins, and he knows the places to do it.

4. They Focus and Stay Focussed
It's easy to get bored - apparently, I wouldn't really know. But let's say you have great turf sprinters, and now you want to play dirt routers. That's hard to do! You can't just switch it up completely! If you get rid of all your good sprinters to go after routers, it's quite the investment to do it right. Even if you sell your one good sprinter for $3 million, that's not enough to make an impact in routers. Sure, Eric dabbles in turf milers for fun and Laura likes her dirt sprinters, and they both have a strong hand in the turf routing division, but for the most part they play with dirt routers, they chase dirt routers in auctions, and they haven't really deviated in 20 whatever years of game play.

5. Laura Uses the Vet
You're already saying, "But I don't have the money for the vet!" But really you do, or you should because the horses to vet are the ones that matter. I can't tell you how many times horses "just miss" in stakes races because they are still a half or full day tired. It happens more than a slightly lesser jockey or that one piece of equipment screwed you over. Tiredness is supposed to be one of the biggest things, right? Now, Laura's not crazy. She's not going to vet all her maidens and her allowance horses, because she has vetted her stakes horses enough that she has a basic understanding of how horses recover and cope and she will just accept that farm rest works, etc. It's those questionable horses - can I run this horse a 7th time this year? Will I regret going 4 weeks between races without a work? Etc. I seldom see one of Laura's horses be tired in a race. Can't afford the vet? Do yourself a favor and write one article or geld 20 horses, good for a whole bunch of vetting.

6. Eric Has Confidence
Overconfidence, yes, but it's better than perpetual terror of losing. Sometimes you're going to lose. Eric accepts that. He doesn't like it, of course! But he gets it, especially in preps. He knows that you'd rather not leave it all on the track 2 weeks before the big dance, so losing is no big deal. But he still boasts that irritating confidence that we all simultaneously hate and admire. He is a true "in it to win it" type. If you're not in the race because you're afraid you might run 2nd or 3rd or worse, then you can't win it. I'll agree with overall sentiment that there aren't enough staggering upsets in the SIM. Well, there aren't enough horses trying to beat the favorites.

7. They Accept Slumps
Before you protest that they don't even know what slumps are, remember that it is all relative. If you retired your one stakes winner two years ago and have yet to get another one as good, that's a slump. But so is dropping from 75 stakes wins to 55, or going from $17 million in earnings to $8 million. Laura hasn't won less than 100 stakes since Year 18, but this year she's going to have to claw and slash her way to get that 100th stakes win (she's 9 away at the time of writing, with only the toughest stakes still to come!) After a year that included Sword and Home Run Derby winning Triple Crown races, this is a slump for her. It mirrors real life - if Todd Pletcher goes a year without winning a Triple Crown or Breeders' Cup race, he's slumping. It happens to everyone, and you have to understand that, even if you can't compare your slumps to theirs! You might feel like Eric wins "everything," but it's been 12 years since he won a Derby. He's really like to change that, I'm sure!

8. They Work Their Butts Off
I can't even fathom Eric's spreadsheets or Laura's time spent on examining results, tinkering with equipment, etc. I think there's something to be said for hard work - they got there not by luck or chance, but because they've spent ten years of their lives working like crazy on it. Yes, they are going to win their share of big races. That's okay. You will too, eventually, and if you don't want to make the SIM be your second job, you have to accept that not every horse in your barn will be a stakes winner for some time to come.

9. They Genuinely Enjoy It... and If They Don't, They Fix It
Both of them really love the SIM. If Mirror was real, Eric would have an enormous portrait of her hanging in his house next to ones of the filly Whitney and his real life dog. If Andre was real, I'm pretty sure he would live in Laura's house. They genuinely celebrate their big wins, knowing better than anyone perhaps that it might be a while before they get one again. When the SIM gets to be a chore, Laura leases off more of her mares rather than breed them, or keep 4 year olds in training, or whatever it takes to make it not a chore. Eric is no longer breeding 200 foals a year with the goal of selling them off, because he doesn't feel like it anymore. Good for him.

10. They Have Good Relationships With a Lot of SIMsters
Again, we've all rolled our eyes at a ten-page long Eric post at some point, or groaned when he gloated in the results thread. But we've also all eagerly hoped he would respond to our posts or offer his advice. I know that neither of them is the type to ignore a simple query, and they are free with their stallion/training/how to fix this horse advice. They have been known to give discounts, have contests, and are just two of the general good guys in the game. They don't make enemies (too often, anyway) and they are simply a pair of people you can turn to if you're ever really drowning and haven't figured something out for yourself. That's nice to have - can you imagine walking up to Bob Baffert and saying, Hey, I've got this maiden that I can't get to win, what's the problem? While Bob would look right through you, Laura and Eric will happily wade into forum discussions or respond to private messages as time dictates. There are worse choices for the two "ambassadors" of the SIM.

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