A Study in Horse Tiredness and Recovery - WK 1 Observations

Original article written by Regina Moore posted 10 years 0 weeks ago

Though Week 1 isn’t over yet, we players had the benefit of the pseudo-Week 1, so to speak, when training opened and entries were being taken for the first two weeks of racing.

So, some of my horses have been vetted quite a number of times and given various activities through Wednesday Week 1. In order to understand the references to rest levels in this and future articles, please refer to my second article in this series, “Parameters”, where I assign each group of interchangeable vet comments a level.


YEARLINGS
Of course, all yearlings start out the year fully rested, which I call a Level 4. On Wednesday, Feb 26th, when I began this study, all yearlings were galloped The horses I was following all dropped to a Level 2 (which I call “recovering”) immediately after their gallop. Yearlings that were galloped once on Wednesday had all moved up to a Level 3 (“mostly recovered”) the next day. On Friday, they were fully rested at a Level 4. So, it took them only two days to recover from their gallops.

With two yearlings, I galloped a second time on Wednesday, and they both dropped to Level 1 after the second gallop, which I call “tired”. On Thursday, they were still Level 1. On Friday, then had moved up to Level 2, and were still at Level 2 on Saturday

One of those yearlings that got galloped twice on Wednesday was galloped again on Saturday, though he was only at a Level 2 of recovery, and that second galloped dropped him to Level 1. The next day, he was back to Level 2, but remained at Level 2 the next two days. On Wednesday – a full week after the initial gallops - he had finally become fully rested at Level 4.

Another yearling galloped twice that first Wednesday was lunged on Saturday, while still at Level 2. The lunging had no effect and he was still at Level 2 immediately afterward. He was also still a Level 2 the next day. On Monday he had recovered to a Level 3, and then the next day after, Tuesday, was fully rested at a Level 4. So, of the two above yearlings, the one that was longed on Saturday fully recovered a day ahead of the horse that was galloped on Saturday. Again, both horses were only at Level 2 on Saturday before their exercise.

So, “piling on” further gallops, without giving the horse a chance to recover from a prior gallop, can take a yearling a lot longer time to recover.


A NOTE ON LUNGING
In the example immediately above, the lunging had no effect on tiredness. I lunged other yearlings on Saturday that were fully rested, and they were still fully rested immediately after the lunge. One yearling I chose to experiment with, I had to lunge four times to get it to drop to a Level 3 of “almost recovered”. He was back to a fully rested Level 4 the next day. So, despite Mary Weather’s warning that one should be careful to not lunge a horse too often, it’s an exercise that appears to have minimal effect on a yearling’s tiredness.


WORKOUTS AND THE HORSE OF RACING AGE
On Thursday, Feb 27th, I took two Level 4 fully rested Thoroughbred horses – one a 3yo dirt router, and the other a 5yo turf router – and gave them each a five furlong workout. Both dropped to Level 2 immediately after their timed works, and remained at Level 2 the next two days. The third day after their works, Sunday, they had moved up to Level 3. On Monday, they both were at a fully rested Level 4. This suggests that it can take just four days to recover from a workout, provided the horse is fully rested going into the workout.

What about an older horse? I took a 7yo Paint and worked him 300 yards on Thursday. He followed the exact same recovery pattern as the two Thoroughbreds. In his case, he took a $100 van ride to the track on Sunday, for his Wednesday race. Despite that, he still was at a Level 3 after the Sunday ship, and was fully rested on Monday.

So, the tentative conclusion is that an older horse can recover just as quickly from workouts as a younger horse, and that a short ship doesn’t have any significant impact on a horse’s recovery from tiredness.


A LONG SHIP
I took a fully rested 2yo bred for steeplechasing, and shipped him at a cost of $1400 from Oklahoma (where my farm is) to Australia on Thursday. Once on his way, he vetted a Level 2. He was still a Level 2 on Friday, but moved up to a Level 3 on Saturday, and then was fully rested on Sunday, three days after boarding the plane. So, if he’d had a race on Monday (not that there are any flat races down under on Mondays), he would have been fully recovered from having the long ship on Thursday.

I took a fully rested 2yo turf sprinter and worked him 3 furlongs on Thursday, which dropped him to a Level 2. As with other horses of racing age given workouts, he was fully recovered on Monday, four days later. That same Monday, I sent him on a $1400 trip from Oklahoma to Australia, which dropped him back down to a Level 2. He was a Level 2 the next day, Tuesday, but had fully recovered to a Level 4 on Wednesday. So, this 2yo had a slightly faster recovery from the long ship than the 2yo, above. At this point, the only factor I can see explaining the difference is each individual horse’s recovery rate.


WALKING
I have long suspected that the reason my horses break down so infrequently, even when I do occasional things like race back-to-back weeks, is because I regularly walk them between races. (Generally, I walk a week after a race, and also two days before the next race.) I just haven’t been able to prove to myself that walking actually does anything, though the FAQ on training your horse does say “it’s the best exercise you can do for your horse.”

There is a Level 3 vet comment where Dr. Hacklu suggests that a horse be walked. When I’ve gotten that comment with my study horses, sometimes I walked the horse and sometimes I didn’t. In the case of walking, the horse was still at a Level 3 immediately after the walk. In all cases – whether the horse was walked or not – the horse was at a fully rested Level 4 the next day.

So, walking is a very difficult thing to pin down, in terms of exactly how it helps a horse. I do know it’s possible to injure an already-tired horse from walking it. Many years ago, I injured a horse the first day of training after a break, by walking it, when it had just raced Friday of Week 16 the prior game year. Based on a recent Forum thread, another player has had the same unfortunate experience.


BROAD TENTATIVE CONCLUSIONS
The only single activity that will drop a fully rested horse to a Level 1 of “tired” appears to be a race, which I’ll be discussing in future articles.

Fully rested horses can recover from a gallop in two days, and from a workout in four days.

At least when it comes to gallops, “piling on” multiple gallops, without allowing the horse to fully rest, is detrimental to its overall recovery rate.

A long ship, such as going from Oklahoma to Australia, only takes two to three days to recover from, at least for horses that were fully rested at the time of the ship.

Of course, this is all preliminary and there’s a lot more experimenting to be done, including with various exercise options that haven’t yet been mentioned. With gallops and works, the question remains how a long series of those activities, even for fully rested horses, might affect the quickness of their recovery.


A SIDE NOTE
I wanted to close this installment with a race result this week that I felt was interesting.

In my “Parameters” article, I reference an old Forum post from the Steward, where she talks about rest versus fitness. One of the statements she made was, “… if a horse likes to run every 2 [weeks], then every 4 is a complete disaster for the horse unless you are working it, too.”

A newbie I’m mentoring acquired a 5yo Standardbred trotter gelding off the AJ list late last season. The horse had won a stakes at 2 and 3, but had most recently been racing consistently in claimers. This player shipped it to the new Waffles Park in Belgium for the Grade 1 stakes being run Week 1. In a field of ten, the horse won by a neck.

One of many interesting things about this horse is that he’s made 21 career starts. Only once, in his entire career, has he had three weeks rest between races , and that was way back early in his 3yo season. This horse has been running every two weeks for a long time, and made eight starts last year as a 4yo. And now he’s won a Grade 1 stakes, while earning his lifetime best speed figure of 82.

I recall that, way back when we first got the other breeds, there was something said about Standardbreds being able to race more often than other breeds, which is in line with real life. Still, while I’ve always remembered that, it’s a good thing this newbie didn’t ask my opinion on A) racing this horse in a Grade 1 stakes; and B) racing this horse on yet another two-week turnaround. I would have thought the horse, even being a Standardbred, would have benefitted from a break by now, and would not have been up to that level competition, even arguably “soft” Grade 1 competition.

This situation reaffirms my suspicion that most advice given about how much rest horses need -- including my own advice -- tends to lean toward the unnecessarily conservative.

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