Understanding Timed Workouts - Thoroughbreds

Original article written by Regina Moore posted 9 years 0 weeks ago

Thoroughbreds are one breed where I feel that workout times are useful. There’s six workout distances available (two furlongs to seven furlongs), and they each equate to a specific racing distance category, as follows:

2f and 3f timed works are for sprinters
4f timed works are for milers
5f,6f,7f timed works are for routers

Therefore, for example, if you have a horse bred for sprinting and work it out at 4f or more, then it’s surely going to have a lousy time, and you’ll think you have a lousy horse. You would need to work it at 2f or 3f to get an actual indication of its ability as a sprinter.

Of course, you would work a horse on whatever surface it’s bred for, unless you’re experimenting to see if it might be a rare dual surface horse.


DISTANCE CONSIDERATIONS
Presumably, a sprinter that has a more impressive work at 2f than 3f would be better at the shorter sprints (say, under 6f); whereas, a horse than has a better work at 3f than 2f would indicate a horse that does better in longer sprints (say, 6f to 7f). However, I’ve never tried to examine this closely, to see if the logic fits. For starters, there aren’t that many sprints under 6f, compared to the 6f and 7f races. Likewise, a router that has an outstanding work at 7f, as opposed to merely decent works at 5f and 6f, would presumably be a better racehorse at the marathon distances, than the shorter routes. But I’m not sure that this has been proven in actual practice.

Even if one embraces the above concept, how do you decide what is a “better” workout at one distance than another? That’s a tough question. In the overview article, I gave links to data compiled by player Abe Froman, where he gives percent brackets for Year 37 yearling workouts. So, presumably, if you have a horse that works 5f in the 25% bracket, 6f in the 10% bracket, and 7f in the 5% bracket, you might think, “I’ve got a marathoner”. But here’s the rub. Those stats also show how many workouts were at each distance. While there were more than 28,000 works on dirt at 5f, there were only 2314 at 6f, and 1245 works at 7f. So, with so many fewer workouts at 7f, it’s easier for a horse to fall into a higher bracket. This is where I’d be heavily dependent upon the pedigree to indicate at what specific distance range, within a distance category, I would expect my horse to be best at.

Still, all in all, workouts can give a good guideline as to what distance category a horse falls into. Say, you breed a dirt miler mare to a route stallion that is known to also sire milers. You breed the foal with the intention to be a miler. The foal is a “wings” galloping yearling, and its timed workouts at 4f are slower than you normally expect from a wings. If you try the yearling at 5f, it might have a decent workout time, which would suggest the horse might be a short router that specializes at 1-1/16 miles, rather than a miler.


SURFACE CONSIDERATIONS
Surface is usually straight-forward, but historically, some pedigrees have been dual surface, and All Weather, which is a newer surface in SIM, came out of the dirt and turf bloodlines. In short, this means that sometimes a horse can have ability on dual surfaces (of which one is likely to be All Weather), and there has even been such a rare thing as tri-surface horses.

Since my early years in SIM, I’ve given all my Thoroughbreds a workout over All Weather, just in case they show ability that I didn’t know they had. This turned out to be crucial for the early development my stable. In my Year 26 yearling crop, I had a dirt miler filly that, when given the standard workout over All Weather, turned in one of the top times for the 4f distance. I promptly turned her into an AW filly, and she won a stakes for her debut, and finished up the season with a thrilling win in the Grade 1 All Weather Juvenile Fillies, which later became a Steward’s Cup race. She was therefore my first homebred Grade 1 stakes winner. I never would have thought about trying her on AW, had it not been for that quick workout time. Timed workouts can definitely be useful!


STEEPLECHASERS
I give steeplechasers timed workouts, as well as various other types of training, just like the flat horses in the crop. However, I don’t pay any attention to the time, since it’s usually horrid. Just as with gallops – where steeplechasers often get the lowly “stiff and awkward” comment – I don’t see workouts as having anything to do with steeplechase ability. I train my chasers simply for the experience of the training.

However, if you’ve managed to breed a chaser that also might have some ability on the flat, per one or both parents, then you’ll probably be giving some credence to workout times.

---

Back to New Players articles