Regarding workout times - dirt router yearlings

[Ash Tarasin]

*Pardon my cross-sectional question and reasoning as I will include both Thoroughbreds, Appaloosas, breeding and training.

This year in particular I'm finding a lot of my allowance and up TB DR to be a thought slower in general than they've been previously (bar a few exceptions). I'm wondering whether this is due to their pedigrees being embroidered by me to a larger extent than before. I love horses with a lot of heart - and stamina to run to the moon and back. I've bred my foals accordingly.

After having worked with dirt routers in both Thoroughbreds and Appaloosas for 2-3 generations I've come to wonder whether I may draw parallells between my Appy yearling DR workouts and my TB yearling DR workouts. Through my Appaloosa routers I've learnt that any horse with e.g. Cant Be Caught as a sire or a damsire will boost the workout speed immensely regardless of gallop comment. Workout-times in the end telling very little of the actual talent/quality/heart/brilliance of the horse.

Actual questions:
A) Can I draw conclusions from my Appaloosa dirt routers - slow workout time ≠ slow horse? (Or maybe rather slow workout time ≈ slow horse?)
How much do you generally "trust" your TB DR workouts to reflect future quality on the racetrack?
B) Is it safe to assume that workouts is a speed-measure - and that you may worry less about them the longer your yearlings are supposedly bred to run? Or should I on the contrary be very worried? (I'm not aiming these horses for shorter routes, mind).
C) How do you look upon workouts for your sprinters? Do you use workouts as a measure of quality? Have you had a slow working sprinter ending up a star on the track? On condition that it didn't "level up" gallop comment to do that, obviously.

Your thoughts would be appreciated. Thank you.
(My way of working my yearlings has been more or less static since I had my first crop. All comparison are made to my own horses being trained the same way. Thus the biggest changing factor has been the horses themselves.)

[Andrew James]

FWIW I am also finding my workout times are a little slower than normal, across all gallop comments.

As far as some of the other thoughts you posted, here are mine, they are very non-scientific and just what I have "observed."

A) I trust the workouts to give me some baseline of where within the gallop group a horse lies. For example a TB DR allowance posting a 57.80 5f, might be closer to the productive side than stakes side. But other than initial race placement (maidens for better, claimers for worse) it really doesn't affect my decision making with the horse at all. I assess their quality based on their speed figures.

this also ties into B heavily.

B) I think this is very accurate to a certain extent. I've observed that horses bred to run shorter routes or maybe even mile will have faster workout times on the whole than those bred to run longer. Yet they might be equally capable of posting a Speed Figure of 85. Meaning although shorter routers will work faster they wont be able to actually run a faster figure than a longer router (assuming they are both placed correctly.)

Hope that helps.

[Rochelle Bos]

Ive learned you can’t always trust workout times. This is my allowance TS colt, he had the 9th highest workout as a yearling (Y50 TB Male 1yo Turf 2 Furlongs Top Horses TS). I 100% thought he would improve, he didn’t, he’s an okay runner. As a 2yo he seemed to only run well every second race, so I used that and got him a stakes win; but this year he has slowed down a lot.

I also had 6 or so Stakes spring mixers in the top 10-15 works last year for their respective breeds/ distances and only 1 has won a stakes so far.

[Mr. Lord Rich]

Ive learned you can’t always trust workout times. This is my allowance TS colt, he had the 9th highest workout as a yearling (Y50 TB Male 1yo Turf 2 Furlongs Top Horses TS). I 100% thought he would improve, he didn’t, he’s an okay runner. As a 2yo he seemed to only run well every second race, so I used that and got him a stakes win; but this year he has slowed down a lot.

I also had 6 or so Stakes spring mixers in the top 10-15 works last year for their respective breeds/ distances and only 1 has won a stakes so far.

You also have to factor in what other players are doing.
I for one mostly always work my ts at 3f. So all my fast horses will never really show up in the 2f works causing those Allowance horses to look like “he might be pretty good”.

Other trainers might have a preference as well.

Just something else to think about.

[Xander Zone]

I am the same as Pete in this I only work my sprinters 3f

[Rochelle Bos]

Well that’s good to know! I’ve always been told people usually run sprinters at 2f, milers at 4f, and routers at 5f! I’ll have to adjust

[Cleo Patra]

I’d also noticed my workouts are slower, even when horses are fully fit. I’d just thought it was me sucking at breeding and training again lol

[Ash Tarasin]

I've observed that horses bred to run shorter routes or maybe even mile will have faster workout times on the whole than those bred to run longer. Yet they might be equally capable of posting a Speed Figure of 85. Meaning although shorter routers will work faster they wont be able to actually run a faster figure than a longer router (assuming they are both placed correctly.)

You seem to support the idea that we can't compare workout-times between dirt routers bred for marathon and short routes - a short router would have to be a lot quicker to be of comparable quality. But it may still leave the question of "how slow can a stakes-galloping DR be and still call itself a stakes-galopper" unanswered. Can a slow horse still be a stakes-galloping horse? What defines a "stakes"-horse, a "solid" or a "freak"? Am I to trust the gallop comment or the workout time when my stakes-galloping horse may easily be mistaken for a Fairly-Talented-Productive (™)? May this "stakes" be stakes solely over a distance only known to end in "another galaxy"?

Cleo indirectly expressed the view I've been worried about - the notion that one need to pay attention to speed when building pedigrees.

[Michael Looker]

Through my Appaloosa routers I've learnt that any horse with e.g. Cant Be Caught as a sire or a damsire will boost the workout speed immensely regardless of gallop comment.

Some stallions throw stakes gallopers that work fast ("Morning Glory" types). Some throw stakes gallopers that work slow. You can compare workout times between two horses by the same sire and have a pretty good idea which is better, but you can't compare workout times of horses by two different stallions and know which is better.

This variation between sirelines has been more obvious to me in mixers vs TBreds.

Cant Be Caught is also a multi-distance stallion. Even if he's not a stallion who throws morning glories, I'd expect him to add zip to 870-yarders.

[Mr. Lord Rich]

I've observed that horses bred to run shorter routes or maybe even mile will have faster workout times on the whole than those bred to run longer. Yet they might be equally capable of posting a Speed Figure of 85. Meaning although shorter routers will work faster they wont be able to actually run a faster figure than a longer router (assuming they are both placed correctly.)

You seem to support the idea that we can't compare workout-times between dirt routers bred for marathon and short routes - a short router would have to be a lot quicker to be of comparable quality. But it may still leave the question of "how slow can a stakes-galloping DR be and still call itself a stakes-galopper" unanswered. Can a slow horse still be a stakes-galloping horse? What defines a "stakes"-horse, a "solid" or a "freak"? Am I to trust the gallop comment or the workout time when my stakes-galloping horse may easily be mistaken for a Fairly-Talented-Productive (™)? May this "stakes" be stakes solely over a distance only known to end in "another galaxy"?

Cleo indirectly expressed the view I've been worried about - the notion that one need to pay attention to speed when building pedigrees.

It really depends on what you want.
A stakes horse is a stakes horses, doesn’t matter what distance it prefers.
The stakes criteria is based on a behind the scenes number system. If your horse meets the minimum number for a stakes it is labeled a stakes. If your horse is 1 below a freak, It’s still a stakes.
Now you might have a lowest of low stakes race against the highest of high stakes, but they are both stakes regardless.

One horse might be bred to all the short route families and excel at 1 1/16, while an equal stakes horse is bred to all the long route families cause it to be an equally rated stakes horse that loves 2 miles.

The problem is, not enough 2 mile races exist so your horse would appear to be a very slow and very bad stakes horse even though it might be the same exact skill level as the short router.

But if the popular races around town were 2 miles or more, you might have the top stakes around and all those short route fast guys will have trouble finishing the job.

Nothing worse then a horse that can’t finish the job

[Ash Tarasin]

Let me rephrase two of my initial questions - do you ever have a previously slow working* (say stakes for clarity) yearling being competitive in 2yo-stakes races without them "levelling up" their ability? Are they per default meant to run 2 miles races much later in life?
For you who breed both sprinters and routers - do you see a difference in how you measure potential quality through workouts depending on whether your yearling is a sprinter or router - does (really) slow working stakes galloping sprinter yearlings exist?

*by slow I mean "speedy-tortoise-slow" or getting-out-of-bed-on-a-monday-morning-slow, not slow as in "almost allowance"

[Tim Matthews]

do you ever have a previously slow working* (say stakes for clarity) yearling being competitive in 2yo-stakes races without them "levelling up" their ability?

Lily of the Valley had very slow workouts for a stakes galloper, but won the SC at 2. She always galloped stakes, but I can't say with certainty whether or not she moved up to a higher-level stakes. Hope that somewhat addresses this question.

Not sure if distance had anything to do with it. Turf routers are much more versatile than dirt routers.


edit: Also, fwiw I've seen my allowance and stakes workout times drop this year as well. I would imagine the times were adjusted down because they were accelerating too fast (apparently sub-57 on dirt and sub-58 on turf are normal now)

[Andrew James]

edit: Also, fwiw I've seen my allowance and stakes workout times drop this year as well. I would imagine the times were adjusted down because they were accelerating too fast (apparently sub-57 on dirt and sub-58 on turf are normal now)

This seems to be verified by the "Workout Times" standings as well.

Any chance we could get confirmation (from the admin or Steward) of if anything happened on the back end that would slow down workout times?

[The Steward]

Nothing happened on the back end that would slow down workout times.

[Andrew James]

oufff, so Im just imagining it and jumping at shadows

Hate when I do that.

This is why eye witness testimony is so faulty.