(Photo Credit: Heather Frisbie)

ASK EDDY had his first timed workout this morning at Canterbury Park.  He went out about 8:45 in the morning and went 4 furlongs (one half mile).  There were a few things we were looking at getting from this workout:

How much fitness did Eddy lose while recuperating?

How would his injury hold up under stress?

Is abscess healed or will it hamper his running?

Questions 1 & 3 were answered.  Eddy completed the 4 furlongs in :48 and looked pretty good doing it.  His exercise rider this morning did report that he was tiring during his gallop out after the wire which indicates that he may not be in race shape just yet.  It was also pretty clear that the abscess didn’t hamper him at all.

It will take a day or two after the workout to determine how he’s feeling.  Although we were looking at next weekend for Eddy’s first race, it looks like he may need another week to tighten up his fitness level.

READING A WORKOUT

There was a question on the last blog on how to read a workout line.  Here is how Eddy’s line reads from today:

ASK EDDY   CBY   4F   :48   FAST   DIRT  B   5/38

The workout reads:

Horse’s name; track where the work occurred; distance; time; track condition; surface; type of work; rank against other works at that distance/surface.

Most of the work line is self explanatory but I’ll touch on two here that perhaps aren’t or are misunderstood.

Type of work: works can be done “Breezing” or “Handily”.  Breezing is that, in the opinion of the clockers, the horse did the workout on it’s own without urging from the rider while Handily would indicate that the horse was encouraged by it’s rider.  In theory, that would mean if two horses both worked 4 furlongs in :48 but one was breezing and one was handily, you could infer that the breezing work would be “better”.

The rank, as stated above, is the rank of the work relative to all the other horses that worked 4 furlongs.  A horse that is the fastest at the distance gets a black dot, or a “bullet” next to the work in the Racing Form under his past performances, hence the term “bullet work” or the horse “fired a bullet” in preparing for the his next race.

Does a bullet work make that horse the best of the day?  Not necessarily.  The only time who comes in first matters is on race day and just because the horse has the fastest work doesn’t mean that it accomplished all the trainer wanted it to accomplish.  A trainer once told me “It’s not how fast that matters, but HOW the horse did the work.”  In other words, if the horse did his work well within himself and comes back just fine then he may have accomplished more than the horse that was flat out to get the best work time and comes back exhausted.