We've stated many times before in previous blogs - columns; what matters most is NOT the workout time, it’s HOW the horse does it. An article on page 4 of the April 15, 2019 Thoroughbred Daily News, titled  “Easy Does It For Maximum Security”, notes the unusual training style of trainer Jason Servis, one of the most successful trainers in the country with one of the highest winning percentages in recent memory (Servis trained Maximum Security is the undefeated winner of the Florida Derby and one of the likely favorites for the Kentucky Derby on May 4^th).  The article states  “Perhaps it’s worth noticing that Jason Servis’s training style is unlike that of any other trainer in the country. He trains his horses so slowly you can barely call their works, works. It happened again Saturday when GI Florida Derby winner Maximum Security (New Year’s Day) worked a half-mile at Palm Meadows in :54.85. In his first workout since the Florida Derby, it was the slowest work at the distance among the 50 horses who went four furlongs. In his prior workout, also at Palm Meadows, he went four furlongs in :52.95, also the slowest work at the distance among 63 horses. Professional clocker Bruno De Julio said there’s a method to what others might consider Servis’s madness. He notes that Servis’s horses don’t work from a traditional starting spot to the wire. He’ll start off, for example, at the half-mile pole, and the horse will start galloping and he’ll go in an :18, :19, :20 clip, De Julio said. Then all of a sudden, when he gets to the seven-eighths pole or the mile-pole, he’ll finish off the last half-mile in :52 or the last three furlongs in :38. At Palm Meadows, he doesn’t train them through the stretch. He lets them pull up at the three-sixteenths pole. I think he believes that the stretch run there is affected by wind. The wind comes in at the eighth-pole and dries out the track from the eighth-pole on. It’s looser. With him, he lets them do their main running going around the turn, so he doesn’t have to set them down on a part of the track that is looser and tiring. De Julio believes the unusual pattern is among the reasons Servis is successful. When people would talk to Bobby Frankel, he’d often tell them horses are over trained, De Julio said. Jason’s style gets horses ready and they’re not over trained. I think it has something to do with the mental part of it. It teaches a horse to shut down. He doesn’t beat up his horses in the morning like some other trainers do.”

This is NOT to say that ‘slow’ works are better than “fast” works, or that the way Servis works horses is the only, or even a primary reason for his exceptional success. Really the point is not Jason Servis, it’s about what workout times do and do not mean, at the sales or on the racetrack. Almost any horse can be pushed to work ‘fast’, that’s not the goal of most works. They pay money for fast race times, not fast work times! That’s why if you want to know how your horse is training, the key is to see the work (preferably in person or at least on video) and listen to what the rider on their back felt and what the trainer observed as the horse cooled out, rather than focus on work times. If your horse works slow and the rider comes back and says “I had a ton of horse, could have gone a lot faster” that’s a LOT better than if the horse has a ‘bullet’ work and the rider comes back and says “he got real tired, nothing left at the end”.

The same applies at the sales. People pay a premium for fast work times (and black type pedigrees). Both are overrated and their actual value is not well understood. A two year old working 1/8^th of a mile in 9.4 at the sale says little it’s ability to run 3/4 fast in a race, yet people will almost always pay several times as much for the same horse if it works 1/8^th of a mile in 9.4 seconds vs. 10.2 seconds. The recorded time says nothing about how fast or easily the horse gallops out afterwards. Some ‘shut down’ after the work, others are just getting started and gallop out with speed to spare. That's one reason so many horses that sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars at the sales never run and/or or never win.  

OBS Under Tack Show

For those who are interested in more information, an article in the May 18th 2018 issue of the Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred, "Slow Down?: Fast times matter at breeze show, but there’s always plenty more to it" offers an excellent explanation of what matters at the sales.

Works matter, work times matter a lot less. The fact that Jason Servis has achieved exceptional and enduring success at the highest levels with a series of ‘slow’ works for almost all his horses is just one more example of how little the recorded time of  a published workout really means.