As our two year olds are starting to run (two winners at first asking and a solid 4^th from three starters to date through the end of August!) it’s a good time to look at the process with workouts and how young horses develop. The truth is (although many handicappers refuse to beleive it!) the recorded time means almost nothing with workouts. First of all it’s fairly subjective; there’s no official timing device, the horses break off, pass a pole, and a clocker clicks a stopwatch. Literally dozens of horses are working at the same time, the clockers miss many and ask the trainer of the horse for whatever time they had. It is not a race and they don’t pay you for workouts. Almost any horse can be made to work fast if you want it to; a bullet work (or one of the best of the day at least) is well within the ability of almost any horse. For example, the best workout of the day for 4 furlongs is usually 46-47 seconds and bottom level $5,000 claiming horses run 4 furlongs in 46 seconds or less all the time in a race. The goal when you send a horse out to breeze is not time, it’s to get the horse fit and with young horses, up to a debut properly. As each horse gets closer to a race, they will be asked for more speed at longer distances. There’s no guarantee which will end up to be the most talented horses, but times say far less than how they move and how they progress from work to work. For example, one of Kenwood's best horses in recent years, stakes winner and graded stakes placed Michael With Us, worked slow and looked awful in his first few works. JW Racer, who won his debut for us impressively on August 26th at Delaware Park, was absolutely horrible in his first couple of works; he literally was 10 lengths behind all the others. It takes most horses more than 1 race to show their best too. Secretariat’s and American Pharoah’s worst races of their entire career were their debuts (4^th and 5^th, the only time either horse was ever off the board in their life). ORB had dull 3^rds and 4ths in his first three races as a two year old, six months later he won the Kentucky Derby. Hope that all offers some perspective, remember, they’re raceHORSES, not raceCARS!