Lava Man - Prep at Keeneland

[Antitrust32]

Originally Posted by King Glorious

I think it's a bad move. What is training at Keeneland going to do to help him for Churchill? They are two entirely different tracks. Might as well have stayed home and kept him at Hollywood. At least he already knows he likes that Hollywood junk. This is worthless in my opinion. I hate all this talk about letting horses get acclimated to a surface. Either they will like it or they won't. If u don't like broccoli, is your mother making u eat more of it going to make u like it? No. If a horse doesn't like a certain track (say it's too hard and stings his feet or something), he's going to run worse on it the more he trains on it because he will have had time to develop a memory of how it hurts. And this is even worse because he's not training on the track he's running on. Now watch the weather cause O'Neill to lose some days of training. Just watch. While it's beautiful here in Southern Cal.

It is a great move actually. Horses seem to thrive when training on the poly and then running over the dirt. Example: Lava Man has already been doing this. Also, now he wont have to travel the week of the race and will get used to the climate and surroundings. I don't understand how you could think this is a negative.

[King Glorious]

Originally Posted by Antitrust32

It is a great move actually. Horses seem to thrive when training on the poly and then running over the dirt. Example: Lava Man has already been doing this. Also, now he wont have to travel the week of the race and will get used to the climate and surroundings. I don't understand how you could think this is a negative.

I say this because I don't think it was the traveling during the week of the race that was getting him beat last year. As has been noted many times, he was coming off of an extremely tough race last year when he went to NY so I don't know that the traveling was to be blamed.

U say that Lava Man has been thriving with the training on the Poly then running on dirt but I say that last year when he was training on the dirt, he was running better than he is this year. Last year, Lava Man went 116-120-112 for the California/Gold Cup/Pacific Classic triple. He went 109 this year in the Gold Cup and Pacific Classic. Where is the evidence that he's thriving more this year while training on Poly (which he's only been doing for a short time anyway) than he was last year on dirt.

My concern is that even though they say that no matter the weather conditions, the track remains fast, I have some concerns that he's going to miss some training time out there because of the weather. I'm just not sold on the whole acclimating angle. One of the most successful trainers in the history of the game, Wayne Lukas, was known as "D. Wayne Off the Plane"...in part because he was well known for shipping a horse in late and taking the money. European trainers struggled for years trying to find the right time to ship in for the BC. Some said it was better to ship in early and acclimate. Some said it was better to ship in right on top of the race. There still is no set answer. Personally, I'd rather keep a horse at home in his normal environment for as long as I can before shipping out. Will this work for Lava Man? None of us know one way or the other. Neither does he trainer.