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HOW HORSES ARE TRAINED Methods Employed Different But Few Trot ¬ ting Trainers Succeed with the Runners Once in a while when I meet a former trotting horse trainer who has severed his connection witli our sport and associated himself with the runners I like to quizz him as to the different training sys ¬ tem which he has to employ with the thoroughbred from that used in training trotters and pacers From these conversations I have learned that if a runner was worked fifty per cent as much as we work our horses he would be made worthless as a racing tool This is due largely to the fact that he runners possess such highly attuned nervous systems that their speed and gait is natural con ¬ sequently not requiring the same amount of work io develop them nor to key them up to top form I take it that the greatest precaution must be used by the trainers of thoroughbreds to see that they do not overwork their charges and thus kill off their speed and dull their keen edge Just a little too much work puts them out of form and inter ¬ feres with their racing In other words in orde to play safe the thoroughbred trainer has to take a chance of not doing enough with his charges rather than doing too much It is for this reason that horses are often raced rather than worked into form They all say that a race is worth more to a horse than several weeks of workouts this being also true with reference to our own horses horsesMyron Myron E McIIenry told me after he had several years experience with the gallopers something like this thisI I certainly had the conceit taken out of me shortly after I began training runners Like every other trotting horse trainer I assumed that our funning brothers didnt know much about their irade and that with my knowledge acquired in training trotters and pacers I would quickly get to the front In my new occupation I thought too the runners didnt receive proper care and that the same sort we gave our horses would mean much in my favor But I quickly learned that the knowledge I brought into the running game was not applicable to its class of horses it being as a matter of fact more of a handicap than a bene ¬ fit I used to observe the trainers closely when I first joined them and before I had it demon ¬ strated to my satisfaction I thought they were a lazy bunch who didnt have sufficient ambition to give their horses half enough work and exercise Though after their races they permitted the care ¬ takers to cool them out too quickly and did many other things in a slipshod careless way I not only discovered my error in respect to these things but to many others and to be frank I had to start in at the bottom and work along the lines of the men who had made a success with runners discarding the whole harness horse training system It took me a year before I really caught on and I must freely acknowledge still longer to learn my new trade for the reason that I had to rid myself of many longstanding harness racing habits of training trainingRegarding Regarding McIIenry I might add that he never did learn to train runners and despite the fact that he was with them for four or five years made only a limited success of the undertaking I cant recall n single trotting horse trainer of my acquaintance who did as well or better with the runners as he had done with the trotters with the exception of Will Young of Lexington Knapp McCarthy you may perhaps recall went with the runners for a time but failed to make good Rody Patterson who deserted our sport a few years ago I believe did have some success with the runners but the sime could not be said of Jack and Gil Curry McIIenry McCarthy Mart and Itarney Demarest Roland Drake Lee Darnaby and a number of others Frank Van Ness was the most successful trotting horse trainer who ever broke into the running game but he is an excep ¬ tion Crit Davis did better than most but was glad later on to return to the trotters John E Madden is often cited as an example of a trotting trainer who made good with the runners but Mr Madden could scarcely be called other than a ground trainer of harness horses And yet I almost forgot there was Johnny Campbell who scored a big dual success back in the 80s Gus Macey and his son Ramey tried both games but both did best with harness horses horsesHut Hut did you ever sit around and hear our trot ¬ ting trainers sigh and remark I am wasting my lime fooling around with harness horses when I could be making a lot of money training runners Well if you havent heard them cot off this line of stuff I have many many times You would think that all they had to do to make themselves headliners among thoroughbred trainers would be to just change vocations as a man would change into a new suit of clothes clothesMcIIenry McIIenry and others of our transformed horsemen blamed their failures on the jockeys stating that they were a bunch of pinheads devoid of any sort of brains and particularly lacking in anything that savored of horsemanship but so long as other men succeeded with the help of the same sort of riders it would seem clear that McIIenry and the others werent cut out for running horse trainers Marque in Horse Review
