Nahoodh

Originally posted by Headstrong@Jun 11 2008, 11:27 AM
But some of them grow a lot more quickly than others at 2 - and those which take time to 'grow into their frame' can be broken down by being hard trained when they don't have the bone to carry it, surely? Whilst 'early types can stand it but often don't go on from there... A good trainer imo knows which is which - I'd say it's an essential part of his job
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Absolutely. Some horses simply cannot handle being trained at two, let alone running at two. If you push on with them you will only wreck them and to do so is stupidity in the extreme.

With respect Chris, I'm not so sure that you can say Channon isn't hard on his horses anymore. I am aware of his training methods and I know several people high up in the pecking order in his yard who have told me all sorts. I also worked for a trainer who exclusively learnt his trade with Channon and to a large extent used his methods, so I'm really quite familiar with them! To go with what they say, Channon himself has never made any attempt to cover up his ideas that you should be hard on them at home. He's been quite happy to admit in the past that his ideas run along the lines that if they break down at home they only would have broken down on the racecourse so you may as well be hard on them at home. So I don't really think that you need to defend a man who seems quite open about his hard training methods.
 
I said isn't as hard, ten years ago nothing got a chance, now the backward ones do. When I started for him yonks ago everything had at least ten runs at two, now quite alot are waited as once raced or unraced 3yos.
 
Chris, not running the backward two year olds doesn't automatically make him less hard on the horses! For starters a lot of truly backward two year olds (like the Josr Algarhouds he filled up on a few seasons back!) can struggle to even raise a gallop and stay sound, let alone make it to the track in one piece.
 
The yard is full of Imperial Dancer's now, let alone Josr's.

I would say having watched a few of his horses gallop this year he has eased off severely.

I wouldn't be the only one to say that either, the other thing is alot of staff who are with him now wasn't with him 10 years ago or 5 years ago for that matter so never knew what it was like in those days, I'm not saying he isn't harder than the majority of trainers out there but he aint like he was ten years ago.

Plus with Josr we only had about 8 of them that year and a couple were actually pretty decent.
 
Fair comments Chris, and I'm sure we wouldn't benefit from another protracted argument about exactly how hard Mr Channon is on his horses as we know the opinions by now and it tends to end in tears.
 
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