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Wind Ops

Grasshopper said:
Archie, in regard to 2. above, each track should get a weigh-bridge installed (easily absorbed cost), and the horse-weights published when they get to the track, and in the Race Report for future reference.

Appreciate the info will come 'late' to those punters getting-on early, but similar applies to jockey-changes, overweights, going-changes etc. In this day and age, there should be no issue in getting the information to punters, by publishing it online e.g. BHA website.

Don't care if or how it might be applied to Flat races.
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On the last sentence, some people will never see the light...

In terms of wind ops, it seems a sensible thing. Appreciate that there are various procedures (the intricacies of which I have little knowledge) and it would be great to have more detailed information than 'wind op', but it is a step in the right direction. The argument (which I read from a couple of quotes in the RP to be fair) that not all horses improve from wind ops and therefore there may not be much value in highlighting them is utter bollocks as a reason not to include them. If the only thing this proves is that wind ops are not correlated to improved performance in the majority of cases then that is valuable information in and of itself.

Agree with you, Grassy, that weigh-bridges would also be valuable. Would provide myself (and I suspect most semi-serious punters) absolutely no value in terms of the race in question, but could be a valuable tool in terms of looking back at past races. Would be really interesting to see if an angle could be gotten from weight variation run to run (particularly first to second run back etc) by trainer. I suspect it could.
 
"we're now going to see the situation on the Flat with horses having surgery before they run, completely unnecessarily."

This is bonkers if true.
 
Interesting chat on Luck On Sunday with Mark Johnston re wind ops and declaration of same.
Information is all important for all concerned whatever its use.
One jockey wondered (to me last year ) as to the value of performing a wind op on a 150k purchase who had the ability to win a p2p on winter ground on debut having passed through the sales ring for maybe the second time in a few years without any mention of respiratory difficulty.
I imagine some trainers look on larynx shape, soft palate and surrounding tissue anatomy the way some people look at breasts and pursue the perfect anatomy by whatever means available, but that is just me !!
 
edgt said:
Interesting chat on Luck On Sunday with Mark Johnston re wind ops and declaration of same.
Information is all important for all concerned whatever its use.
One jockey wondered (to me last year ) as to the value of performing a wind op on a 150k purchase who had the ability to win a p2p on winter ground on debut having passed through the sales ring for maybe the second time in a few years without any mention of respiratory difficulty.
I imagine some trainers look on larynx shape, soft palate and surrounding tissue anatomy the way some people look at breasts and pursue the perfect anatomy by whatever means available, but that is just me !!
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Unless it performs to a lesser standard than expected or it's a notable issue then I'm not sure there's much point in performing them - that said would be dangerous to compare something a horse can do as a 4yo with how it might perform at 6 or 7 for example.

Martin
 
We're four or so years on from this so wondered if anyone has thoughts or observations based on the additional evidence of the last few years.

We don't know at any point what type of procedure was performed, so the obvious question around 'do different procedures elicit differing benefits or negatives?' becomes invalid (from the 'highlighting a potential improver' perspective, anyway).

But, something I never got to understand is ' do some trainers tend to have procedures implemented just based on the hope that an improvement will be seen?' (ie they don't know what else to do, and it's a dart)

Or (in general) is there nearly always a true identified veterinary reason for a wind op?


Main reason for the question(s) - there's a 6f sprinter that I think might be up to taking take some good races, but likely to be (to some extent, at least) under the radar early on. Just noticed the horse in question has had an op recently, so now the Q's are ' what are the chances that has indeed set us up for improved performances this season?' and ' if it has, is it just a toss up whether that's going to be seen first time out, if at all?'

A 3rd Q might be, what are the chances that may lead to some regression rather than improvement? (hence the point around 'why do trainers do it' and which ones do it for the 'right' reasons)
 
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Some trainers (Paul Nicholls is one) are definitely quicker than others to have wind ops done. In Nicholls' case he has a severe climb on his home gallop and maybe that allows him to detect wind problems sooner than others.

WPM, on the other hand, is slower to resort to wind ops. But his gallops are dead flat and so it might be that it's only when a horse goes to the races that a breathing issue will come to light?
 
Doesn't WPM have a very deep sand gallop? Wouldn't that test a horse's wind just as much as an uphill one?
 
Desert Orchid said:
Doesn't WPM have a very deep sand gallop?
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He does, and his horses win many races through fitness and not only talent.


Desert Orchid said:
Wouldn't that test a horse's wind just as much as an uphill one?
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I'm not sure. Although his horses are very fit and well conditioned, Willie wouldn't ask them for maximum effort at home. I doubt PFN does either, I don't think any good trainer would, but maybe even a half speed going uphill puts more stress on breathing in particular?
 
Grey said:
Some trainers (Paul Nicholls is one) are definitely quicker than others to have wind ops done. In Nicholls' case he has a severe climb on his home gallop and maybe that allows him to detect wind problems sooner than others.

WPM, on the other hand, is slower to resort to wind ops. But his gallops are dead flat and so it might be that it's only when a horse goes to the races that a breathing issue will come to light?
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Actually this pulls out some interesting nuances.

So, it's fairly well-documented that PN runners outperform the average on their first post-op run (or at least I'm pretty sure I read something on that fairly recently).

My first thoughts were, well OK, maybe that's because his training methods help the horses recover from the op quicker, or possibly he's good at knowing really when they are over it and ready to perform. Equally, it could just be he has higher quality in general, so it's obvious that some breathing assistance will show benefits.

But then it struck me.....maybe it's the 'getting in early' factor that contributes too. In other words, the horse doesn't have to go through as many races struggling as some others might. Hence there's some sort of 'mental' factor at play for the horse concerned.

A lot of conjecture, perhaps. And likely not provable.

The more I think about this, though, the more it feels like there are some pointers hiding in plain sight for the general racing population. If only to mark down some future long odds performers that might step up unexpectedly (and in combination with other unexpected improvement factors). May have to get a Geegeez subscription and learn how to play with the data.
 
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chaumi said:
But then it struck me.....maybe it's the 'getting in early' factor that contributes too. In other words, the horse doesn't have to go through as many races struggling as some others might. Hence there's some sort of 'mental' factor at play for the horse concerned.
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I often think about this where horses 'put down the park' for a string of races to get its mark down. I think sometimes it backfires; that the horse, being a pack animal, just gets used to running among the pack rather than trying to finish ahead of it.

It must require a fair bit of horse management to get it to perform at its peak again.
 
Discussed wind-ops with prominent Irish NH trainer a few years ago and his contention was that the wind-op would bring a horse 2-3 Lbs at best and that this bounce wears out fairly quickly too. He thinks, although it may be necessary at times, that many trainers use it as a false flag to demonstrate to owners that they are 'doing something' to improve their underperforming superstars and to convince them it should be kept in training.
 
an capall said:
Discussed wind-ops with prominent Irish NH trainer a few years ago and his contention was that the wind-op would bring a horse 2-3 Lbs at best and that this bounce wears out fairly quickly too. He thinks, although it may be necessary at times, that many trainers use it as a false flag to demonstrate to owners that they are 'doing something' to improve their underperforming superstars and to convince them it should be kept in training.
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How is Willie?
 

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