The goal of interval training is to promote improved performance, while reducing the number of breakdownsSome believe it is dangerous to suggest to Thoroughbred trainers that there might be a better method of conditioning than that process they hold dear. You do not get Eclipse Awards that way, and you may not reach your funding goals for research if you irritate the wrong influences within the industry. Since I have no ambitions in either direction, let's lay out a better training game plan-just for the sake of philosophical argument.
Why? You may remember a series of armchair battles chronicled on these pages a couple of years ago between myself and a gaggle of veterinarians, trainers, and farm managers. One veterinarian was adamant that "elitist" horses did not need much training at all and that ordinary horses were not worth the extra time and expense. Utter nonsense.
The good horse-the animal with some natural ability-is the one who needs the most we can provide in conditioning. If we take a precocious Thoroughbred and throw short bursts of speed at him, his muscles will become racing fit very quickly-but heart, lungs, and legs are left behind. Because training "takes" better on such an individual, these sprint-specific exercises will tend to turn out a sprinter. Later, when it's time for the three-year-old to prove he can handle the classic distances, if he
has survived the bone-crushing sprints of his two-year-old year, then he can be predicted to come up short at the routes-fatiguing and breaking down with above-average frequency.
The cheap never-wuzzer, hitting six furlongs in 1:13 and change and a mile in 1:41, needs all the help he can get. Horses like this probably make up one-third to one-half of the horses that survive race training. If the trainer does nothing to enhance their fitness and subsequent performance, their racing careers are doomed-as are their owners' bank account. Each time one of these animals fails to produce, the owner loses money. Discouraging. But horse racing needs these horses and their owners. If only they could become viable, consistently performing athletes.
When I first got into racing, I went to Frank Zubovich, the track coach at Ohio State University who had a PhD in exercise physiology, and his team physiologist, Edwin Fox. They estimated that a Standardbred taken through a more scientific conditioning protocol could be improved between 5% and 15% in racing times. A 1:41 miler is delivering a mile in 101 seconds. Five percent of 101 seconds is about five seconds. Five percent of a 1:13 six-furlong performance is about 31Ú2 seconds. Add those numbers to this fact: Every Standardbred that we put through a redesigned, more scientific training protocol was improving 3-to-4 seconds on a mile in 6-to-8 weeks, while maintaining a once-a-week racing schedule.
Experimenters on the Thoroughbred side have produced a Japan Cup winner (Stanerra [Ire]), a 1:33 miler (Jondolar), stakes winners (Saratoga Passage, Image of Greatness, The Very One, and others), and a lot of winners since 1982. The goals were always the same: safety and better performance. Preserve and enhance.

The magic four
We called it the "magic four," and the late Barry Wexler proved it further with some of George Steinbrenner's youngsters: A horse that can gallop four continuous miles daily gains a huge advantage in work capacity over horses which stop building base at two miles. Moving on to six galloping miles daily produces a further increase in work capacity, but the gains seen at four miles are the most striking.
It takes time to build to four continuous miles safely, but that investment in structural fitness pays off when it is time to put on the pressure with a decent volume of race-specific exercise. You move into the tougher exercise with thicker cartilage pads, tougher tendons and ligaments, and a good start on bone density, muscle development, and cardiovascular fitness.
Jondolar was trained off a six-mile base, Stanerra off a 15-mile base (yes, 15 miles every day), and many Thoroughbreds have experienced preparations between four and 12 miles a day. It can be done. And it has been done, albeit with some difficulty, on American racetracks.

Cardiovascular development
Sustained high heart rates are the key to building a superior cardiovascular system. Horses coming off a four-mile base can accommodate two miles of more intense work twice a week. A six-mile base allows three miles of sustained hard work twice a week. A sustained two-mile gallop is more difficult to perform than two one-mile heats with short (ten-minute) rest periods between. In either case, the hard day miles should begin at modest speeds and end more strongly.
The danger in performing this kind of work is always the same: going too fast, too soon. You want to peel the speed away layer by layer, as if peeling an onion. Today's 2:40, 2:30 miles might be followed in three or four days with a pair in 2:35, 2:25, and that work might be followed, a few days later, with a repeat of the 2:35, 2:25 gallops. Saratoga Passage took these double-headers all the way down into the 1:40s.
Any time you perform more than one heat of exercise, interspersing a short, partial recovery rest period in between, that is called interval training. The goal of this is to allow you to do more of the right kind of work without slamming headlong into the brick wall of fatigue. Short rest periods tie the workout together for a "stamina" effect. The right kind of work, say a mile in 2:00 followed by a mile in 1:50, is much easier to safely accomplish if there is a short rest period between them. Colin Hayes's three three-quarter-mile uphill works were always separated by a period of walking back down the hill. And that kind of work made him the king of Australian racing for a long time.

Race specific workouts
The biggest error committed with American Thoroughbreds today occurs when the horse crosses the 2:00 barrier. Suddenly, workouts are cut to short bursts at screaming speeds. The horses love these works, the muscles love them, but the wheels tend to fall off while the sprint-specific exercise produces "short" horses. It is not the breeders' fault that we have so much speed these days and not enough stay. We are neglecting that gap between sustained 2:00 and 1:36 mile rates, where the real classic runners are built.
For a horse with any natural ability at all, speed is not the problem. When you breeze a single quarter, three-eighths, or even a half, you are training for speed and speed only. Worse, it is very difficult to go back and get stamina after you have already revved up the engine to produce those :33s, :34s, and :35s. Attempting to race the horse longer after a speed-specific preparation is akin to programmed suicide-the horse must hit the fatigue barrier hard somewhere along the line. Meanwhile, the concussive, torquing forces experienced in short screaming workouts and baby races take a heavy toll on ill-prepared lower leg structures.
The smart approach is to continue with the long and slow to short and fast process that has been progressively loaded through the foundation and cardiovascular stages, going for stamina first, then, finally, absolute speed. In fact, it is probably smarter to avoid all those knee-cracking sprint races carded for early two-year-olds and wait for the longer races that are carded for youngsters at the end of the year.
Again, the volume of race-specific exercise is what will produce superior fitness. You can accomplish volume if you split the workout into parts. A horse that can perform a 2:00 mile, rest a little, and then come back for a 1:50 mile can later deliver a pair of three-quarter works, say in 1:26 and 1:20, with only about seven minutes in between. In fact, Thoroughbred workouts have been safely performed with four three-quarter-mile heats with seven minutes in between each, from 1:25 to 1:15. That 1:26/1:20 horse can be gradually moved through a series of works as follows: 1:24/1:18, 1:22/1:16, and 1:20/1:15. Then tapered to double header five-eighths: 1:08/1:03, 1:06/1:01, 1:05/1:00. Then singles: :59, :58, :57. At that point, you have a race-ready Thoroughbred with plenty of stamina, ready for a nice mile.
It takes a little more time. It requires a rider with a "clock." The extra volume of work means that all the peripherals have to be right-shoeing, nutrition, training surface. You would do well to monitor heart rates, body weight, and feed intake, and to measure joint and tendon heat via thermography. Perhaps most of the work can be performed and precisely controlled on a high speed treadmill. We are trying that now, and I will let you know how it turns out.
Something to think about, isn't it?