THE MULTI-PIECE PUZZLE OF TRYING PLACE HORSES TO THEIR BEST ADVANTAGE IS A VERY TRICKY CHALLENGE

By Tony Gollan | Friday, May 15, 2015

Group 1 winning trainer Tony Gollan is the leading trainer in Brisbane. Having won the Brisbane Trainers’ Premiership last season, Gollan has not only cemented his position at the top of the ladder for the second racing year in succession, but he is currently closing fast on the record for most number of Metropolitan wins in Brisbane in a season ... a record which has stood for twenty-seven years. Tony’s weekly blog appears exclusively on HRO.

The carnival continues to unfold with several visitors current form-lines being exposed given us a sounding board of where we stand as a stable moving forward.

The truth is I evaluate races week in and week out, whatever time of the year it is. With the carnival the difference is we have an influx of horses that we don’t normally see bringing different form-lines ... and it certainly appears after the first meeting at Doomben that the Sydney form is really strong.

You have got to remember though they have a bit of a lead-up on us. A lot of the visitors are probably getting into action here with a couple of more runs under their belts ... so I’m hoping, strategically from my point of view, that as the carnival goes on we can bridge that gap and get a little bit closer.

Some of our horses are first and second-up while some of the visiting horses have been racing and freshened for our carnival so they’ve got a bit more fitness residual under their belt, whereas ours are probably still warming towards what we call the peak end of the carnival ... getting closer to the Stradbroke.

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But while you can allow for that differential, that doesn’t mean you stop evaluating your own position.

You have to do that every day.

You certainly look at each race of each of your horses ... at what might be the next lead-up race and things like that ... and you try to honestly evaluate your horse.

There are certain horses you put into the carnival that you believe can hopefully make the step up to that grade. There are times you find out that step is just a little bit too big though, so you have other options through your carnivals.

It is no different when I go to Melbourne, Sydney or our Brisbane carnival. You often change direction with horses depending on what else is around.

What I never do is change any of my horse’s plans or avoid a race because I am worried about one particular other horse ... never!

But if you reach a stage when you genuinely think that your horse is just one rung below a particular level of race that you were aiming for then you are justified in changing direction or putting your horse out for a break and bringing it back out of carnival race time.

But certainly you do constantly evaluate things. You’ve got to be forever paying attention to what is going on around you.

You have to look at the level of each particular grade and be realistic as to where your horse fits in amongst those levels.

That’s the key to having horses race successfully over a period of time.

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Of course every horse has its own character and its own individual characteristics as well.

As a trainer you have to work with that, as well as work with different age groups ... from two-year-olds through to older horses ... which brings its own set of demands.

Two-year-olds are essentially probably easier to get fit than the older horses.

If an older horse, like Temple Of Boom, is coming back after a long layoff we have to do a lot more work with him to get him to his peak and he’ll take a couple of runs to get to his top.

A two-year-old can get to its top a lot, lot quicker ... and sometimes you try to hold them together so you can continue their fitness regime with them.

For me personally the two-year-old will normally do a little bit shorter, sharper sort of work although, having said that things change again as the season progresses.

We are getting to the back end of the season now so they are nearly three-year-olds and the ones that are racing are a lot more mature now.

It’s about keeping the two-year-old happy ... not that you don’t have to keep the older horses happy as well. You do.

All horses are a pushing and pulling game ... the two-year-old particularly. You don’t want to go over the top with your two-year-olds but you certainly have got to have them fit enough on the day.

So you go from not wanting to overwork your two-year-olds to not wanting to do too little work with your older horses, who generally need more work to reach their true competitive fitness level.

It is a tricky challenge.

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So the bottom line is that monitoring your opposition while paying every possible attention to your own horse’s ability level, current fitness and general needs is a twenty-four/seven operation.

You try to put it all the information together and come out with a winning formula ... but, of course, something else makes that much more difficult to achieve.

That is the fact that every trainer is trying to do the same thing.

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