kimberley mine wrote:TJ wrote:
Eblouissante 45 works prior to her first start came over a 17 month period of her training. She was training around what Shirreffs' reported were weight loss issues, setbacks and growing spurts.
I'm with Sysonby here....520 days of training at $70/day means her owner spent somewhere in the ballpark of $38,500 in training bills before the filly raced even once. You can give a horse time to grow and develop and get over foot issues and get weight on in a paddock for far less than half of that.it is a family Shirreffs knows and has done well with while developing those he had into graded stakes winners. He is the only trainer, so far...who was able to do that with the foals of Vertigineux. TJ
Not so. Balance was trained by David Hofmans and he did a pretty good job getting multiple graded stakes wins out of her.
Hi Kimberley,
Sorry, my bad with Balance, I thought she was trained by Shirreffs. I should have realized after looking at her form that it wasn't Shirreffs style of training. Balance came to hand much faster and started 4 times as a 2YO running once each month. She starting her 3YO season about 6 weeks later and continued racing once each month till her main objective, the Kentucky Oaks where she broke down and was forced to take more than 7 months off due to an ankle injury. Hofmans did a great job bringing her back to top class racing as a 4YO.
I would be surprised if the training rate at Shirreffs barn is only $70 bucks a day. I would be just as surprised if it was simply growing spurts and backing off her feed that took all that time....but the bottom line is Z and E both got to the races, both were big horses that needed a lot more time then the average horse in order to get to the races safely....Zenyatta was 17.2 hands and E is near the same.....so size does matter. When you think about it....the job Shirreffs has done with these two giants is quit amazing. TJ