It was declared no race.
All steeplechases in this country, big track or small, are started with a walk up start. Jump racing is a good second career for horses who will not enter/leave the starting gate.
We have a mare here who refused to get in the gate at Penn Natl without a lot of persuasion and she was banned from running there, so we bought her as a broodmare. Not sure what happened since she had 8 previous starts and had even run 4th in a handicap in a 4 way photo at Hawthorne…she must have gotten hurt somewhere along the way and this was her way of protecting herself…but we did have problems loading her into the trailer and she was vary for a long time of walking into a stall (they are 12x12 and fairly bright)…we held off breeding her last season to get her over some of her quirks and she seems much better after spending the summer outdoors.
Chris Cox’s in Mineral Wells, Texas filmed a video on this, it was very good and it worked on the race horse in the video. It was on RFD TV about 2 years ago.
Maybe you could get a copy of it or email him about it?
As a slight spinoff from the topic, I’m using a QH trainer this year to break the baby and of course the gate is paramount to them so she’s getting a lot of early gate work. Essentially every time she steps on and off his track, she has to walk through the gate so that by the time she gets to the real racetrack, she’s been in a gate 400 times and its no big deal.
He told me once that he was watching a race at Los Alamitos and a horse he broke dumped his rider and ran off in the post parade clearly going back to the barn. The problem is that the gate was in his way. Instead barreling around it, he slowed down to trot, squeezed his way through one of the open stalls backwards and then took off again out the other side. He was really proud “That’s my training.”
Down at Ocala West, walking through the gate on the way to the track is also standard practice with many of the horses.
[QUOTE=Hoot&Tick;2826941]
http://www.chris-cox.com/
Chris Cox’s in Mineral Wells, Texas filmed a video on this, it was very good and it worked on the race horse in the video. It was on RFD TV about 2 years ago.
Maybe you could get a copy of it or email him about it?[/QUOTE]
HT, what are you talking about on this site?
[QUOTE=AnotherRound;2827119]
HT, what are you talking about on this site?[/QUOTE]
I was thinking maybe you could use this site to get in contact with CC and get a copy of the video he did on getting race horses in the starting gate.
I saw him working with a horse with this problem on a show he did on RFD TV, and it worked.
Who are you talking to H&T? No one here is having problems getting their horses in a starting gate. It’s just a general discussion about it.
Thanks anyway.
[QUOTE=Calamber;2826396]
Yes, the trotters and pacers are all brought along to a travelling gate mounted on a car and when their noses are all nearly touching the gate it folds back. The only way you could start horses and sulkies without a tremendous amount of confusion and collisions.[/QUOTE]
I have always wondered what would happen if that car broke down?
Thanks, Hoot&Tick! I may try to see if I can get a copy of that tape.
As I’m the one who started the thread; and I apologize to you for the rudeness of some of the other posters who questioned your posts (as if they knew my reason for starting the thread). :rolleyes:
My apologies also. I apparently missed something there. So sorry.
[QUOTE=hitchinmygetalong;2829440]
My apologies also. I apparently missed something there. So sorry.[/QUOTE]
Thank you, I accept! Coth has made me a stronger person, things said on here don’t bother me anymore! When I was new to Coth I could not understand the attacks and rudeness from some, but now I know they are not on the forum for the same reasons I am. Have a great holiday!
Thank you to you also Wellspotted!!!
Thanks, Hoot&Tick, and thanks, Hitch.
I will say this for COTH–people do care and we do reply! I post occasionally on another BB–and sometimes get completely ignored. Or worse, you can see that your post has had ____ number of viewings but 0 replies. I think, what’s the point? Then I post on COTH–and look out! EVERYONE has something to say!
It’s kinda like going to the barn during the holidays. Would I prefer it be just me and the horses, with no other humans around, in which case I can visit, groom, treat, but won’t ride? Or am I grateful when ANY of the other boarders show up, even the “irritants”–at least we’re both horse people with brains and cell phones in case one of us has an emergency.
Hmm … maybe I should go start yet another thread and do a survey on that very question. :lol: :lol: :lol:
Peace on earth … peace on COTH!
I have what may be a really stupid question, but here goes:
How did standardbred races start before the automobile was developed?
I’m guessing it was like the old walk-up start, only it was a (slow?) drive-up start?
[QUOTE=Artful;2830938]
I have what may be a really stupid question, but here goes:
How did standardbred races start before the automobile was developed?
I’m guessing it was like the old walk-up start, only it was a (slow?) drive-up start?[/QUOTE]
Is not stupid but an excellent question which made me ask around and get an answer for you.
From what I’m able to gather they had a horse drawn gate in some places but in most places it was a walk up all in line then they would begin trotting as evenly as possible till a judge dropped a flag at a certain point which started the race.
Was a challenging thing for a driver to be watching the horses on both sides of him as well as the flag.
Supposedly the cars didn’t come into common use till the '40s.
Very interesting. Thanks for bringing it up. Maybe somebody with more knowledge of that style of racing can expound upon this further?
George
I was lucky enough to get one very fancy young gelding who had been ruled off every track up and down the east coast, starting in FL and working his way north. Why? Because he would not load in the gate. When I got him I had a lot of work to do with the horse trailer- he honestly would not load. Once I spent a long time patiently loading him he never posed a loading problem again- I was very tempted once to take him to the track and see if he would load in the starting gate but had put too much retraining effort in to him to risk him getting hurt.
Sometimes we can be lucky enough to be standing around when that really nice fancy horse gets ruled off, and since the horse has to be removed from the track immediately, offering the trainer a cheap dollar always works to get the horse into your own barn!
My experience with two training farms in CA was that young horses being broke to gallop and work were daily asked to walk or even jog through the gate on their way to the track. I guess that is no guarantee of how a horse will behave once it is at the racetrack, however. This is sometimes horse specific and sometimes trainer related. I watched a race last spring in which two horses from the same (small) trainer were both scratched at the gate… that’s pretty sad. Might be interesting to study slow/bad gate breaks broken down by trainer sometime…
Is not surprising it being a small trainer problem.
Not because their any better or worse but that their less likely to be able to get stalls at a track so need to ship in from the farm.
Being stabled at the track has its advantages with gate training because at the track there is always all kinds of help. At the farm this may not always be so even if they have a gate at the farm.
George
I seem to remember one of the Triple Crown races in a recent year–one horse held up the start for several minutes (at least it seemed a long time) because he/she wouldn’t load.
Does anybody else remember this?
I was glad to read the Q&A about the harness racing starts. The only thing I’ve read about the early days was “One Man’s Horse” in Born to Trot and I thought that in those early speed trials the horses trotted the course one at a time and were clocked–but that’s all I know about it! Did harness racing go formal as early on as Thoroughbred racing did?
They still don’t use a vehicle for many trotting races in Europe, both harness and mounted. A lot of their races do tend to be longer though, so like in jump racing a perfectly even start isn’t as much of an issue.
For the shorter mile races they use a auto starting gate, like in the Elitloppet in Sweden.
