Compare to an outfit like Winstar–“What started as a 400-acre property – the former Prestonwood Farm – has grown to over 2,500 acres and is home to nearly 700 horses”
or
Claiborne–3000 acres and over 500 horses
and other huge Kentucky farms, Magdalena Farm is pretty cozy. Sorry, @endlessclimb
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That’s fair. But it’s certainly not Joe Blow training in the pasture:)
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You’re comparing apples to oranges. Both Winstar and Claiborne are farms whose major business is standing stallions, and boarding broodmares. Magdalena is a training center with a handful of mares on the property. Claiborne has no track or training center. Winstar’s is probably about the size of Magdalena.
If all you want to do is list large properties in Kentucky, you should also include Lane’s End, Coolmore, Stonestreet, and Darley. They are also farms with many 1000s of acres, but none of them are training centers either.
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I get what you mean, and you’re right. Compared to other tb farms (including all farms, not limiting to training only) his place isn’t massive or crazy fancy. Would I love to live there? Oh yeah! Side question for anyone that might know - in the video it shows a horse being galloped on a large grass track, do they train in regular shoes and do those shoes have any sort of traction device?
After looking at the video and the website, I’m wondering if they only gallop at home on turf. I would think you would want to train some on the surface they usually race on, wouldn’t you?
It does sound like the tours will include different aspects of the operation, instead of focusing on just one thing like a lot of the farm tours.
Turf is a wonderful, forgiving surface on which to train. Most racehorse trainers don’t do it because they don’t have access to a place like that one. Racetracks restrict the use of their turf courses to save them for race days. Otherwise, tons of horses would train on it.
If you have a young horse in training or a horse coming back from an injury and you’re at a farm where you can train on turf (or an artificial surface) that’s preferred because both are easier on a horse’s body and joints than dirt.
The horses seen in the video are mostly likely those who aren’t ready to race (unless they’re turf horses). Potential dirt horses will ship to a track and continue their training there, in order to have time to adapt to the new surface before they’re entered.
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Interesting, thanks.
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She won the Cotillion today, but not by a lot and not convincingly
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I think she won on class today.
I thought she seemed quieter than usual in the post parade–maybe the Travers took a lot out of her. I wonder how she will be trained up to the Distaff.
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Also, quite a cut-back in distance from a mile and a quarter to a mile and one-sixteenth.
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Oh I am sure she is fine. I was not trying to criticize, just noticed it. She is a great horse in great hands.
Good girl! Shoveling the feed in, not even coming up for air!
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I did not want to start a new thread, so just putting this here:
I think this is cool. A positive action for horse racing. Might even attract a couple of new fans.
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She’s amazing. Look forward to her return to the races!
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