training | Horse Racing Free Tips

Kevin McKathan To Give Training A Try

Kevin McKathan has many talents. One of the principals behind McKathan Bros. Training Center in Ocala, he's helped start the career of many a good horse, including 2015 Triple Crown winner American Pharoah (Pioneerof the Nile), and he's also a major force as a consignor at the 2-year-old sales. But he's ready for something different. Thirty-three years after starting his last horse, McKathan will return to the training ranks when he sends out long shot Fenwick (Curlin) in Saturday's GI Toyota Blue Grass S. at Keeneland.

“I am very excited,” he said. “My brother (J.B., who passed away in 2019) and I used to train horses at the racetrack years ago and the reason we started doing what we've been doing is because we weren't training good horses. I've always said that bad horses make bad horse trainers. Whenever you can touch a good one, it's fantastic.”

McKathan started his last horse in 1989 and shortly thereafter started up his new business in Ocala. There wasn't time for much else.

“For years and years, I've always had 150 horses at the house,” he said. “It's not like I could just head out and run around at the races.”

McKathan bought Fenwick for $52,000 at the 2020 Fasig-Tipton Fall yearling sale for owner Jeremiah Rudan. The original plan was to sell him as a 2-year-old at theFasig-Tipton Gulfstream sale, but he was withdrawn. Rudan decided to race him and sent the colt on to trainer Steve Asmussen. McKathan had high expectations for Fenwick, but he lost his first four starts. Things hit bottom when he was beaten by 24 3/4 lengths in a Feb. 13 maiden special weight race at the Fair Grounds. The decision was then made to send him back to McKathan in Ocala and to more or less start over.

“In his first race, he ran a huge seven-eighths and just got beat,” McKathan said. “By Curlin, we had high hopes for him. He looked like a two-turn horse, but after his first start, he had such bad racing luck every time he started. Jeremiah got a little disappointed and had us bring him home to Ocala. We went over him and he was in perfect condition. We put him out in a field for a couple of days to get some sun on his back.”

Fenwick was turned over to trainer David Fisher and sent to Tampa Bay Downs, where he broke his maiden by 5 1/4 lengths on March 12, beating the 1-20 favorite Commandperformance (Union Rags), who was second in the GI Champagne S. for trainer Todd Pletcher. Commandperformance, still a maiden, is back in the Blue Grass.

“He ran a huge race at Tampa,” McKathan said. “He finally got things his way and finally ran the way Steve and I always expected he could. I joked with Jeremiah before the race. How could we be so unlucky to run into a horse who was second in a Grade I in a maiden race at Tampa? But our horse ran great. For the Blue Grass, we were planning on moving him to someone. Jeremiah said that since I was taking the horse up to Keeneland why not just put myself down as the trainer of record? He talked me into it.”

Rudan planted a seed and McKathan has become interested in seeing where the training business can take him.

“I believe I can combine everything,” he said. “I have a great staff. If you think about it, we travel somewhere every month, whether it's for a horse sale or for a horse race. It's not undoable. It's just a matter of working things out.”

Fenwick is the only horse that McKathan has as a trainer. For now, that's good enough.

“This is definitely something I think I will be able to do,” he said of training. “I will enjoy this one, take a shot at them in the Blue Grass and if we make the Derby, I'll be there for it. I don't think this is a one-shot deal so far as my training. We've all been horse trainers our whole lives. It's just how you plan on going about it.”

McKathan won just seven races in his first go-round as a trainer and his stable earnings were just $30,461. That's what can happen when you train slow horses at tracks like River Downs, Beulah Park and Birmingham. All these years later he has a starter in the $1-million Blue Grass.

“I am expecting big things from this horse,” he said. “It's exciting and it's fun.”

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Study Suggests Dangerous Behavior Could Be Caused By Skeletal Pain

Horses that exhibit undesirable behaviors like bolting, rearing or kicking under saddle are often assumed to have poor training or to simply be ill-tempered, but a new study shows that horses acting progressively more dangerously may be reacting to axial skeletal pain.

Dr. Melissa Story studied 14 horses that had exhibited increasingly dangerous behavior, putting their riders' safety at risk, and had subsequently been euthanized.

She and her research team performed spinal exams, gait evaluations, diagnostic imaging, neurologic evaluations, and pathologic and histopathologic exams of the axial skeleton (the skull, the rib cage, and the backbone).

Those evaluations, along with prior medical records, owner and trainer complaints, and an exam completed once the horses had been euthanized, allowed the scientists to tentatively determine that skeletal pain may have been to blame for the horses' behavior.

Ten horses showed severe behavioral responses during both the mobilization and myofascial exams. The most common areas of concern were the lumbosacral and cervicothoracic regions. Additionally, 71 percent of study horses had hemorrhage or hematomas in these areas.

The scientists concluded that structural pain (neuropathic) was the root cause of the dangerous behavior. They noted that ganglia relay peripheral sensory information to the central nervous system and that ganglionitis has been associated with neuropathic pain syndromes. More research is needed.

Training, Color Key To Increasing Mustang Adoptions

The number of wild horses on Western rangelands continues to exceed the stocking rate the land can sustain, says the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Adoption remains a key strategy to regulating wild horse populations.

Dr. Jill Stowe, professor of agricultural economics at the University of Kentucky, created two studies to determine how much demand is present for Mustangs among people who choose to adopt horses. She learned that there is more demand for horses that have had some training, and more demand for pinto and dilute-colored horses.

For the first study, Stowe partnered with Dr. Kathryn Bender, professor of environmental economics at the Allegheny College Center for Business and Economics. The duo sought to determine what equine characteristics were most desired by adopters and what adopters were willing to pay for a wild horse. They used data from BLM online auctions held between November 2012 and November 2014.

They found that older horses, those that were born in captivity, and those which had spent a longer time in captivity were less likely to be adopted. They also found that horses with more uncommon coat patterns were more likely to be adopted than horses with a common coat color like bay or chestnut. Adopters were also willing to pay about 40 percent more for the horse if it was a pinto, and 20 percent more for a diluted coat than a solid-colored coat.

Additionally, people purchasing horses that had some halter training or under-saddle training were willing to pay 55 percent more for the horse. These findings could assist the BLM in determining which horses it selects for adoption and training.

Stowe completed the second study with undergraduate student Hannah White. The team created a study based on the assumption that current horse owners are the most-likely group of people to adopt a wild horse. They disseminated the survey via social media and received 2,250 usable responses. Of those, fewer than 10 percent had never adopted a wild horse and wouldn't consider adopting one in the future.

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They found that previous adopters were willing to pay more for a horse than those who had not adopted before. People who owned five or fewer horses were also willing to pay more to adopt a Mustang. The average response indicated they were willing to pay $125 for an “ideal” untrained horse, just under $300 for a halter-trained horse, and $415 for a horse that had been started under saddle.

Both studies indicated that training, especially under-saddle training, is key to driving Mustang adoptions.

Sciacca Gets 1000th Winner

Some four decades after saddling his first winner, trainer Gary Sciacca celebrated the 1000th victory of his career, sending out Caumsett (The Factor) to win the Aqueduct fall meet opener Thursday afternoon. The 47-10 third favorite, Caumsett broke his maiden in a one-mile turf test beneath Hall of Famer Javier Castellano (video).

Sciacca, a two-time leading trainer at Belmont Park (spring 1993 and fall 1997), has conditioned the likes of multiple Grade I winner Saratoga Dew–the first New York-bred to be named an Eclipse champion–and millionaire GISW Subordination.

“I'm just real happy to get it done,” Sciacca, 61 and a Brooklyn native, said. “I would have loved to have got it done at Belmont, but I got my start here at Aqueduct so this is great. It feels great. We needed to get it done and get it over with. I thought she was going to win last time [Sept. 19], but she got nailed right at the wire. Bobby, my son is here, so that's great.”

He added, “The Grade I wins with Saratoga Dew and Subordination were huge. The business has been so great to me and all the hard work is paying off. It's taken me all over and has been really good.”

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