by Sharon Soileau 11-08-2008 02:00 AM
In horse racing there is a wide variety of people who tend to the animal's well being. Each horse usually has a team to care for him: a groom, hotwalker, exercise rider, jockey, pony person, and of course, the trainer.
The groom tends to the horse's daily care. Usually arriving at the track as early as 4:00 am, this person will check to see if his charges (horses) have cleaned up their grain. If a horse is "off feed", or not eating well, this could be an indication of injury or illness. The groom is usually responsible for 3 or 4 horses at a time. His job includes getting the horses ready for their morning workouts, which includes cleaning them up and having them saddled when the exercise rider or jockey arrives. While a horse is on the track, the groom will clean out the stall, add fresh bedding and wash the feed tub and water bucket. When the horse returns from his workout, the groom will see to unsaddling him and bathing him before turning him over to a hotwalker. The hotwalker then walks the horse for about 30 or 45 minutes to cool him out from his workout. After the horse has been returned to his stall, the groom will give him a thorough brushing, clean out his feet, and rub the legs down with liniment. (Liniments are a common substance used on horses to help a hot horse cool down: the alcohols help the product to quickly evaporate, and the oils they contain cause the capillaries in the skin to dilate, also increasing the cooling process.)
Exercise riders will workout several horses every morning. Their job begins about 5:30 - 6:00 am, depending on what time the track opens for training in the morning. Each horse will have specific instructions from its trainer, and the trainer expects the instructions to be followed to a "T". Some horses will only go a mile or two at a slow gallop. Others may jog the wrong way around the track for a lap, maybe two. Young horses are sent out in pairs, or sets of three or four. When sets of horses go to the track, all the riders are expected to keep the horses galloping together, side by side.
Every week or so, a horse will "breeze", or run at full speed for a specified distance. This task is usually reserved for the jockey who will ride the horse in his next race. From time to to time, horses are "ponied". This is a light exercise intended only to loosen their muscles. A pony person rides a very quiet, durable horse and leads the racehorse around the track without a rider. Horses being ponied will do so at a jog or very slow gallop. The pony person also escorts the racehorse through the post parade on race day.
The trainer is in charge of everything from hiring hands to ordering feed. A trainer decides what his horses will eat, how much, which supplements and vitamins they need, maps out a training program for each individual animal and tries to select the best available jockey for each horse.
Horses are as much of individuals as people are. Some tend to be a bit lazy and will need an aggressive rider. Nervous horses, particularly fillies, seem to do better when handled by a rider who has extreme patience. Then there are horses who prefer a female rider over a male rider. The task of matching horse and rider can be exasperating.
After all the basic details are worked out, the trainer then must decide when his horses are ready to run, which leads to the task of what type of race to put them in. Being individuals, horses make up a wide range of class levels, from maiden ranks (horses which have never won a race) to various levels of claiming races, allowance races and finally up to stakes races. If a horse does not perform well, the trainer must then figure why and what he needs to do about it. For the horse that does race well, the next decision will be where to race him next and at what level.
There are as many different types of trainers as there are horses, which will be the subject of a later blog. I will attempt to explain the difference betwen trainers and horsemen.
Sharon Soileau is an ex-jockey turned horse trainer. After enjoying a brief riding career, she passed her trainer's test in 1979, then won with the first horse she saddled. She continues to work as a certified trainer in Louisiana.
Published 11-08-2008 © 2026 Access Athletes, LLC
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