My understanding is that this has been & continues to be a central tenet of Rags' dogma, which I have heard expressed by Robes in live seminars, not to mention the infamous audio tapes. At the end of more than one tape I half-expected the assembled to do a mantra-like chant of the rule. It also seemed to me to be very much alive & well at the Muldoon meetings at Sar this past Aug, and is one of the rationales behind pinpointing when a horse is likely to make a fwd move. I feel compelled to reiterate that my position is not that the idea lacks any merit, as it certainly seems to work for Robes.
Rather, what I'm saying is that there has never been any statistical or other proof which supports either the general principle or its application in cases where the horse's line indicates the opposite is true. In other words, pending JB's runs, the matter is one of opinion, which are like you know whats, in that everyone has one, including prominent vets & trainers who are closest to & have devoted their lives to the horses.
In the context in which the question arose, I not unreasonably I think interpreted JB's comment that it was unfortunate that KAN ran his top about 6 weeks prior because he probably needed more tome to recover as an application of the "8 weeks to recover rule" which,as you will recall, I specifically made a pt of saying I found surprising. The reason for my surprise is a belief that the non-number info TG provides, & recently expanded, is at the very least an implicit rejection of another core Rag principle, namely that one should focus almost exclusively on nos. & patterns. Based on that & a careful reading of the ROTWs, I am also under the impression(& harbor the hope) that not all the Rags bzyantine orthodoxy survived to become part of the TG approach to handicapping. My basic pt is that if I am right that the "8 weeks" rule has not yet been jettisoned, it is certainly in line for the re-examination which is now underway.
