Re: Mike Maker off the claim - hoof size (758 Views)

Been on this soap box for nearly 15 years (and catch grief on it regularly), but hoof size is a physical piece of data that should be provided on every starter and available to handicappers, in the same way that weight should be.

People are welcome to laugh, but there was a former trainer (can't even remember his name now) who had a brief posting career on twitter and wrote articles for BRIS at derby time well over a decade ago, and he was always able to acquire and publish hoof size of derby starters in his article.

Given it was a very limited sample size for a specialized condition (his article only lasted a few years, maybe 3 or 4), there was a CLEAR abnormal impact value in the positive for horses with large hooves and negative for horses for small hooves for the years he published this data (His theory was that at CD in general, given its higher sand content (unless completely packed down by water), horses with smaller hooves sunk deeper into the surface and had a tougher time getting over it).

I would certainly never claim that such a small sample size proved his theory, however, the results were certainly interesting enough that I thought they warranted a study that involved an appropriate data set to draw a real statistical conclusion and see if there is something there. But it appears no one else in the industry believes such an edge exists and handicappers aren't owed this data.