Jerry: I was intrigued by your comments during the BC seminar regarding the performance of certain horses shipping from cooler climates to the warmer sites of the BC. In your introduction, for example, you stated that “ . . shippers from cooler climates, especially for some reason those running in dirt races, often don’t run their races . . .” As to Bare Necessities, you wrote that “the ship from cooler weather doesn’t help.” You also wrote that the big question regarding Stellar Jayne was the “ship from the Midwest.”

These comments triggered my curiosity: have you run any samples which measure the BC performances of horses which have shipped from a climate you consider cooler into a warmer one?

I have noticed that many of these horses have performed poorly in the past, but I have not been able to identify climate as the most important or only cause of that performance. Take Society Selection, for example: yes, she performed poorly last year in the BC shipping from New York to California, but she was also running back on three weeks rest after a huge effort for a 2yo filly. She might have have run equally poorly had the BC been run at Belmont.

Because the impact of shipping from one climate to another will influence my betting decisions, I did a little research to evaluate the potential impact of climactic conditions. One way (not the only way) to measure this is by reference to the climate horses are stabled and train in, measured crudely by the mean temperatures of that climate. Look at horses which have been training at Belmont and Keeneland. According to the National Weather Service, there is almost no difference in the mean temperature during the month of October between New York and Lexington (55 and 57 degrees, respectively). The mean temperature in Dallas for the same month is 68 degrees. So, assuming a normal October from a mean temperature standpoint, horses shipping in from either of those two climates right before the BC have been stabled and are training in a climate that is about 12 degrees cooler. That is not necessarily significant, however. For January, the mean temperature in Arcadia, California is 56 degrees and in Miami it is 68 degrees. So, in looking at horses which have trained in New York during October and then ship to Dallas to run in the BC, at least from mean temperature standpoint, we are looking at roughly the equivalent of a horse who has trained at Santa Anita during the month of January and ships to run at a stake at Gulfstream.

Mean temperature may not be the right evaluation tool here, but if it is not, what is?