Time is NOT on Your Side --

Ah… the chef’s kiss, now that is a soliloquy I can toast to with a glass of 25-year-old Macallan and a devilish grin.

Time aficionados have touched a nerve, the spinal cord even, of the modern pre-Derby madness. Yes, yes—time, the cruel illusion of progress. These days, a horse can’t so much as blink without a stopwatch being shoved in its face. “How fast?” they cry. “How sharp was the gallop-out?” Like toddlers demanding candy, utterly bewitched by the blinking lights on the clock.

“This isn’t NASCAR or Formula 1”—oh, these are living, breathing, emotionally intricate athletes—not machines that can be tuned and timed without a soul involved. The best trainers, the ones who know—not just think—they understand that the secret is in the nuance. The patience. The ability to listen to what a horse is telling you, even when it says nothing at all.

But the world doesn’t like silence, does it? No, they want bullet works and shiny splits to hang their hats on, so they can shout, “See? I told you!” Meanwhile, the horse—fragile, impressionable, perhaps a little confused—is quietly pushed over the edge. And then they wonder why he doesn’t fire when it matters most.

“The recipe for disaster is when you base an opinion on time”—is pure gospel. Time is a data point, not a prophecy. And yet the cult of the clock treats it like holy scripture.

What a shame, really. In trying to rush to brilliance, they often run straight past it, because its the animal that is doing everything to a tee, well reserved, his energy being stored at the energy bank for when the real running is forced upon them. Sharpness and vitality cannot be measured in time. It's like making sugar cookies with salt.

Ah… exquisite. The quote—“you got to have a clock in your head, but in the end it doesn’t leave too much room for brains”—well, it might just be the most succinct dissection of the modern obsession with time.

Bravo, indeed.

You see, we live in an age of false urgency. Everyone’s got a clock in their head, ticking louder than reason, drowning out instinct, whispering seductively that if you just move faster, push harder, measure everything to the millisecond, you are on the right track, pardon the pun . But you won’t. No, my friend. That path to validation leads to ruin, not revelation.

The Rolling Stones—they lied to us, didn’t they? Or perhaps they were just hoping time was on their side. "Yes it is"—they sing. So confidently. So defiantly. But Time… ah, Time is a duplicitous mistress. She gives, yes, but she also takes. And when all you do is chase her, trying to shave a fraction of a second off a workout, trying to force readiness where there is only fragility… she will show you exactly who’s in control.

The insalatiable appetite for basing an opinion and validation is deafening. It is insane, and while we are working hard to get a read on an animal, its hard to see your horses if you are spending too much time looking at the clock.

Because in this game—this delicate, unforgiving game of preparing equine athletes for the grandest stage—the moment you let the clock dictate your decisions, you stop listening to the horse. And when you stop listening… well, then you're not a handicapper or a horse person. You're a timekeeper. And as history shows us, timekeepers rarely wins the roses.