: >What is it about Saratoga that causes a Mr. Dutrow to train at 4% or an Iwinski to train at 6%? Or Bobby Frankel to go on 19 race losing streaks and look like a mere mortal??<

This one I can answer in part.

There was a cough going around in Frankel\'s barn during that dry spell and virtually all his horses had a problem.

TGJB: Well... maybe. If they really were coughing, he wouldn\'t have run them-- Frankel is not a guy who feels compelled to enter a lot of races.

From what I have been told, a lot of this has to do with the layout of the barn areas at the different tracks. Some barns are easy to keep an eye on, others are not.

: I figured you wouldn\'t believe the coughing story. :-)  

At one point he had a long string of losers in graded company. Several of them clearly ran very subpar (they weren\'t just losing). I heard the coughing story. So I started avoiding his horses. A few more ran subpar after that. I can\'t remember if I read about it or if I was told about it by someone at the track. Either way, that wouldn\'t be the first time I heard a story like that and almost an entire barn went bad for a couple of weeks. AS far as I was concerned I had information that indicated his horses might not run well and they weren\'t. So I was right on top of it and a little more forgiving when they showed up again.