our strategy with claimers is to try and find horses (usually fillies) that are underdeveloped and get the muscle on to them, assuming this will lead to an improvement in performance, which it usually does. A tactic a lot of trainers seem to adopt is to keep horses skinny as they will run well (having less weight to carry). It’s a short term tactic though - better is to work muscle on to them, but it takes a lot of work and it’s not worth spending all that time unless the horse has a bit of talent.

I’m not very expert in all of this - I still have a lot to learn - but I’ve got access to a lot of different trainers and I’m learning my lessons slowly.

In general Tom/you seem to put a lot of emphasis on getting the horses feed right, weight on. I guess thats an angle that has come out of your recent postings, and is the basis for getting improvement and longevity from some of your recent claims. Would that be a fair comment ?? Again interesting detail to read. Cheers for that.