stops running in the turn

Question
my horse trains and works like a million dollar horse during training hours. he stops running in the final turn at night during racing. he was flipping his pallet so i had that fixed. thought it might be the lights and noise at night. fixed that with special blinkers and ear muffs stuffed with cotton. he seems to have this stopping point cemented in his head. but only at race time. i love this little horse and i think he has the makings of a nice talented racehorse. please help. thank you so much. p.s. he goes to the lead and stays there until he gets to the final turn. then he starts backing up. and not because he is out of gas. same place everytime.

Answer
I would need to actually put my hands on this horse to figure out the problem. All I can tell you is to drop this horse in as cheap as possible and see if he runs better against worst company. At this point, he has shown that he doesn't have the talent you thought he had. Dorsal displacement surgery doesn't work 100% of the time. This horse could be a roarer as well. It does sound like a respiratory problem and the jockey should be able to tell you what he hears. If you can't rely on your rider then change to an experienced rider that can tell you more. If the airway checks out clean then the horse could have other problems, such as a cardiac defect. Another possibility is that the horse could just be running too fast, too early. If the pace is not that fast then I would stop wasting money on him and move on. I know you had hopes for this horse and love him, but that will just cause you more disappointment and loss if he can't run well for you. A talented race horse should have a healthy mind as well. If there is something going on in his head then that problem can be one of the most complicated to fix. The mind of a race horse is one of the hardest things to train. I am sorry that I can't tell you a more specific solution, but it is up to the trainer to figure this out and to work with the jockey to find the problem. Send the horse to another track with a different surface like turf or all weather and see if that makes a difference if you think night racing or the track itself if the issue.

Christopher Crocker

http://CrockerRacingStable.com

Crocker Racing Stable and thoroughbred horse racing partnerships