NEW ORLEANS – On July 12 of last year, Catching Freedom worked in company with Mozlzil and Quarrymen, the two breeze companions leaving Catching Freedom in their wake. In August and into autumn, Catching Freedom worked regularly with a colt named Ethan Energy, who, just as regularly, spanked him in those team drills. On Jan. 28 at Fair Grounds, Awesome Road breezed under a death grip to keep him from burying Catching Freedom, and on Feb. 3, the filly Alpine Princess absolutely dusted Catching Freedom in a serious Fair Grounds drill. Mozlzil last saw racing action in November, when he got blitzed in a Churchill Downs allowance race. Quarrymen was sixth Feb. 13 in a Fair Grounds allowance race. Ethan Energy ran March 2 at Oaklawn Park, a bland fifth in allowance competition, with Awesome Road one place ahead of him. Two weeks after she worked with Catching Freedom, Alpine Princess finished fourth, beaten nine lengths, in the Rachel Alexandra Stakes, earning a 76 Beyer Speed Figure. A couple of races later that day, Catching Freedom finished third with an 87 Beyer in the $400,000 Risen Star Stakes. While horses who’d humbled him during morning work last summer and fall became mired in mediocrity or fell out of training, Catching Freedom in January was winning the $300,000 Smarty Jones at Oaklawn. Workouts once were the province of professional clockers and horsemen. Descriptions and analysis of what went down early mornings at tracks across North America came to fans and bettors through gatekeepers and hearsay. All we really knew were the times written on the page. More detailed information has become available in workout analyses from sources like Daily Racing Form’s Clocker Report. :: Access morning workout reports straight from the tracks and get an edge with DRF Clocker Reports Now, racing networks and racetracks, especially in the lead-up to major events, have video cameras recording morning work for public consumption. The website XBTV.com has accumulated a years’ deep database of workout video. And since 2023, the Kentucky Thoroughbred Association has compiled workout video on its website (kentuckybred.org/workout-videos). So, as the 2024 Kentucky Derby draws nigh, the lay public situated on the outside looking in through most of racing history has been afforded an ever-expanding view behind the curtain. But do we really know what we’re looking at? Catching Freedom, who races Saturday at Fair Grounds in the $1 million Louisiana Derby, has workouts from July through February available for viewing on the KTA website. Maybe Catching Freedom on Saturday will prove he’s a legitimate Derby horse. You wouldn’t know it from his video-published drills. “Absolutely, it doesn’t always mean what you think it means when a horse gets beat in the work or doesn’t work good,” said Brad Cox, Catching Freedom’s trainer. “The works mean a lot, but they don’t mean everything.” Cox has trained champions, like Kentucky Oaks winner Monomoy Girl, who wouldn’t make you look twice during a morning breeze. “She worked along all right, but she’d shut it down past the wire, even when you asked her to gallop out,” Cox said. Catching Freedom needs only a moderate step forward Saturday to shoulder himself into legitimate Derby contention – workouts be damned. “He always was a pretty average work horse. We had no idea what to expect from him first time out,” Cox said. Cox trains another 3-year-old colt, Nash, who works so strongly by himself that Cox rarely puts him in company. Nash has flash, but the colt has fallen behind Catching Freedom in the barn’s 3-year-old pecking order, going to Oaklawn this weekend for a far less significant race, the $200,000 Hot Springs, than the Louisiana Derby. Nash still might blossom but has started looking like another kind of work horse that can fool the growing number of eyes trying to glean actionable information from morning training. “I’ve had a lot of them that worked great and couldn’t do it in the afternoon. If I said their names, you wouldn’t even know who they are,” Cox said. Louisiana Derby hopeful Honor Marie’s racing performance also surpasses his training appearance. Honor Marie finished a decent fifth in the Risen Star, a race he needed after a winter break, following a series of Fair Grounds workouts that left some observers cold. What most didn’t realize: The breeze partner consistently outworking Honor Marie, Drip, was a tiger. Drip debuted on the Risen Star card and won a maiden sprint with a splashy 95 Beyer. “He’s not one of those horses who looks pretty out there, who’s always in the bridle and bearing down on the bit,” trainer Whit Beckman said. “He’s never been one to blow anybody away with the overall mechanics of it. But he always works well, and all I’m really looking for is consistency.” :: KENTUCKY DERBY 2024: Derby Watch, point standings, prep schedule, news, and more Beckman recalled a similarly lackluster worker he encountered during his tenure as an assistant to trainer Todd Pletcher. “Shanghai Bobby wore blinkers in the morning, wasn’t much of a work horse. Just never really gave you the feeling he’d go out and win the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile,” Beckman said. Shanghai Bobby did just that in 2012. Pletcher trains one of the best-working 3-year-olds of 2024, 2-year-old champion male Fierceness. Twice, in his career debut last summer and in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, Fierceness has run to his training. Twice, when he was beaten 20 lengths last fall in the Champagne and when he checked in a lackluster third as the 1-5 favorite Feb. 3 in the Fountain of Youth, he has not. “You get certain horses like Fierceness, you come to expect them to breeze brilliantly every time,” Pletcher said. “As we’ve seen, it doesn’t always equate to him running as well in the afternoon.” Pletcher works hundreds and hundreds of horses in company at his winter base, Palm Beach Downs. Often, when one appears to clearly outwork another, there’s more to it than meets the eye. Some exercise riders, Pletcher said, are great at slowing horses down in routine gallops but less skilled at guiding a mount through a work. Breeze riders, too, come in a wide range of sizes. “Johnny Velazquez comes in to work some of our better horses. You’ve got a skilled Hall of Fame jockey who weighs 30 pounds less than the exercise rider on the other horse,” Pletcher said. At Palm Beach Downs, breezing on the rail confers a meaningful and consistent advantage over the worker on the outside. “Sometimes week to week, switching whose inside and outside, can make a big difference,” Pletcher said. Still, trusting one’s eyes, when those eyes become trained, will yield better results than looking down at a timing device. “I think probably the biggest error people make when judging works is looking at the time of the breeze. I’ve had owners see their horse worked in 1:03 and will call me up and ask why the horse worked really bad when he’d actually worked fantastic,” Pletcher said. Sometimes a work will fool even a most expert observer, like Pletcher. In October 2004, a solid but unspectacular New York-bred named West Virginia badly outworked Speightstown, who then went out and won the Breeders’ Cup Sprint. And in late March 2018, Audible “threw in a stinker” working toward the Florida Derby, which he then won. Catching Freedom never will be a big, beautiful mover dropping jaws at dawn, but he has amped up his breeze game the last couple weeks. “Sometimes when they start working good, you worry,” Cox said. Or maybe Catching Freedom has been dropping hints. And unlike during most of racing history, as Catching Freedom works toward the Derby, it’ll be out there for all of us to observe. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.