I'd like to see data about how often various trainers have their horses break poorly early in their careers. After the first start, we might find that all breaking problems had more or less been eliminated, except for random slow learners and problematic horses here and there. (Indeed, if breaking problems persist past the debut, I think that's when as an owner you would really have a problem with them. Bad breaks in the debut can be part of giving horses a race, which is an accepted practice.) But I'd still like to see the data through starts 2 and 3, or really until they stopped showing differences among traines.
People might say that we don't need "bad break" statistics for trainers, because we have win-early statistics on them, and the rate of bad breaks could be inferred from the win-early statistics. But the bad-break statistics would just break down the issue of early performance further. And I have to say that having a trainer who couldn't get a first-time starter to break would concern me more as a handicapper than a trainer who maybe just didn't have a lot of 2-year-old types in his barn. If the trainer DID then have a first timer who looked like a win early type, and the trainer's history suggested he got his first timers to break (and also not run short, which could be gleaned from interval by interval data in charts), then I might still select the horse.
The reason I think trainer statistics on breaking would not be a waste of time, and would show something, is partly Barclay Tagg. If I've seen one Barclay Tagg firster break slowly, I've seen 100. Well, maybe 3. But 100 sure sounded good.
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