Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro is the latest hope to become the first winner of horseracing’s Triple Crown since Affirmed in 1978. If he does, this NY Sunday Times article reports that the unusual training regimen that his owners have adopted for Barbaro may harken a new standard in training 3-year-olds for the demanding trio of races:

[Barbaro trainer Michael] Matz says he thinks he can succeed where six horses in the last nine years, from Silver Charm to Smarty Jones, failed after coming so close to horse racing immortality. He has thrown out a regimen that has been regarded by trainers as commandments etched in stone, opting instead for a new schedule, forged by his own personal setback and inspired by a brilliant colt.
While most trainers organize training to maximize fitness and build race readiness, Mr. Matz has given Barbaro an unusual amount of rest between races in his budding career. Trainers usually prefer to have their horses experienced in having dirt kicked in their face, maneuvering through crowded fields and reacting to adversity before they run in the Triple Crown races, beyond being in shape.
Barbaro, though, ran only five times before winning the Derby, and started his career only when Mr. Matz decided he was ready, in October, relatively late for a horse with Triple Crown ambitions. [. . .]

In recent years, Mr. Matz has watched as six horses, weary from their Triple Crown campaigns, have fallen short.
As a group, those six horses competed in an average of 8.5 races before the Derby, and an average of 3.8 of those races were as 3-year-olds, usually in the 12 weeks before the first Saturday in May. Bob Baffert trained three of those horses, and two ó Silver Charm and Real Quiet ó fell three-quarters of a length and a nose short from completing the sweep in the grueling mile-and-a-half Belmont Stakes. Eking out those last few gallops from a tired horse in the Triple Crown’s third leg has vexed trainers in recent years.
Barbaro pulled into Churchill Downs having raced only once in the 13 weeks before the Derby. Between his starts, he was rested for five to eight weeks. . .

The next stop in the Triple Crown is the Preakness, which is the tightest of the three Triple Crown race courses. Inasmuch as its narrower curves pose a different challenge than the long straightaways of both the Derby and the Belmont, it may just be the toughest race of the the three for a relatively inexperienced horse such as Barbaro to win.