I wouldn't know what to do with them.

How would you use them?

Here is what I would say about a few services

DRF: Cover Belmont, Saratoga, Gulfstream and Santa Anita ONLY. Not every horse will get a chance to be on the report so be careful with that in your Handicapping. The reports are ok with comments and grades but each clocker is different.Online workouts are pretty good.

Bruno with the Works: This Guy I have heard of for a long time and always seems to hype his product up in his emails and online. I believe his workout reports are pretty expensive and cares more about just getting your money vs putting work in. The report starts out with his selections in every race and then when you scroll down you will see (almost) every horses workouts graded from 1-5 stars without a comment which I think is pretty useless because why should this horse deserve the 5 star workout today and not last time? Bruno covers almost every track possible. Almost got in legal trouble with sharing his reports with a friend but I got away with it for some reason?

Toby Turell: I hear people in SoCal talk about this guy for his workout reports but again another guy who puts in not a lot of effort and a very short report with not too much detail on the workouts. Covers California racing only I believe.

National Turf Clocker Report: this is a pretty nice workout report. Almost every horse is covered and includes a short comment with grade. Covers SoCal and NoCal racing.

HR Report/Handicappers Report: In my opinion this has to be the best workout report out there. Have always been sastisfied with their workout reports for being so detailed and also they make sure they include every horse in every race and best of all you could probably hit a few winners with just by using this report it’s just that great!

Those are all the services I can review for now. Just on a personal note I would recommend clicker reports if you are really wanting to include them in your Handicapping but be careful where you are getting them from m. I don’t ever buy these reports because I don’t use workouts in my Handicapping as much as I used to. The workout data is good if you know what your looking for but again it depends on the service company.

Hope this helps!

Playing multi race horizontals I often come across races with one or more FTS. In order to help me navigate some of those races, I find this information helpful. 1) how did the horse work? Well within themselves? Tired or strong at the end of the work. Who did the horse work with!! This can be valuable with some of the bigger barns as they tend to pair horses of similar ability. If Chad Brown sees fit to work a FTS with one of his stake horses the FTS is probably talented.
I believe they serve a purpose as long as the clocker does his job well.

Makes sense.
Thank you.

I put a opinion statement above for the different services that offer "Clocker Reports" if you wanted to have a look Tony

I saw that Conley and really appreciate your effort!! I was unaware of some of those options

I like to classify workout comments as subjective or objective. Does this observation directly point to a positive/negative? Or does it create a flowchart of positive/negative possibilities?

Objective-
Clockers observed that Exaggerator blew the turn in his final prep for the Belmont Stakes. After a grueling campaign with 2nd/1st finishes in the Derby/Preakness, this would be a sign the horse is fatigued a high percentage of the time. If you did the work to check clocker reports, you were much more prepared on Belmont Day than the public when they made him the favorite and he finished 11th.

Subjective-
Take a runner that had his head high throughout the final workout before a race. A couple reasons can cause this but Clocker #1 and #2 followers will have very different results:
#1 - horse ran with head high, often a sign of soreness or injury, fade this one.
#2 - horse ran with head high, often a sign of uncomfortable equipment, should run fine on race day with that fixed.
The problem here is this creates a flowchart where not only could 2 clockers have opposite assessments but even those individual assessments could split off separate ways as well. Clocker #1 says he's "injured or sore"...Well If he's injured it's a negative but if he's sore, it could be either. There's a possibility he just needs an extra week for his tendons to heal and boom...he runs well on race day...or he remains sore and doesn't. It's a "Flowchart Comment" and it's just throwing darts.

This sounds like a lot of work. As such, if one is good at putting it together, I'd assume it could be quite lucrative.

Back in the '80s, I had a guy in SoCal teaching me body language. He seemed to be a winning player - but who really knew back then?

What I was really interested in was his "warm up system." Never knew how it worked but I was astounded at how often he'd peg a chalk as "didn't warm up well" and be right.

As for the body language... well, let me be kind to myself and say I WAS TERRIBLE at it!

I probably made it sound like more work than it is. Workout reports are actually a very small factor overall in my capping. Just a quick assessment...is this comment an edge or generic? There's a good handful of times where I found clocker reports that anchored a big score but definitely not an every race or even every day thing. Let them give you a runner here and there and stick to your primary handicapping otherwise.

As for storytime, I also am not good at all with physically reading runners. I was once on the fence watching a post parade and when the #3 walked by with ears flopped completely to the side, I told everyone that horse is lame and I'll quit horse racing if he wins. I lied because he paid 17/1 gate-to-wire and I'm still playing, lol.

Your story is almost the same as mine!

I was studying what this guy told me and thought I was getting pretty good at it. (It was 1983 and I was not yet a winner player.)

So, one day I am at HOL. I came to play Star Gem in the 9th race. Frank Olivares is the jockey. Of course, I showed up for the 1st race - and bet all the way. I had planned on betting a my BIG bet - $20 on this horse.

It was a cheap claiming sprint - $12,500 claimer, as I recall.
I visit the horses as they're being saddled and as they walk out to the track Star Gem looks like he is dragging his right rear foot.

Seriously... I thought the horse looked like Igor limping around. I said to myself, "He'll have to be a vet scratch!"

I left my $20 in my pocket.
Sat down to watch.
Star Gem is 20/1. (Well, that proves it. Nobody likes the horse.)

Olivares pops the gate and is just gone down the backstretch. Nobody ever got close to him.

That was the last time I ever used physicality. LOL

My all-time two largest hits were based entirely on physicality. In one of them, only one horse was not a firster.

Can you share a little about what you look for?
Can you do it without be at the track? (That seems difficult).

I think it is hard to do if you are not at the track, because you are at the mercy of the cameraman and what he chooses to focus on. They tend to focus mainly on the horses their commentators are touting. The point is to compare all the horses in the field with one another and if you leave one out it is pointless. And they leave horses out all the time. The jockey's also can cut the post parade short. Or, as in NY, they are too lazy to put a camera in the infield, so you mostly just see the track ponies on TV
.

Note to add:
Marche Lorraine in the Distaff was an example of how clocker reports can mislead you in the wrong direction and a good example of what I labelled a "flowchart comment."

Her notes were..."on the wrong lead, no gallop out, C+"

So if you're skimming through and read that it looks like an automatic toss-out. Problem is there's a different direction that comment can go. What if the horse WASN'T on the wrong lead? A bad workout doesn't mean a bad race day.

Only throw horses based on a workout report if the comment is completely objective to being negative to their condition.