Not long ago, I had a guy call me and say, "Wow! Did you see how many races Trainer X has won this year? He's having a great year."

I said, "Did you see how many horses Trainer X has started this year? Look at his percentage. It isn't so pretty."

It's easy to be carried away by the big numbers that a trainer compiles. It can be wins or earnings. There is, however, a lot more beneath the surface.

I look at a trainer's UTR percentage because it tells me if he's entering horses where they belong and where they can get a chunk of the money. Let's face it: just about anyone could win a lot of races if he stars a lot of horses.

Keep in mind that there is a cost---often a very significant cost---each time a horse starts, even if it's just in a claimer or overnight. Shipping costs, labor costs, Lasix, etc.

What you never see (unless you're the owner, of course) is the P&L statement on a horse. If a horse wins $32,000 in a year, how much profit did it make?

That's impossible to answer unless you know all the costs that go into keeping a horse in training. But if your training-shipping-vet-shoeing costs on that horse come to $30,000 in a year, you've certainly lost money because the trainer and driver each took five percent or a total of $33,000.

Each case is different. If you're the trainer and the owner, it's different. It's different if you're training and racing in the high-rent district of Toronto or metro New York than if you're competing in a low-rent area.

I'd love to see earnings figures include earnings per start for trainers. Then someone who is impressed with a trainer earning $2 million in 1,000 starts could easily see that the trainer earnings $1 million in 350 starts actually had a much better year.

A trainer specializing in stakes colts has it a bit tougher than one who has a raceway stable. The trainer with stakes horses must toss them into the mix and hope they're competitive with the best in their class---they are classified by age, gait, and sex. But the raceway trainer should be able to generate a high .UTR for his owners by putting his horses in where they belong.

Of course, this is just one of many ways to evaluate a trainer.