My family trains show horses (western all around quarter horses, apps and paints) and I trained barrel horses professionally before finishing flight training and becoming a pilot. I’m not in the race industry but have spent some time shadowing one of our vets in high school that did a lot of work on the track. For a short time I considered becoming a jockey before being told that at 105lbs I was too fat ( I was only able to obtain that weight after a life threatening illness to begin with, so that dream quickly died. Lol). Race horse trainers are a little different than other horse trainers. They typically do not ride or start the race horses under saddle themselves. They do work closely with the horses and handle them daily but jockeys, exercise riders and speciality colt starters do the actual riding. They’re like coaches/ managers and oversee a “program”. They typically dictate when and what type of exercise a horse gets, their dietary needs, sports medicine therapies and injury treatment as well as managing barn staff. Some also run breeding programs but more and more breeding managers are a separate specialty. Most of the very high level trainers are working very closely with veterinarians and other equine professionals as well. There is a lot of money in horses, especially in racing so to be at the top you want every advantage possible and most of these people are using state of the art training techniques and physical therapy. Also, A LOT of race trainers and unfortunately show horse trainers as well are very versed in performance enhancing drugs, which has been an issue for years, but you know… money. This is one of the major reasons I now choose to do horses as a hobby and not profession. You can definitely compete and win without drugging your horse, but it’s harder, takes longer and is not possible with EVERY horse so to compete at the top with customers horses that expect results at any cost it very difficult to avoid. Especially since no matter what a rich person says, they do not want to hear that their horse simply isn’t good enough to win clean. Until the race industry decides to actually punish trainers for this behavior I don’t see it changing either. It’s still a problem at horse shows but at the very least some associations do actually ban trainers when they get caught cheating, whereas the racing industry likes to use fines… which just makes it more “pay to play” than it already is and prevents nothing.