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The two sprint handicaps yesterday, both televised, both prestigious and both worth a considerable amount of money, were contested predominantly by Northern trained horses – specifically, horses trained in Yorkshire.
What happened to the Newmarket, Lambourn and South Coast trained horses?
I could understand not travelling up for Scottish race, but the Dash? Any reason for this happening? Is there something I’m missing?
Some very good trainers up North with that type of horse. Nicholls, Easterby x 2, Johnston and Fahey all top class with a good handicapper. Jim Goldie also knows the time of day with a good quick one.
Does anybody else agree, You would be better off not betting in any race dandy has a runner. The guy is a very talented trainer but has more faces than the town hall clock when disguising his major fancys. I know he isnt running them for our benefit but frustrating all the same.
Agree with you, stotty. Dandy’s multiple entries have ruined the Stewards Cup for me for many years.
Corm, are you saying that owners who want a sprint handicapper in training will now send them to a Middleham/Yorkshire outfit rather than, say, Newmarket?
Why wouldn’t they Max? Cheaper for a start!!
Seriously though, those trainers mentioned do seem to be able to train those types of horses very adeptly. In addition I think that sometimes a top handicapper may get off a bit more lightly up North than down South where he may be meeting animals from fashionable stables more frequently, particularly early on in their career.
I would LOVE to live long enough (and the clock is ticking) to see a Northern trained Derby winner. Imagine that! I thought MJ might be gearing up towards it a few years ago but that seems to have fallen adrift now that Godolphin take the decent ones (Shamardal being the obvious case in point) away from him.
I’d love to see the Coolmore operation place one or two Galileos with Mark or Richard Fahey. Or Donald McCain or Tim Easterby or any of those named above.
I’d love to see that corm being a Durham lad myself. Indeed any classic winner, it’s been a while. Maybe Fahey might attract a few good horses, I see one of the Maktoums has a couple of Dubawi 2 year olds there.
Regarding the sprinters, I think Henry Candy and Malcolm Saunders can hold their own with anyone with sprinters. Also northern trainers have had to find a niche were they can compete and with southern yards raiding decent middle distance races in the north sprint races have become the obvious medium to make their mark.Fair points lads. Cheers.
Long shot: Are horses in the North healthier this season? There’s quite a few Lambourn yards struggling for winners at the moment and I can think of one or two Newmarket yards who should be banging them in and aren’t. And some southern meetings seem sparsely supported – Folkestone tomorrow an example.
There’s definitely a lack of numbers at the top level of sprinting amongst southern trainers and it’s not just in the handicaps.
In the Palace House Stakes on 2000 Gns day, the first eight finishers were trained in the North or abroad. The Temple Stakes was a bit better, with Newmarket supplying the second and third, but the first southern trained horse finished ninth.
The lack of competition was highlighted on Saturday by the fact that an 80 rated horse got into the Dash – compare that with the lowest rated horses in comparable heritage handicaps over longer trips. Even the bottom weight at Musselburgh was rated higher!
I suspect that part of the reason is the lack of races at the Southern tracks for quality sprint handicappers. You rarely see a York or Haydock meeting go by without a valuable sprint, but a check on the program book shows only two 5F handicaps worth more than £20k staged south of the M62 between now and the end of September, both at Ascot.
The 6F options are a bit better, but even there, the likes of Doncaster, Haydock, Ripon, York and Ayr provide serious competition.
So it makes sense to have your sprint handicapper trained in Yorkshire!
AP
Fair points lads. Cheers.
Long shot: Are horses in the North healthier this season? There’s quite a few Lambourn yards struggling for winners at the moment and I can think of one or two Newmarket yards who should be banging them in and aren’t. And some southern meetings seem sparsely supported – Folkestone tomorrow an example.
Oilseed rape may be a factor, Max. We used to have horses with Mark Brisbourne and the neighbouring farmer grew oilseed rape in the field next to his gallop one year and he had to work his horses at the crack of dawn before the pollen was in the air because a good number of his horses were allergic to the pollen which caused them to bleed on the gallops. He told us that Newmarket trainers suffered from a similar problem.
Thanks for your informative answers, chaps.
How long does Oilseed Rape bloom/emit pollen for? There’s one stable I follow that started the season like a bat out of hell and is currently right off the boil. I think he might have this problem.
Rape flowers for roughly a one-month period between mid-May and mid-June so will be over soon, though I believe that due to the oil’s increasing popularity as bio-diesel new strains are being bred that flower earlier with the eventual aim being two crops per year
Plenty grown on the Vales of York and Mowbray, so D Nicholls at Sessay near Thirsk may be affected. Fahey, Easterby and the other Malton trainers are ‘above’ the Vale in the foothills of the North York Moors, as are Johnston and the Middleham trainers in the foothills of the Pennines on t’other side
The air is always better up there (cough cough splutter) as is the grass, being on limestone
Flowering Rape also causes hayfever in humans, but the beleagured honeybee loves it and the resulting honey is delicious, so it ain’t all bad news
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