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apologies safari = no paragraphs…..The breeding industry is where the real money is made in horseracing. You may suppose that the purpose of breeding is to create winners on the racecourse. Someone once said: ‘The thoroughbred racehorse exists because its selection has depended not on experts, technicians or zoologists, but one piece of wood: the winning post of the Epsom Derby.’ But, if you follow the money, you can start to see the game the other way round: the purpose of racing, at the very highest level, is to advertise future breeding prospects. Aiden O Brien has long since targeted the Derby with a scattergun approach , throwing as many horses into the mix as possible in the hope that one of them will claim the elusive prize which is the goose that lays the golden eggs in the bloodstock world. As with a lot of powerful stables Balleydoyle horses are very often under priced in almost every sphere of racing – from unraced maidens upwards. In Gp1s , especially the ones with the big influences in the bloodstock world , their horses are even shorter as they employ the dual tactics of , i hyping the horse so that the public shortens the price and ii lumping huge sums on themselves to increase the public gamble. Should they win these elusive influential races , it would be almost counter productive for the horses to go off at big prices , as they are Balleydoyle horses they are likely to enter the maRket at single figure prices and it is a simple task for Coolmore to influence the price further with such a head start. With the unimaginable figures earnt by the worlds top stallions it is nothing for Coolmore to enter as many horses as they like in the derby and a few hundred grand to shorten one up (such as it reportedly took to shorten Fame And Glory) is a small gamble for the tens , even hundreds of millions these horses earn at stud. Sometimes these horses already have superb breeding for the bloodstock world and can be Retired relatively early after Group race success . In the case of St Nicholas Abbey , he didn’t really have the true blue blood required to make him a viable stallion off the back of just one Group1 in a very weak looking 2yo race. ( although by major stallion Montjeu he is out of an unraced Dam herself by a son of the unsuccessful Kris. With Momtjeu having sired two Derby winners already SNA could not successfully be hurried off to stud after his guineas flop- equally he was unlikely to be allowed to take his chance at Epsom ) He was always going to run as a 3yo , but I think if he had been better bred his "injury" after the Guineas would have ended his career. I do not now believe for one minutes all the reports that his work before the guineas had been " better than any other horse we’ve had" it was just the Coolmore hype machine ensuring an incredibly false SP in the guineas. One of the most disturbing problems in British Horseracing at the moment is PRIZEMONEY and the INCOMPETANCE of racings rulers. Whilst the awful levels of prizemoney at the lower end of racing affect a far greater number of trainers owners jockeys and stable staff ,it is the Prizemoney at Group Level falling short on a worldwide level which will have a major effect on the future of racing in this country. That one piece of wood will very soon cease to be the be all and end all in the bloodstock world . The Irish Champion Stakes ,The Arc , The Dubai World Cup and The Breeders Cup Classic will certainly have a greater influence than the Derby in the future. Perhaps the only breeding empire to rival Coolmore is Sheik Mohammeds Darley Stud . Godolphin have already fired a warning shot at the BHA stating they are prepared to use their base in Newmarket as a centre from which they will be pot hunting foreign group races and Sheik Mohammed has long been manoeuvring The Dubai World Cup into a Leading Bloodstock influencing Group1 – this year he even put his spat with Coolmore behind him and extended invitations to Balleydoyle. I personally think that over the next ten years it will be The Irish Champion Stakes that becomes the most influential race in Europe at least , for one reason and one reason only….John Magnier …. The most influential man in racing. It was John Magnier along with Robert Sangster , Vincent O Brien and Lester Piggot who in the 1970s reestablished the bloodstock influence of The Derby and exploded Stud values beyond anything anyone had ever believed possible . He built his empire in Ireland , Australia and America and was the first person to invest in horses for their bloodstock potential and not their racing potential. It is still the case today that a vast percentage of horses sold at auction could not possibly earn their purchase price on the racecourse . Breeding is the centre of Thoroughbred Horseracing now more than ever before. If John Magnier decides to stop supporting the Derby and concentrates more and more on The Irish Champion , wwhich continues to increase in value , then that one man will have once again changed the nature of Thoroughbred Horseracing Worldwide. He calls the shots in the racing world today on a massive scale (anyone who thinks Aiden O Brien makes the decisions st Ballydoyle concerning which horses stay in training is Mistaken). John Magnier may yet change that "one piece of wood" for a different one. British racing is dining out on it’s 18th century history and with it’s head in the sand and an absolutely outdated imperialist attitude the BHA believes our position in the racing world will remain as it has been for the last few decades. The first signs that this is not the case will be the lack of Ballydoyle runners in the Derby and the fact that they go off at a fair price. Maybe not this year ……but soon.
Enjoyable read…..
Points all are valid….The Derby still is a important race because of its History not because of the realitive merit of the track and the runners nevermind the winners.
I enjoyed reading this.
I’d not heard about Coolmoore smashing in to their horse in the Epsom Derby. Where does that come from, I wonder.John Magnier having such influence, too …. ? Could be right, I’d not know.
Breeding’s at the top, the punters are at the bottom – fairly sure that’s the way it is but do we have to worry …
I posted a story on the betfair forum about this. I have a friend who works in betchronicle and before the Epsom Derby they received bets from one person allegedly of between 200k and 300k on Fame and Glory in the moments just before the off. As a result he went of 9/4 favorite and their was a big hullabolu about the fact that the bookies shortened on horse and never lengten the odds of the others namely Sea The Stars. These bets were placed full well in the notion of geting the horse to go off favorite for the Epsom Derby so it could written down in the stud book no matter what happened in the race. Fame and Glory was beaten 1/2l and would have won any normal renewal easily if they went a proper pace up front.
John Magnier is the most influencial man in Breeding ever IMO. He was the first too dual hemisphere stallions and has made himself double the amount of revenue as a result. He can determine trends of stallions and he picks their races…sells the horses that dont fit into his plan and buys all the yearlings to make sure they dont have too much of the same stock and to diversify for the future years. He was obviously taught and coached into the job by the names above but he has made the bloodstock world his own niche
John Magnier is the most influencial man in Breeding ever IMO.
Learned everything from his late father-in-law
He learned a great deal but improved after looking at VOB mistakes namely Classic Throughbreads which nearly put him out of business.
No similar mistake will happen again
I don’t really see the point of plunging on these horses. Surely the breeding value depends on how well the horse races rather than its SP.
I’ve only been following racing for around three years and while I’m still pretty much a novice, I learn something every day: courses, trainers, jockeys, horses. I’m at the stage now I can begin to put things together i.e. picking a jock at a certain course at a decent price or picking a trainer at a certain course in maidens, or latching on to a hunter chaser just before an upturn in form, stuff like that. At this stage, I’m well and truly hooked on racing.
One of the first things I learned, or maybe more properly felt, was an extreme distrust/dislike in the pit of my stomach for Ballydolye/Coolmore.
I’d love to see or read a psychologist’s appraisal of an Aidan O’Brien interview: to me, this is quite clearly a man living under constrant pressure, having to bend the knee daily to his masters, and for a trainer at a top yard, you get the feeling he has very little input in the operation. In summary, AOB does not appear to be a happy man. Wearing shades while staring somewhere to the left of the camera and avoiding eye contact with his interlocutar while telling us Ballydoyle’s latest wonder horse will win the Guineas, Derby, Arc, etc..etc…
Additionally, the jockey turnover is another pointer to a very stressful environment and Johnny Murtagh looks like like a man who’s been given a last minute death row reprieve since he left, a smile from ear to ear, just witness him after the Lincoln happy to chat about being available, give me a call, I’ll be happy to ride, seemed over the moon about the win and dead genuine with the Stobart Connections. Contrast this with his stilted and measured approcah of the last few seasons.
Coolmore/Ballydoyle makes people (not just punters) very uneasy it would appear.
Very few persons are happy when living by someone else’s rules.The top class trainers never like to be told what do do with a horse.But Coolmore cannot afford to let Aidan go. He is too good.With a smaller operation and clear goals for each horse like the Aga Khan has from the beginning, it can be done, but tricky with so many horses.The AK can sit down and discuss the future of each horse but not so easy with a hundred. They keep racing against each other.Having said that some wealthy owners who are not breeders like to win Derbies!Incidentally I would love to hear both John and Aidan talking about their various careers.But such will only happen long after I have departed for the shed in the sky.Certainly John seems to know the breeding better than most.I for one believe that Mr. Tabor’s contribution can never be underestimated.He brought both Montjeu, a headcase but a genius of a horse, and Hurricane Run, to Coolmore, which started the riff with Godophin, and Thunder Gulch to Ashford,
I believe that most who post on this site believe that the Derby is the most important race in the world.Certainly Ballydoyle does and that is good enough for me.The BC is great to win but there is eight cups each year.Only one Derby.
- Total Posts 17716
Enjoyable read…..
Points all are valid….The Derby still is a important race because of its History not because of the realitive merit of the track and the runners nevermind the winners.
An enjoyable read indeed. But not because the points were valid, but because the hypothesis was so imaginative, wild and unsubstantiated.
As for The Derby, I suggest that with winners in the past decade including
Sinndar, Galileo, High Chaparral, Motivator, Authorized New Approach, Workforce
and — oh yes, a little-known colt called
Sea the Stars
, the reputation of the race is higher than it’s been since the early 1970’s at least.
And that’s without a Coolmore winner since 2002.
There’s surely a much simpler explanation for the unduly short prices of Coolmore’s Derby leading fancy – namely, the belief of punters, big and small, that the Magnier Selected must have a pretty sound chance. The phenomenon was observable with Noel Murless’s runners in the 1950’s and 60’s, Vincent O’Brien’s runners in the 60’s and 70’s, Henry Cecil’s in the 80’s and 90’s, and now Aidan O’Brien’s since the Millenium. Many of the fancied runners from these stables started at absurdly cramped odds, win or lose.
Without real evidence to back up the theory, flights of fancy as to hyping potential breeding colts by staking a few hundred thousand pounds on them to win a particular race make exciting reading, but hold little water. Such behaviour would in the end devalue the stock, and Magnier is too wise a business bird to fall into that amateur’s trap. Nor does he need the winnings.
The Arc and the Derby are not the most significant races for Breeders, for the simple reason that they are too long. Many runnings of the former, in particular, end up as soft-ground, false-paced lotteries; and few Arc winners go on to make successful stallions without having 3yo Classic (English/French) or 8-10f all-aged Group 1 "collateral form".
I would agree that the Irish Champion Stakes has over the past decade held a good claim to indicating the true Autumn middle-distance champion, just as The Derby has first claim to indicating the best middle-distance 3yo colt.
Whether the fine Irish race maintains this position of importance for as long as the Epsom classic has managed (230 years and counting) is a question which Ireland’s astounding bankruptcy and incipient penury, with the possible decline of Magnier/Coolmore’s power, may soon influence.
The question of Prize Money has been addressed before. It has been relatively lower for Group 1 races in England than in either France or USA
since the end of World War II at least
, but this has
not
affected the desire of the richest and most powerful turf aficionados to race their ludicrously expensive equine toys against one another in our Classics and other Group 1’s. Read the surveys to see how unimportant prize money is to the major players. As the original poster rightly said, breeding is all. That’s the industry that matters, fiscally.
And before anyone mentions the fact, the reason the Aga Khan has no horses in training here has nothing to do with our Prize Money, and everything to do with outrage over the Jockey Club’s disqualification of his
Aliysa
from the 1989 Oaks for banned substances, under the care of his favourite trainer, Michael Stoute.
- Total Posts 17716
I believe that most who post on this site believe that the Derby is the most important race in the world.
That may be so, but I would not be amongst the believers.
I for one find it impossible to say which is the most important race: although I would certainly say that for Pinza The Derby is certainly the most
interesting
race, which is not quite the same thing!
There’s a "club" of important races (which doesn’t include some of those stellar-pursed
arriviste
Middle Eastern and Asian ones, though it
would
include the top Japanese events) which have equal importance to the breeders, and hence to the leading owners.
Good evening Pinza , I have several questions , maybe you have some of the answers. Firstly I think the theory of backing their horses in to favouritism in the classics has nothing to do with winnings just the SP of the derby winner .as a punter I can see the thinking behind this although I don’t know if breeders would think the same way – for instance Makfi 33/1 …first thought , unexpected winner of a Guineas where none of the form going into the race stood up . When the fav wins a classic the opposite is the first thought , he won it as expected the form stood up. So when I heard rumours of Coolmore shortening Fame and Glory it certainly seems plausible to me. How do you see it as devaluing the bloodstock ? My questions , how long since the Irish Champion replaced the English equivalent as the primary target for bloodstock interests or was it ever thus? The English triple crown is no longer a target because of the bloodstock worlds newfound interest in Speed influence , is this not an indication that bloodstock interests change with time and can in turn devalue races , even the worlds oldest classic? I don’t know if recent derby winners have been syndicated to japan or America for more money than winners of the Dubai world cup or breeders cup classic ? I do know that John Magnier has said in recent years that it was a mistake to shorten the French Derby to 1m2f and that The Derby is the race to win and he will continue to try to win it.it must be remembered though that HE is the man who developed the whole Derby winner multi million stud value scenario and has built his empire to some extent around the derby. The bloodstock world IS changing though 1m6f is already taboo it seems to me only Shadwell Darley Juddmonte and Coolmore are interested in the Derby
I agree with what you say Pinza in hindsight but i have no doubt what so ever that in the case of Fame and Glory that money was put down purely on the day to ensure he went off favorite for the Epsom Derby no matter what else happened.
when Jim Bolger said something along the lines of "The Epsom Derby is not particularly important at the time when he was deciding to take New Approach out of the entries,that was when John Magnier refered to Frederico Tesio who had said:
"The Thoroughbred exists because its selection has depended, not on experts, technicians, or zoologists, but on a piece of wood: the winning post of the Epsom Derby. If you base your criteria on anything else, you will get something else, not the Thoroughbred." [Federico Tesio]
Wickepedia continues this with:
"What was Tesio talking about? Quite simply, he meant that the Epsom Derby has become the standard and the goal of breeders around the world, and those runners that achieve this highest of standard of performance have consistently proven to be outstanding breeding stock. The Thoroughbred is the result of breeding for racing performance and nothing else. Breeders that concentrate on any other criteria, especially those that breed strictly to sell an attractive sale yearling, are missing the point and are doomed to failure."
Whether this is changing I do not know, but the best stallion from the last 10 years would appear to be the Derby winner Galileo.
As to the winners of the Irish Champion stakes, Has any of the offspring of:
Oratorio
Azamour
High Chaparral
Grandera
Fantastic Light
Giants Causeway
and Daylami acheived much?But on the other hand apart from Galileo what has the offspring of the Derby winners:
Authorized
Sir Percy
Motivator
North Light
Kris Kin
High Chaparral
and Sinndar achieved?- Total Posts 17716
I agree with what you say Pinza in hindsight but i have no doubt what so ever that in the case of Fame and Glory that money was put down purely on the day to ensure he went off favorite for the Epsom Derby no matter what else happened.
If the betting was Coolmore manipulated, what was Heffernan doing on this horse? Why was Murtagh on
Rip Van Winkle
? The mounts were chosen earlier in the week, on the basis that the going would be Good to Firm.
The feeling on the day changed, when it emerged that the going was on the slow side of good. Punters tended to the opinion that neither of the heavily backed "speed" horses would get home, and that the run of the race would suit one of O’Brien’s stayers (
Masterofthehorse, Age of Aquarius, Black Bear Island, Golden Sword
or the unbeaten
Fame and Glor
y) better.
Though there was enough money just before the Off to firm both
Sea the Stars
and
Rip Van Winkle
up again.
If
Sea the Stars
hadn’t been there, the stayers-brigade punters would have been proved right, though the fast finish of
Rip Van Winkle
convinced many that he would have troubled the winner more than the others if he’d not been ridden so conservatively.
Seldom can a trainer have fielded such a strong posse of six for the Derby. He had the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th and 10th (Ryan Moore up!) home, but came across perhaps the most remarkable equine athlete many of us have been privileged to see.
Having said all of which, it’s curious that the handling of
Fame and Glory
, whose record is by normal standards stellar (3 Group 1’s including the Irish Derby, and two 2nds to
Sea the Stars
) seems to have harmed public confidence in both Coolmore’s and Ballydoyle’s judgement.
It seems that his failure to storm the heights in the 2011 Arc has disillusioned The Believers. But to be fair, I’m not sure that the horse was that heavily hyped during the year by his connections. It was surely yet another case of blind trust in the Top Trainer of the Day, a trust (as usual) not being rewarded.
- Total Posts 17716
It’s easy to forget, as I’ve almost done, that
Fame and Glory
is still in training, and being aimed at a second Coronation Cup (along with
Workforce, Snow Fairy, Dandino
and the rest!)
His story is thus far from over, and The Believers might yet be rewarded.
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