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Is this the lowest rated horse in training? Rated 49 and set to carry 7 stone 6 in a seller at Fakenham today!!
And he costs as much to feed as Coneygree.
What wizards trainers are in persuading owners to keep paying fees :)
What wizards trainers are in persuading owners to keep paying fees
Well the owner is the trainer which I suppose helps!
Has actually had a modicum of form in recent seasons, winning a race and accruing £26k in prize-money. I’ve seen worse.
Mike
The Society Man ran off 44 in a Novice Chase earlier in the year and ran well enough in that and a race at Cartmel a few weeks later to have his mark go up to the low 70’s.
Messers Chapman and Cornwall try to farm place money in small field Novice Chases with these horses now as we saw at Fakenham yesterday.I started a thread on john Cornwall a few months back. Question: these horses are clearly useless but because their marks are so low they always have to run out of the weights even in the lowest of handicaps. There are about ten horses in training in this situation. What is the point of the handicap system if they can never run off their true mark? Surely any horse which isn’t good enough to achieve a rating of 70 jumps or 40 flat, should not be allowed to compete?
What wizards trainers are in persuading owners to keep paying fees
Weep not for Flichity’s owner-trainer John Cornwall, who is well used to feeding animals with nary a hope of providing a return on investment considering his initial forays into racing were in the pointing field just shy of three decades ago. Most of those were on owner-trainer-ridden brutes, but you can also see him falling off the rider-owned, John Mackie-trained Andermatt in the 1998 renewal of the Martell Fox Hunter.
A total of no fewer than 60 winners under Rules since taking out a permit, including ten in the 2003-4 season alone, suggests that he’s no complete duffer as a handler; and indeed he’s been more vocal about the lack of a deeper pool of jumps horses in his East Midlands locality than many more vaunted trainers.
You may remember a brief interview with him on ATR at Fakenham in March 2015, moments after the then 62-rated chaser Flichity had just trousered him £2,000 for finishing a remote second of two to Ainsi Fideles in a match, and the gist was rather more frustration at the poor turnout than delight at landing on a purse less than a grand smaller than when the same gelding had won a Uttoxeter novice handicap the previous May. Cornwall is a sporting man, and he wants the sport he participates in to be competitive and meaningful.
What is undeniable, however, is that the yard is on its worst run since the turn of the century, the aforementioned victory for Flichity still constituting his most recent success. Only one runner has mustered a triple figure RPR in the meantime.
I’m not sure what’s changed to precipitate such a decline in fortunes, apart from, perhaps, not much action in terms of sourcing new inmates for the Long Clawson-based operation. It’s noticeable that there have been no new purchases for the yard since summer 2013 by the racehorse transporter Nick Sarson, who had a bit of a gift at finding Cornwall cast-offs from other yards for often little more than a grand. I don’t know if Sarson has stopped that line of work, or whether the two simply no longer work together. Anyone?
Either way, in answer to the initial question, Flichity’s official hurdle rating of 49 is still higher than that of both Finch Flyer (Jeff Sadik; 45) and Our Georgie Girl (Paul Phillips; 46).
He’s not the lowest rated chaser in training right now, either. Both of those lower rated hurdlers are also officially worse chasers at present (with ORs of 44 and 46 respectively), and Mark Gillard’s Surprise Us can additionally “boast” a lower chasing rating of 48. Flichity is equal fourth lowest on 49 along with Derrick Scott’s ageing mare Lupita.
None of these figures come close to setting lowest totals for chasers or hurdlers since the ratings ladder was revised in autumn 1989. When John Upson’s demise was at its keenest he managed to get chasers Kevin Fancy (confusingly a mare) and Dramatic Victory down to marks of 13 and 26 respectively, albeit the latter was retired before getting chance to race off that career-low. To add context to those figures, when my old pal Quixall Crossett bowed out as a 16-year-old, he was still rated all of 33lb superior than Kevin Fancy at her worst.
Hurdles-wise, I’m sure similar depths have been plumbed on several occasions, although as I write this the rating of 35 for the miniscule and rather limited Crestina Crossett is the lowest figure I can immediately recall from memory.
Would I have prevented any of those named from racing, however? Not on your life.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
The Society Man ran off 44 in a Novice Chase earlier in the year and ran well enough in that and a race at Cartmel a few weeks later to have his mark go up to the low 70’s.
A return of 0-48 over fences, mostly accumulated for Michael Chapman, is pretty eye-watering, though in reality he should have defied a high-90s rating twice for the same handler at Market Rasen during 2014. I was present to see him shoot Joe Cornwall out of the saddle at the last with the race in safe keeping on one of those instances, whilst he was worried out of holding on in another.
Talented or moderate, Chapman’s horses are never knowingly underraced, and they don’t all thrive on it forever. Heck, even Orpen Wide soured eventually, though heaven knows it took a while.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Can anyone remember the name of Michael Chapman’s horse that finished fourth or fifth at a big price in what’s now the Betfair hurdle at Newbury? It was ridden by Billy Worthington but soon had whatever ability it had run out of it by Chapman’s insistence in racing the horse every second week. must have been 20 years as I’m sure Sir Peter did the commentary.
Can anyone remember the name of Michael Chapman’s horse that finished fourth or fifth at a big price in what’s now the Betfair hurdle at Newbury? It was ridden by Billy Worthington but soon had whatever ability it had run out of it by Chapman’s insistence in racing the horse every second week. must have been 20 years as I’m sure Sir Peter did the commentary.
I guess you mean NON VINTAGE. 3rd in 1996 at 33/1
That horse was ULTRA tough. It ran a total 26 times in 1996 (Flat and Jumps combined).
Can anyone remember the name of Michael Chapman’s horse that finished fourth or fifth at a big price in what’s now the Betfair hurdle at Newbury? It was ridden by Billy Worthington but soon had whatever ability it had run out of it by Chapman’s insistence in racing the horse every second week. must have been 20 years as I’m sure Sir Peter did the commentary.
I guess you mean NON VINTAGE. 3rd in 1996 at 33/1
That horse was ULTRA tough. It ran a total 26 times in 1996 (Flat and Jumps combined).
Thank you. It was bugging me. He may have been ultra tough but 26 times in a year would knock the stuffing out of most horses.
Wondered if anyone might have picked up on this before now, but not long after this thread John Cornwall managed to send out two winners in rapid succession, albeit The Jugopolist and Next Exit as opposed to Flichity.
All at once, a best seasonal return since 2013-14. Good on yer, son.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
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