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It was a fabulous days racing at Plumpton today, the large crowd were treated to a really good horse in Absurde and Simon Holt was quite right in saying it’s the best the course has seen. VPU won well before becoming a powerhouse. Looking forward to the £100K Champion Chase tomorrow, Plumpton really know how to finance a meeting, ARC could learn a thing or two.
I didn’t have any bets, and didn’t know any of today’s results before just watching the replays from Plumpton.
Mullins wins all the prize money, because of course he does cos he’s got all the good horses, and two solid hurdlers lose their lives.
Completely deflating stuff all round really I’m afraid.
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It’s not that the domination is boring at the top level, but the race for the Championship has consequences for trainers that aren’t actually looking to compete with the juggernauts.
While it may be great to see Absurde at Plumpton, it’s like dropping a Premier League team into L2 with all their resources.
As Chris Gordon says in the RP, “The championship is driving me mad, normally we’d potter down to Plumpton with some brilliant chances and I can’t believe I’m having to take on Willie Mullins.”
“For us local trainers, this is a brilliant meeting. We’ve won the Sussex Champion Hurdle three times and it is a race we target, so it was pretty gutting yesterday to see four top-class Mullins horses in there.
“It’s pretty unhealthy when you’ve suddenly got this going on. This guy has come over and almost in a month he’s destroyed everyone and it’s just a mass of horses. I’m very grateful that I don’t train in Ireland.”
Gordon sounds rather bitter. Why should Willie Mullins need his permission to have runners at Plumpton?
“Gordon sounds rather bitter. Why should Willie Mullins need his permission to have runners at Plumpton?”
This
GB horse racing just has to step up to the plate, i’m afraid.
The reality is that horse racing in the UK is a minority sport competing with other minority sports, in terms of supporters and, these days, money and sponorship.
Reality check time.Just one thought on this, if the ridiculous prize money for the GN was shaved to a more realistic level, we probably wouldn’t be having this debate.
I still struggle to understand how the Gold Cup winner takes home c£150k less, rather than more, than a Grand National winner
Agree the prize money for Grand National is too much. To win the title, realistically Mullins has to win the National.
I wouldn’t say racing was a minority sport, at least in terms of the number of spectators. But it is obviously a long way behind football, especially in media interest.
Chris Gordon may not like to hear it but if he wants to be competitive he needs to get some better horses. The entry conditions at Plumpton did not say “open to all qualified horses except those trained by Willie Mullins”.
The Closutton trainer is running a business and needs to win prize money for his owners. He is not running a charity for Chris Gordon.
Some very strange posts about Chris Gordon. Renowned as a very shrewd purchaser of horses, and a great supporter of Irish point to pointers, I sincerely hope that he continues to serve his customers in the same vein. People of my ilk rely on people of his ilk. Unfortunately his owners will never have the deep pockets of Mullins’, but these sorts of mind numbing ego-driven title races only happen now and again. Thank goodness.
I took think that Chris Gordon is entirely reasonable to voice his irritation. Mullins is now shipping battalions to contend in races which he’d pretty much ignored in previous years and why? Have the prize funds at Plumpton and elsewhere suddenly soared? Just what would winning the British trainers championship for the second time gain him apart from rubbing the nose of Skelton et al in the dirt? Is it just to ensure that every possible British owner with deep pockets buys their horses via Closutton?
I don’t think this is necessarily boring but I don’t think it’s healthy, it’s ruthless and makes me love the sport a little less…Oscar,I totally agree.
Mullins is going to kill British NH Racing,
he does’nt care about the sport,smaller trainers or the history of racing,he is utterly ruthless.
Once he has killed it here he will probably move on to France.
I find him detestable.Some unbelievable comments here. I’ve said it before that sport is basically the only meritocracy left these days and other trainers need to pull their fingers out. I suppose we should ban Nicholls, Henderson and Skelton from having runners at Plumpton today because they’re not normally there are they?
The only answer re the trainers championship is to have a combined title
i.e before prize money comes into effect you need to have trained say 75 winners in the UK,maybe even higher than that.It is not acceptable for a foreign based trainer to come & just win the big races.
At least Aiden O’Brien competes throughout the season here.Mullins is only interested in the big races.If he had’nt done so well in the Grand National,would his horses be running at Plumpton.No.
Yea,the jockey championships are based on number of winners, so make the trainers ones the same!
A meritocracy is when ability is the only means to success. Sometimes in soccer you get an outlier like when Leicester won the Premiership but where are they now? The power continues to lie with the usual suspects and the FA and EUFA seem powerless to effect meaningful change. I wouldn’t call that a meritocracy, it’s just big business.
Rugby Union in England has a different price cap to that employed in France which gives an advantage to French clubs attracting overseas players – is that meritocracy? No it’s randomly applied business rules.
No doubt Mullins got to where he is by hard work and talent but I don’t happen to like how he appears to be turning the screw to ensure it remains that way. I’m sure all his owners were delighted to find their horses were running in places they’d never heard of till recently. Maybe now they know about the delights of Plumpton they might consider switching to a more local trainer like Chris Gordon?Sport has never been a meritocracy.
Money always dictates where the participants finish over the long run.
Governing bodies have an opportunity to try and level playing fields through regulation, but unsurprisingly tend towards keeping the participants with money happy rather than doing their job.
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