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It has added a bit of interest to the end of the season; had a small saver on Skelton at 3/1
Just base the Trainers title on a points system. 6 points for a Class 1 win, 5 points for Class 2 and so on. Have say a dozen bonus point races during the season.
Mullins down roughly 13k after the 4th at Perth today. I think he could go 1/10 before racing on Saturday. Not that I’d be backing him.
What are the odds of Sandown being abandoned on Saturday? Whatever they are, the represent Skelton’s only chance of winning the title.
All races at Saturday’s Sandown meeting have been rescheduled to ‘capture’ the culmination of the trainers’ title race.
Races brought forward 30 mins. 1st race 1.20.
Gold Cup now 4.10.ITV will cover races from 1.50, right up to the last at 4.45.
Skelton is putting up a great fight- He can still have a good lead going into Saturday and if WM doesn’t win the Bet365 it will be very close. At present DS is following the Pipe model, but his owners have garnered over 3.3mil in prize money so they’ll be happy. All he needs is a few more grade 1 horses- He’s got the Ferguson/Mason group so if JP were to send him a few more and maybe the ‘double green’ , he could dominate the next few years.
I spoke to him at Plumpton and watched him imteract with many racegoers and he comes across as a very pleasant bloke so I say good luck to him.
The prize money in NH is far too backloaded, so any success at Cheltenham and Aintree suddenly puts Mullins in the title hunt; the equivalent of appearing in the Champions League at the Semi Final stage…..
Why didn’t he have all these runners in Oct, Nov, Dec, etc ????
A championship should be about the whole season from start to end, not the final 6 weeks….Skelton can feel robbed if he is beaten.
Everyone knows the rules at the start of the season, so I don’t believe anyone is entitled to feel robbed.
There is an issue with the value of the Grand National but all trainers know the Championship is decided on prize money, which means Cheltenham and Aintree will inevitably have a huge influence over who wins.
No point ifs and buts , Championship is what it is . Didnt Stoute win Irish Championship at one point when English trainers dominated on flat in Ireland in between Vincent and Aidan eras .
Mullins by far best trainer anyway , systems , scourcing of horses , attracting owners , targeting of horses .
National says it all Nicholls runs 5 was it?? , all gassed out , Mullins multiple place getters , he just so far ahead , pure genuis .If you have a stable of 300/400 horses & can enter half the field in a 20 runner race there is no glory if you win it.
If you throw enough s**t at a wall some of it will stick.
Its like Ethiopia or Kenya having 10 runners in an Olympic Marathon.Its no surprise than in the Olympic athletics countries are only allowed 3 athletes per event.
I would have gone to Sandown tomorrow but now will not bother.
As I have said before Mullins will destroy NH racing unless he is stopped.
Success breeds success, though. How can other trainers compete when every owner wants their horses with Mullins. And I assume his scouts know they have owners prepared to pay for the horses they source? I was told that one of the secrets to his success is the way that his horses walk back from the gallops through an icy cold stream. Seem to recall an article about Imperial Call years ago saying he did the same. Maybe the Irish trainers have access to more icy cold streams than we do. Having said that, our local trainer Adam Nicol who trains his horses on the beach and in the sea has a 57% strike rate over the past 14 days! I only spoke to two people the other day at our local track but they both rolled their eyes and said how unfair it was that Mullins is plundering prize money at small tracks that he would normally ignore, so it isn’t just me that feels aggrieved by it. It is, however, giving Dan* a lot of publicity which he needs having lost one of his most supportive owners.
*who, years ago came to our racing club in a working men’s club in a run down part of Birmingham, which is why I’ve followed his career ever since.“If you throw enough s**t at a wall some of it will stick.”
Which of his runners in the big race are s**t MissIsabella? Which don’t deserve to be there? Which are the non stayers, the clapped out badly handicapped has beens, the rubbish? I note there are no reserves so it’s not as if he has kept anyone out of the race. Yes, Grangeclare West has pushed half the field out of the handicap .. but it is a “Premier handicap”. Take out the Mullins horses and it is nothing of the sort, although the other runners are all decent and deserve their place.
In fact , take the Mullins horses out of the rest of the card and the “Jumps Finale- Where Champions are Crowned” as it is marketed would look thin indeed. Jonbon and Pic d’Orhy are the only ones I would cross the road to see, maybe Hitman who I have a soft spot for and Edwardstone in a “didn’t he used to be good?” kind of way.
If Mullins’ domination is going to kill racing then it stands to reason that other Irish trainers would have been crushed first. If so then how has Rachel Blackmore just completed the set of Cheltenham’s big open grade ones (in addition to a Grand National)? How did Inothewayurthinkin win the Gold Cup? How did Banbridge and Hewick win the last couple of King Georges? If Closutton and all its inhabitants disappeared off the face of the earth tomorrow then there wouldn’t be a sweet little kids sports day of a season in GB with all the smaller GB trainers getting a lovely turn to win the races. De Bromhead, Cromwell, JOB, Emmett Mullins, probably Elliott when he gets the wheels back on the wagon, and some smaller trainers like Shark with one good horse would come over and win a lot of the stuff.
Dan Skelton isn’t complaining, he’s in there swinging. Paul Nicholls is running the good horses he has left fit to run. Jeremy Scott rolled the dice in the Champion Hurdle, proved “if you’re not in you can’t win” in the best possible way and gave a great interview. Rebecca Curtis won at Cheltenham with her one good horse then took him to Ireland and walloped the field. Even Cotton Wool Nicky sounds like he’s going to plonk a substitute jockey on Constitution Hill and let him venture to Punchestown. That’s the spirit and it makes good racing.
“I would have gone to Sandown tomorrow but now will not bother.”
Well if you’d taken that attitude last year you would have deprived yourself of seeing this year’s Grand National winner before he was famous, but whatever
“Is Willie Mullins’ domination boring?”
No. And he isn’t dominating, as green describes above.
Is Nicky Henderson’s “will he run, won’t he run”, “take them out unless the ground is absolutely 100% perfect” and “keep them wrapped in cotton wool” approach boring?
Yes.
I’ll always favour a trainer donning a trilby as it seems that’s a look that’s on its way out. So good on Willie. Yes I have a certain amount of resentment about the way things have turned but he’s bringing a few good horses for the public to see.
In 2016 he brought a strong team to the Aintree Thursday meeting when there was a small possibility of him becoming champion and it made me decide to make the trip from South Wales.
As regards the Bet365 Whitbread Tankard Trophy he’s making it pretty indecipherable by putting in 4 that haven’t won over fences and a few that have had just 3 runs. It doesn’t seem right but it’s not without interest.Complete overkill having 10 of the 20 runners in the Bet365 tomorrow. Yes Willie we know you’re going to win the trainers title (I was predicting it before Cheltenham).
Is it feeding his ego? Does someone get immense satisfaction in crushing all competition knowing full well they do not have the ammo to compete? Bit like scoring 900 for 3 against a much weaker bowling attack. Beating a Division 2 team 9-0. Beating a tennis player ranked well below you by a triple bagel?
It’s no longer a sport. It’s a multi-million behemoth business wanting a complete monopoly on all Grade 1 races across the UK & Ireland, where driving your rivals into the dirt makes you much richer and ultimately everyone else poorer.
It will have serious long-term repercussions across the industry for NH racing if anyone cares to take their head out of the sand for just a few minutes.
MissIsabella I’d go to Sandown and watch history being made…. either way.
And if you would own one of the ten entries in the Bet365 Gold Cup with a reasonable chance of winning the race, would you tell Willie “Please take him out, I don’t want to upset the rest. I’m sure we could find a 15k race round Tipperary he might win.”??? No way i would do that. If the horse is fit and the race conditions suit, I’d run.
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