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Over the past few years, O’Neill has trained some top German imports for JP – Olaso (won a Group 2 on the flat in Cologne), Champions Day (placed in Group company) and now Donaldson (won a Group 1 last year beating the great Schiaparelli, although he does now appear in another ownership). Through my red, yellow and black tinted spectacles, I expected each one of these to at least be placed in very decent company over hurdles. OK, Olaso ran well in a couple of decent handicaps but I expected more, Champions Day didn’t win a thing, and certainly Donaldson was really disappointing on his hurdles debut last month. Yes, you can argue the case that German bred horses aren’t always successful over hurdles, but Catch Me (now trianed by Eddie O’Grady) was only Listed class in Germany but was placed in the Supreme Novices Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival this year.
I’m not sure what it is – is O’Neill just unlucky with his imports, or is there another reason for what I would call decent horses under-achieving.
Darren – Anglo German
Jonjo O’Neill has had enough decent horses to have made a fist of challenging for top honours, he just simply falls a distance behind Paul Nicholls and co. in his training ability. The likes of Iris’s Gift and Rhinestone Cowboy could have been trained by anyone to do what they did (and ridden by anyone, in the case of the latter), but horses such as Very Optimistic clearly didn’t derive any benefit from being under Jonjo’s care after looking nothing short of sensational in bumpers.
Having said that, I don’t think he’s a particularly good judge of a horse, and if he’s advising JP in any respect then that could be half the problem. Take Spectait for example, rated 105 on the flat and said by Jonjo to be a bloody good novice hurdler. He won a poor maiden event at Aintree before being stuffed out of site behind Imsingingtheblues at Cheltenham (and that wasn’t exactly a brilliant race).
He’s lucky enough to still have Exotic Dancer, Black Jack Ketchum and Don’t Push It, though just how good they’d be with a different trainer is a scary thought.
What rubbish about JP being frustrated. If you get done you get done and by whom it doesn’t matter…..what do you think your retained Jockey should stop the 10/1 shot that did you?
Point is surely Mccoy should have ridden JP’s horse as he’s on one of the highest pay packets in racing to ride JP’s horses. As for Jonjo, to call him one of the greatist trainers in the country, well his training record hardly confirms that. Right now i’d rather have Jim best at the helm of Jackdaws than Jonjo, and anyway, I believe you were good friends with Jonjo so maybe your bias. If so, could you tell him to get his head out his [expletive].
Thanks in advance.
WTF are you talking about? Jonjo’s total of 81 winners for the season almost 30 more than PN is enough for anyone to say he is one of the best in the country.
He may not have taken top honours but you can only pee with the wullie you got. There are Millions more pouring it’s way into Pipe’s and PN’s yards………anyway how would anyone know how many horses yards buy and the owners lose fortunes….some never even see a racecourse….we only hear about the good ones.
I don’t give a hoot if you think I am biased or not the facts speak for themselves and your post is hardly worth answering.
Doesn’t Nicholls shut the vast majority of his yard down over Summer though. I mean in effect O’Neill has May, June, July, August, September and much of October to bang in as many as he can before Nicholls starts to churn out the novice hurdle winners and the ex-French horses.
Doesn’t Nicholls shut the vast majority of his yard down over Summer though. I mean in effect O’Neill has May, June, July, August, September and much of October to bang in as many as he can before Nicholls starts to churn out the novice hurdle winners and the ex-French horses.
Sorry if you think I was comparing Jonjo to Nicholls I assure it was not the point of my post.
Someone has to have the best horse in the country and right now Nicholls is the man at the helm. He is a great trainer and held in the same regard as guys like Nick Henderson and that is saying something.
Jonjo will train his fair share of Cheltenham winners in the future there is little doubt about that…….but to win Champion Hurdles and Gold Cups you need the right horse…..racing doesn’t have Harry Potters…..ED would have how many Grade 1 wins to his credit inc the Gold Cup if Kauto Star wasn’t around?……….no one in their right mind would say if the trainers were reversed the result would be different.
All this talk about what McCoy should do and shouldn’t do is just gibberish especially if a person doesn’t know the full story. You can be sure JP would be consulted beforehand and he is nobody’s mug.
JP has tremendous loyalty to people despite his riches. You just need to take Flagship Uberalles as an example. He could have sent the horse to his own yard and Jonjo when he bought it, but never as he didn’t want to be unfair to Hobbs………Hobbs did nothing with the horse but never once, that I am aware off, did JP threaten to take the horse away.
JP understands racing and he has great respect for Jonjo and the chances of JP turning his back on Jonjo when he has a lean spell are round about Ziltch.
Franchoek reportedly stays with King but will be ridden by McCoy in future. I saw a purchase price of £300k mentioned.
The post mentioning successful Pipe trained German imports omits Seebald.No runners on Tuesday, 13 entered on Wednesday.
Jonjo says they’ll all win David….get stuck in
Does anyone know who advises JP on what horses to buy or if he has his own breeding programme? Judging by the fact he quite often has two or three entries in Irish races it would not surprise if he actually has at least 150 horses in training. Considering those sort of numbers very few turn out to be anything special.
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He’s lucky enough to still have Exotic Dancer, Black Jack Ketchum and Don’t Push It, though just how good they’d be with a different trainer is a scary thought.
Mate you are scary where do you get these ideas from? Do you make them up yourself or are you getting divine guidance?………If you are I would think about changing my religion
if him upstairs had trained Exotic Dancer he still wouldn’t have beaten Kauto Star to date and as far as Very Optimistic is concerned he beat nothing at Ascot………..the second was a friggin boat and the rest were as big as bulls or weren’t off a yard………..one of my biggest bets of the season he was. Not because he was special…..just one of those races where word gets around and you now you don’t have to be much to win….so much so I was phoned from the course to ask if I wanted on…the truth is I could have jumped on my grannies back and won looking like a future CH horse or whatever…..it was a worthless contest……….most bumper form generally isn’t worth the paper its written on and one in 100 turn out to be average or better.
The horse was ok but nothing you would write home about. Jonjo won a nice hurdle race with him and that’s about all he is………a nice horse but a long way of top class.
Olay Olay went like a horse that either wasn’t over a hardish race at Aintree, or has the lurgy. I wouldn’t touch the yard with stolen at the minute and that includes Exotic Dancer.
Olay Olay – is he a Cheltenham horse FOF?
No need to wink
runs purely on merit.You can forget his last run
Cheltenham usually on the soft side, suited best to horses with bundles of stamina, stiff uphill finish? Hardly his cup of tea.
2m4f at Chelteham in soft ground in a hot race you wouldn’t have 10 pence on him at the moment despite the Wetherby form working out well.
The likes of good ground at Newbury Haydock or Aintree would be more to his liking.
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