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A trainer who has won about 200 races in the past five seasons (with over 150 of them being chases) and with the current poor run of form, it would be interesting to hear a statement form her. Apart from that what we hear every year that the autumn ground was too quick or the horses are slowly coming to hand you can expect her to let us know, if there is a virus in the yard or something else that went wrong.
Apart from Royale Pagaille in the Betfair and Djelo in the Charlie Hall (okay he only beat a 2m5f horse which seems out of form) everything else is beaten about 8-10 furlongs from home.
That’s clearly not the way she would like to have it at this stage of the season.Gavin Cromwell’s yard is the same. He’s something like 1 win from last 150 runners.
Both stables without a doubt under a cloud at the moment and you couldn’t back one from either- regardless of all other considerations.
How can you back her horses into single digits, considering this is her worst season ever?
Once again without a winner in the past 40 days from 44 runners…. Something is going badly wrong with almost half of her runners not in contention from about four furlongs out.Cromwell had the Thyestes winner. Who could have thought his horses might be about to find some form?
When’s spring … Cheltenham … Lol maybe he knows he can’t go to war against Mullins for a full season so is prepping his horses for a short …very productive window
Pick 3 on Saturday champion 2025/2026
I don’t think it’s fair towards the horses. Royale Pagaille and Jungle Boogie ran the worst races of their entire chasing careers only a week ago. If you’re that good and experienced as a trainer of her calibre should be, there is no need to ask horses the impossible.
Cromwell looked a bit “surprised” about the return to form when interviewed by Gary O’Brien. But he always has that innocent look in of a crook his face…. I mean that’s what he is.
If you check the Oscars list Cromwell is up for best actor … If your surprised by this then it’s time to give up racing and take up knitting
Pick 3 on Saturday champion 2025/2026
Now 43 days without a winner and 51 runners. Only 7 winners all season at a 7% strike rate and 2 of those wins were Djelo.
50 horses used this season and only 6 have won for the stable.
Mind you Charlie Longsdon’s stable haven’t had a winner since November.
I’m not sure if Venetia would win a race restricted to trainers with the surname Williams at the moment. Not with Chester, Christian, Evan, Ian, Jane & Noel taking part too!
I did post about how well Jamie Snowden’s stable had been going but since posting his stable’s winners have dropped off. Perhaps this post will help Venetia and have the opposite effect?!
She had a horse run OK in the first race at Plumpton yesterday but it was beaten fairly easily by the favourite in the end.
I see Cromwell had a winner at Punchestown. Coming into form just before the DRF.
I recall reading some time ago an interesting theory on stable form. It was suggested that there is something wrong in every yard 99.9% of the time, mostly undetected viruses where, like humans, some horses are affected and some are not. Some end up with the equivalent of a slight cold, others it hits hard.
A huge anount of food goes in and out of the yard. Some of it will carry contamination at some level. That contamination, like the virus, might affect 2% of the horses or 72% of the horses.
Trachea washes, blood tests, etc., generally show nothing, or show something else that throws treatment off track. So, when yards hit a rich vein where almost everything runs to form, it is nothing more than the stars aligning for a couple of weeks when viruses and contamination have somehow missed the yard for that short spell. Also, yards in the big training centres are more susceptible to ill health simply on the crowd-infection basis – passing in the street, using the same gallops etc.
There might be nothing in it but it struck me as highly plausible and still does.
Maybe her horses are simply not that good this year? Or, if there is a virus, she will have a yard full of well handicapped horses soon.
Her losing run stands at 60 now, with her last winner coming 49 days ago. No doubt she’ll have well handicapped horses, but will they get the ground they need by the time they start recapturing their form?
She has also entered nine horses at Bangor this coming Friday. Maybe this is when they start turning the corner.Ten years ago, in the 2015/16 season, she trained 29 horses that achieved a racing Post rating of at least 130. This season she has nine that have reached that level.
In 2015/16, she had five horses that won at least £50k in prize money. Those five were owned by:
Tony Bloom – Now a Mullins fan
Mezzone family – Last horse in training was with Dan Skelton
Mrs J Burt – Had no horses at all since 2018
Hills of Ledbury – The horse was Yala Enki, who was moved to Nicholls
Boultbee Brooks Ltd – presumably the man of that name who now trains his own horses.Owners move on, owners die, it happens to almost every trainer as they get older. Ms Williams has long had young horses coming from France, purchased by the agent Guy Petit. But that source seems to have dried up, perhaps through lack of money from her current owners. Prices for horses from France certainly haven’t been falling!
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Of all the female trainers without a joint licence Sam England is currently the most successful this season with 26 winners.
There are a number of female trainers that have exceeded Venetia Williams win tally this season.
They include Lavelle, Menzies, Candlish, Jane Williams, Curtis, Sayer, Woollacott, Corbett & Morgan.
AP – yep, that’s the same Clive Boultbee-Brooks as has given training a go himself most recently.
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.
Steeplechasing – I can well believe that germ theory. It’s one perhaps exacerbated further by the near-total absence so far this winter of a cold snap sustained for sufficiently long to kill off plenty of the blighters.
There are some trainers who talk about the germ line, and of how training at hilly locations sufficiently highly above it grants automatic protection against most, if not all, infections of their respective strings. Norman Mason and Richard Guest referred to it repeatedly with regard to their Brancepeth base, and I’m fairly certain Joel Parkinson did in an interview not so long ago too.
Brancepeth is approximately 141 metres above sea level. High Eldwick, home of Parkinson’s joint operation with Sue and Harvey Smith, is about 167 above. Kings Caple, where Venetia Williams is based, is only 66. Significant?
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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