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Great news that Lady Cecil has applied to continue at Warren Place next year. I’m sure that I’m not alone in wishing her every success.
Hear hear Glad!
"this perfect mix of poetry and destruction, this glory of rhythm, power and majesty: the undisputed champion of the world!!!"
Great news that Lady Cecil has applied to continue at Warren Place next year. I’m sure that I’m not alone in wishing her every success.
Hear hear Glad!
Hear hear too
Delighted Lady Cecil is to continue. Hopefully Prince Khaled will come out and back Lady C publicly
Bad news from Warren Place that Mike Marshall is leaving. Perhaps he rather expected the main job. I hope they can fill the big void he will leave.
"this perfect mix of poetry and destruction, this glory of rhythm, power and majesty: the undisputed champion of the world!!!"
Bad news from Warren Place that Mike Marshall is leaving. Perhaps he rather expected the main job. I hope they can fill the big void he will leave.
Surely Marshall is more qualified than Henry’s Missus?
I think sentiment is blinding a LOT of people.
I think sentiment is blinding a LOT of people.
Blinded? How?
Running a stable is essentially about having an eye for horses and good management and planning skills. Whilst I’m sure that Mike Marshall is capable of performing these jobs, there can be little doubt that Lady Cecil is more than able to run her stables.
Bad news from Warren Place that Mike Marshall is leaving. Perhaps he rather expected the main job. I hope they can fill the big void he will leave.
Maybe he saw the ghost
I think Mike Marshal has resigned and moved on, I wonder why. He says he going on to a further challenge he has got a new job with an arabian owner cant think of his name.
He’s probably a bit fed up
it happens to all of us
you’ve been there for a while
and you think to yourself,
for some reason I’ve had enough,
it might be bad memories
or the energy has gone.What do they say – move on
after two years to further
your prospects and show
your not a stick in the mud.
It’s all bunkum you’ve
got to listen to your
inner ear. Training is damn hard
you are only as good as
your current season.
Possibly the horses aren’t
winking at him any more
Having spent last week up at the sales in Newmarket, I asked a few re the Warren Place situation. Everyone said the same. MM has been running the show over the last year and LC and her sister were rarely seen in the yard let alone on a hands-on role. Sister rode out but LC only occasionally accompanied Henry round evening stables. For me this hardly indicates a thorough education.
Presumably MM thought he would get licence (by all accounts he is a nice bloke who knows the time of day) – obviously as I said earlier, blood is thicker than water.
Still money is everything in this game and so long as they are supported by owners, winners will happen BUT I would be surprised if it continues at the level the yard has been used to.
I am sure you are right Jinny that MM thought he would take over. Reading the Lady Cecil interview in today’s Post she says that she herself had not expected to continue but feels that she wants to keep the "Cecil" story going a bit longer. I think she feels it is the right thing to do by Henry.
It was very moving to read that nobody actually expected him to die. HE was sure he was going to make Royal Ascot and had even gone into business with his tailor three weeks before he died! "He wasn’t ready to go" Jane said. He had also persuaded every one around him that he would pull through. This tells me that they would have had little or no plans in place for his death and have really played it by ear.
She is happy to confess that she was not hands on before his death but is very much so now and she will be getting her trainer qualifications this winter. It goes without saying that the next 12 months will be vital and it will be interesting to see how many horses she is sent by the Prince and the Niarchos family and of what quality. I am sure much will depend on this.
She has some very progressive, late maturing 3 year olds like Retirement Plan, The Mighty Yar, Venue, Hamelin and Squire Osbaldeston who could all prove pretty decent at 4 so hopefully she will be ok until the Frankel progeny arrive. I am sure if she is still about then she will be given some of them!
"this perfect mix of poetry and destruction, this glory of rhythm, power and majesty: the undisputed champion of the world!!!"
Well to be honest I doubted he’d make Christmas when I last saw him – in fact I thought he did well to last as long as he did so I can’t believe they didn’t make some sort of plans.
Henry Ponsonby wasn’t overly pro the new set-up though was he when interviewed on the Morning Line yesterday. When NL said something like "presumably you’ll be supporting Jane?" he was quick to point out the horses were moving to Alan Kings. And he also pointed out the MM was the person responsible for the success.
And the trainer qualifications are just doing your NVQ 3 in Horse Management (easy) and attending 3 modules each lasting a week at the British Racing School. There are no exams and it is then up to the BHA to grant you your licence once you have been for an interview. To my knowledge they haven’t "failed" anyone yet although Graham Bradley may not qualify as a "fit and responsible" person. So long as you have got £40k (it may have gone up) in the bank as disposal assets, anyone can apply. They do suggest you have at least 2 years experience in a senior role (head lad/assistant) to qualify although I would query some people’s interpretation of that!
So anyone can become a trainer so long as they have the money available – the trouble starts when without proper hands-on knowledge, they don’t know enough to instruct staff in how you want them to ride a particular horse, whether or not that horse is quite 100%, does that horse need another few pieces of fast work before he runs, is that horse going to handle a track like Epsom at this stage in its career or will I **** it up for good……etc etc.
A relative unknown, George Scott, has got the job of assistant.
Forgive me, however they seem to be hiring young "chinless wonders" and edging out the established team. A friend of mine had a Cecil trained filly run at Wolverhampton recently and some, to use his words, "blond chinless wonder" turned up as Travelling Head Lad when they expected Billy Brown.
Said "chinless wonder" seemed to have little input but to grin inanely in the parade ring.
It would appear Lady Cecil is overlooking the very reason why Warren Place fell into the doldrums post-Julie Cecil – i.e. loss of key staff.
Fair play if she wants to build her own new team, however I cannot help but feel the stable is about to fall into terminal decline.
She probably did herself no favours in running a well fancied/bred Niarchos filly at York on Saturday in the same race as a perennial loser owned by Henry Ponsonby only for the latter to win at 16s. The racing managers of the Niarchos and Abdullah equine legions were loyal to Henry Cecil (as opposed to Warren Place) and in the absence of one single juvenile classic aspirant at Warren Place, I am staggered that the new regime seem hell bent on allowing such key members of staff to leave.
I am not sure you could describe George Scott as a chinless wonder. He has a background with racehorses not dissimilar to the one Mike Marshall had. He probably has a greater breadth of experience than Sir Henry had a the same stage of his career. Sir Henry was not much older than George is now when he became the trainer at Warren place. From his own book about his early life and career, it would be easy to describe Sir Henry as chinless, and even feckless, until he decided to become a responsible adult about his chosen career.
I was slightly surprised that Mike Marshall decided to leave Warren Place. If his reason for leaving was that he wanted the trainers role there, I am slightly more surprised that he has chosen another assistant role, rather than try to set up under his own banner. After the last few years of success at Warren Place, now would be the best time to use his current profile in the racing world to gather support from owners and financial backers. There is less of a chance that his profile of success in the next couple of years will eclipse that of his time at Warren Place.
As for Running Dear beating Flow by a head on Saturday in a Class 4 Handicap. It has always been the case that if Warren Place have two in a race, then they will both have a fair chance of winning, with the possible exception of designated pacemakers. I expect that Henry Ponsonby’s syndicate were happy. I cannot see the Niarchos family or Alan Cooper being the type to be having a punt on a 20 runner handicap to supplement their income. Their ideas match Sir Henry’s; the Niarchos family is mostly concerned about finding one or two Group level performers from each year’s intake. Flow had already established that he is about an 85 rated horse, he is a colt and not a filly that could eventually become a broodmare at Flaxman holdings, and unless someone knows of a reason why he could show huge improvement at four, he is probably headed for the sales. Not much reason for angst there.
Things may indeed go pear-shaped at Warren Place in the future. I cannot think of anyone who could take over there and have anywhere near the success of Sir Henry. Lady Cecil had the choice of selling up or keeping going. Having made her choice, I am pleased that she has the determination to keep going despite the problems and knock-backs. The fact that she is from a racing family will have prepared her for the inevitable things that go wrong.
My mistake Marginal, you are quite right, Flow is indeed a colt. Nevertheless it struck me as odd that Running Deer, a filly for whom the owners must have been desperate for a win (she is from the same family as the potentially Group class Eye Of The Storm) was pitched in against a Niarchos favourite from the same yard.
As I understand it Running Deer has been the subject of heavy market support from the yard in the past, but on this occasion both the stable staff and indeed the owners were resigned to the filly being second best. It will be interesting to observe whether Running Deer remains at Warren Place.
As regards the new Assistant being comparable with Sir Henry, I beg to differ. Sir Henry, as you know, became a trainer having assisted his step father, one of the most successful trainers in the land. I think it is Sir Henry’s typical modesty that allows a reader to draw the conclusions you have (chinless/feckless) whereas in truth Sir Henry was anything but and even prior to taking over Warren Place from another legend in 1976, he had secured the support of influential owner breeders such as de Trafford and de Walden.
I wonder which influential owner breeders Mr Scott will be bringing to Warren Place?
As regards Mike Marshall not setting up on his own, one can only assume that he hasn’t the financial backing to take that step at this stage. Taking over the license of a well established training centre is one thing, setting up from scratch in an economic slump is entirely different. The fact he has moved implies to me that he hasn’t a lot of faith in the new regime at Warren Place having the same degree of success enjoyed when Sir Henry was alive. So it is entirely understandable for him to seek a role with a young up and coming trainer who is about to double his string.
Apparently headhunted by David Loder – he only spent a couple of weeks as Assistant to Simon Callaghan before returning home. Here he is in all his glory whilst at Michael Bells. (hope he remembers that chewing gum is not a very pleasant thing to watch whilst being interviewed!
Sadly, this has the makings of a slow-motion disaster.
I’m inferring from what some of the current owners in the yard have (and haven’t) been saying, that they’ll maybe have one or two yearlings with Lady C out of sentiment, but increasingly they’ll be looking elsewhere.
It would be nice if it were otherwise, but it’s not apparent that Lady C possesses any training skills.
I’m struggling to think of any trainers’ widows, who didn’t already have some track record in training before they married, who made much of a fist of it. Mercy Rimell perhaps?
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