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After the Yorshire Oaks, Gosden walks down toward the winners enclosure from the stands and he’s ambushed by Channel Four on the walkway. He’s asked about Dar Re Mi’s targets and after mentioning the Arc, he makes a pithy, barbed comment about a race suitable for the filly in Japan worth £1.2m. I don’t remember the precise comment, but it was definitely a complaint about available prize money here and, possibly, a warning too.
i saw this interview and thought too that it was a warning forom normaly one of the most freindly of flat trainers.
i thought 300,000 was a good prize for a fillies race and after only 4 turned up for the 600,000 international on tuesday its hard to feel too sorry for flat ownersAfter the Yorshire Oaks, Gosden walks down toward the winners enclosure from the stands and he’s ambushed by Channel Four on the walkway. He’s asked about Dar Re Mi’s targets and after mentioning the Arc, he makes a pithy, barbed comment about a race suitable for the filly in Japan worth £1.2m. I don’t remember the precise comment, but it was definitely a complaint about available prize money here and, possibly, a warning too.
Can’t say ‘warnings’ like Gosdens – cryptic or not – cut much ice with me. Whether the Yorkshire Oaks was worth 300K or 3M is irrelevant really as Dar Re Mi’s now-soared paddock value will be just the same whatever the prize money for the race was. And the money generated from her breeding career will surely dwarf what she’s received in race prize money. Ditto the winner of any other G1.
I’ve no idea how much York themselves contributed to this week’s prize money, but as suggested by both you and I it would be preferential if they propped up everyday races and leave wealthy sponsors, owners and the levy cough up the prize fund for more than sufficiently endowed pattern races.
300K, 600K…jeez, these guys need a stint of earlies down t’pit to realise just how very very fortunate they are to be living in the cloistered land-of-cockaigne they do.
Thankfully I missed Gosden’s churlish moan as I’d switched over to sanity at Stratford to witness David Pipe turn over a 2s-on shot and the estimable Trelawney Hill get the job done with a mini-steamer, in the two handicap chases. The smooth-talking John G ain’t in the same league as those two
Thankfully I missed Gosden’s churlish moan as I’d switched over to sanity at Stratford to witness David Pipe turn over a 2s-on shot and the estimable Trelawney Hill get the job done with a mini-steamer, in the two handicap chases.
Indeed, Drone; Indeed.The risk-reward formula in this country is a paradox: I can’t get to the bottom of it. It’s certainly a more complex issue than Gosden (and his fellow risk-reward sniper, Luca Cumani) realise imo.
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Max/Drone
Personally, I think your doing John Gosden a massive injustice, and this most eloquent and percerptive of today’s trainers isn’t some spoilt rich kid crying for more, but someone whose whole life has been spent in racing, can see what’s happening to the sport in the UK, doesn’t like it, and says so.
It’s a fact of life – in any paid sport – that better money attracts better players, and while races like the KGV1 remain worth about a quarter of the Arc, it will never pull the same quality fields, so what is wrong in saying so?
Attract better players and the sport will grow, look anywhere outside racing and you’ll see that’s the case; the alternative, of course, being the Peter Savill route, and I can’t believe either of you would think that a good thing.Yes, you have to feel sorry for poor old Jonnie Gee. Training a 4 legged goldmine for an owner worth 750 million for the mere pittance of 175 grand in high summer on the Knavesmire.
This is the same bloke who has rounded on working class syndicates running their working class horses in a working class maiden race at Yarmouth not so long ago. Let them eat cake indeed.
True he’s very eloquent and worth listening to, but I’ve read more good ideas, suggestions and constructive criticism in a few years on TRF then I have from Gosden in decades.
As regards the race in Kyoto he "forgot" to mention that Watership Down have breeding interests in Japan. Prizemoney in the land of the rising Yen is massive because gambling on it is massive. They also have sectional timing over there Jonnie, information you refused to give to punters when it was first introduced in the UK.
Whats also interesting in this is the attitude of the racing media. Certain sections of it are all over "team" Ballydoyle for running 4 120+ horses in the Derby, criticising their "juggernaut" approach yet say nothing when Newmarket stalwarts such as Gosden and Cumani send or threaten to send their horses elsewhere.
UK racing has probably given Gosden a life and income that most people only dream of. He’d do well to remember that imo.
Read this, this morning, and it seemed quite appropriate for this thread:
"A survey was once conducted to find out what teenagers think of museums, art galleries and the theatre. Unsurprisingly, it discovered that most of them dislike such places. It seems they think them boring, and associate them with ‘rich old people’. The survey concluded that if homes of the arts offered more cafes and leisure activities, and if performances were shorter, teenagers might be more inclined to go.
With luck, no one will ever take any notice of this survey. It says nothing new, for things have always been thus. If galleries and theatres started trying to attract teenagers they would fail, while at the same time alienating their natural constituencies………"
Should the racecourses and racing authorities be encouraged to read material such as this?
Colin
Nice post as usual, Cav.
RH, his filly, Dar-Re-Mi, had just beaten the dual Oaks winner and confirmed herself the most improved filly in training. Mr Bell can’t buy a winner at the moment – something a forumite mentioned in DL&P before the race – so Johnny G was arguably fortunate to win the race and the dreadful prize money. And the owner, Mrs Lloyd Webber, was overjoyed in the paddock. There is a time and a place.
Last season, he was given a whole hour on ATR to grind his prize money axe. I could listen to him talk for hours about his time with VOB and his career in America – certainly "An Audience With John Gosden" at my local theatre would have at least one audience member – but his prize money skit is tedious and perverse, as Cav points out.
Same with the millionaire trainer and stud owner Luca Cumani; the trainer of Presvis, arguably the most exciting older horse in the country, who won’t run the horse over here in what might be seen as a not-so-subtle protest about prize money. Yet both trainers are happy to exploit the British handicap system when necessary and both have been happy enough to operate effectively in a fixed odds environment, so to speak.
Indeed, Cav
Here’s a mildly interesting observation. Just been to the sandpit for the afternoon. Good crowd, nice weather and a good gambler’s card with two vulnerable favourites to take on and a couple of good priced, well backed winners. A young novice punter would have enjoyed the card today.
Except for one race.
When Sanders returned to the normally polite winner’s enclosure on Sir Bloody’s Eloise, there was absolute silence from the thirty or so punters gathered at the top end. An unusual and embarrassing silence. I can’t remember seeing that before. Even the widely loathed Barney Curley gets a better reception than
that
when his horses win round here.
All afternoon, Mapletoft and his trusty sidekick videoman had been harrassing jockeys and trainers like a pair of handsome Duracell rabbits. Not Sanders though. There was a reticence. The stoic Brummie jumped off his exhausted filly and shook his head even as the ATR man was extending his microphone at the elbow. The merest of nods were exchanged as Sanders walked past, head bowed.
After Sanders had passed, Mapeltoft shrugged his shoulders and wryly winked at the stills cameraman, suggesting either an element of history between the linkman and Prescott’s stable jockey, or that he didn’t expect Sanders to stop and chat anyway – the only person all afternoon who didn’t do so.
On the way home, I thought about this thread. Explain to an enthusiastic novice punter the running and riding of Sir Mark Prescott’s horses. Not easy, is it.
Indeed, Drone; Indeed.
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