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The RP can’t tell whether you’re paying with a smile on your face or through gritted teeth.
And don’t care.
I can manage fine with what’s free, I just need a decent place to go to satisfy my breeding interests.
As good a website as it looks, the words "over-reaction" "toys" "pram" "chips" and "shoulder" spring to mind.
Just a bit. Lord knows what he’d make of the Lynch thing.
Someone should tell him, though, if you want to make an effective statement you really need to write it down, read it a few times, get someone else to read it, and sleep on it before you make it public. It’s littered with errors that undermine his point.
(or maybe it’s just because I’m a pedant)
I think that for "racing folk" it won’t have detracted from the event. Provided some gossip, yes, but people know when a good horse is around.
To be honest, what really will have swamped the Eclipse for non-racing folk was those guys with the bright green ball further into London, with Murray getting acres of print. That, Michael Jackson and the impending Ashes seemed to get most coverage in the papers I saw.
If Elite get a fat check they will flog Border Patrol, nice horse, a group horse in the making.
Cynical as ever about Elite, I see!
As a matter of fact they were offered a very fat one indeed for Soviet Song, after the 2002 Fillies Mile, and did not bite. That’s more than just a rumour.
The were also offered a big cheque for New Seeker at one stage, which was all the more impressive as I believe he’d been gelded at that point.
I do agree that the club need a new flag bearer and I don’t think there’s anything in the wings, so holding onto Border Patrol does make some sense.
Subscription fees are, in short, merely a means of getting other people to pay for the training and running of one man’s horses, and when membership numbers are on the rise the best thing
for the club
is to give others every reason to follow suit. I doubt very much if the numbers being thrown around back in 2002 stack up against those mentioned today, so ERC would have been under no pressure to sell to anyone.
Now, however, the club’s situation is very different. Subscription rates were, as I understand it, on the decline before we began to feel the full effect of the collapse of the financial markets and I can only imagine that things are much worse at present. So, with no obligation to members (as they don’t actually own any of the horses and aren’t entitled to a share of the sale amount) and no flagship animal – I see Soviet Song and Penzance have been trademarked though – what would prevent the release of Border Patrol?
Absolutely nothing (and I’d still love to know how administration totalling £1.3m breaks down).
Having snipped this a bit… I’d not thought of *that* "one man", as I rarely see or hear from him whilst another struts around!
To be honest, selling Border Patrol, or at least a stake in him, makes perfect sense to me. The club don’t have the scope to stand him as a stallion, and if he does make up into a group-class horse it would be more publicity for them if he were to be worth a place at stud. It’s a pity the mare has only the one filly. The club is stacking the breeding prog with too many fillies from the one line.
Personally I don’t mind numbers dropping.. I’ve been in the club almost since the beginning and it was a lot more fun when they owned a string of average horses (particularly as they had more jumpers, which was what I was interested in). Wonderful as SS was, as I’d seen her dam win her first race etc. she didn’t half attract a lot of glory hunters who thought every horse in the club would be like that.
And I know that there are quite a few members who have noticed the same faces are always getting the paddock places. Let alone the fact that many of the club staff now appear to be family and friends…
I can’t afford a real share in a real horse, much as I’d love to, so this is as close as I get (which is why I stay). I’ve learnt a little bit about breeding and it’s been nice to "follow" a family closely.
I appreciate what you’re saying Rob, but from the reports I have read some horses were dehydrated in the stables area. I cannot imagine there are no water supplies in that area. The dehydration may have been caused due to the lack of ventilation in the boxes.
Some of the horses were dehydrating by the time they were unboxed, too. I’m not sure what timescales would be like but you couldn’t let a horse drink a lot of water before running because of the colic issue, so it sounds as if some of them shouldn’t even have been allowed to run…
If Henderson was that concerned about the mares welfare to have to break the rules to give her drugs maybe he shouldn’t have been running her in the first place.
From the sounds of it he suspected, but didn’t know for sure she would have a problem – don’t forget that there are studies suggesting that 70% or more of horses in training will bleed but presumably not all of those severely enough to affect their performance.
It would appear that the drug given was intended to speed up recovery from a possible bleed rather than prevent bleeding, so it’s not like lasix for example. I’m not terribly impressed by the vet claiming not to know it was banned – or that he presumably advised Henderson it would help the mare recover, when in fact it was likely to be ineffective by racetime (ie he was being paid for something that even if legal wasn’t delivering what was promised).
What concerns me from the report is the refusal of the vet to attend, and the statement he gave which refers to it being used by his training *clients*…
A massive mistake imo. The one key factor for me in her win at Ascot was precocity. That will not last forever!
Didn’t Ward say after the race that he expected that she would be beaten by the horses she beat by the backend, he just has very forward 2yos?
So the problem occurred because a horse collapsed with heat exhaustion after a race and they had to chuck all the water they had over him.
Have to say that it’s that particular thing that makes me glad they abandoned. Even if they’d had more water available, horses can’t drink a lot before they race, and it’s really not pleasant to watch them keel over.
I suppose one question is, if temps are forecast to be that high, should racing be abandoned ahead of time?
Stilvi, there’s an article on her here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/horser … Chase.html
Started with Peter Bowen, went to the States and has now returned to Wales.
Sounds a good idea to me Roseblossom – if a horse has been withdrawn at late notice it would be useful to know the reason when looking back at the form later on. Leave it with me and I’ll see what others think.
Regarding the business of being diverted when clicking on form or Live Reporter, this still never happens to me. Maybe others can help again – would this be computer settings (like pop-up stopper)?
Hi Lee,
thank you for that
With the diverting to bookies, there’s no obvious reason for it. I use Opera "clean", without any plug-ins, and 95% of the time it works perfectly well. But when it feels like taking me to a bookies site, that’s just what it does!
The weirdest thing for me is just clicking on a horse’s name on the racecard, instead of getting its form, you get taken to Betfred, WillHill, Sportingbet etc etc.
I had to sign up when I saw this – I have had this exact same problem!
However, it also occurs when I am trying to select a race text commentary (especially if its the last race on the card) and with some of the Live Reporter links. Click on ’em and get take to a bookie site, usually William Hill.
As Lee reads here, there is another thing that occurred to me – I would really like to see form include when a horse has turned up for, but not started, a race. I noticed a horse recently was described as having returned from a 50 day layoff – except it had actually been entered for a race three weeks previously and broke the stalls.
While the horse didn’t actually run, rather than having a break it would have been tuned up for a run. In addition it would be useful to know if a horse has a problem with stalls/starting. Whilst if they plant it appears as RR, if they don’t load up at all it doesn’t…
