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I might not have the solution but a few suggestions would be…
Run your horses for a start. Putting the Mares race aside, in the three novice hurdles at Cheltenham Britain had a combined nine runners! A third of which were trained by Ben Pauling who nearly won the Albert Bartlett. Run them and see how good they are, might not come to anything but you won’t know until you’ve tried.
It seems Willie Mullins gets all the best horses from France but as he’s now cornered that market why not try German breeding as an example. A few years ago German bred horses had a half decent record at Cheltenham from very few runners.
Go looking for owners. Most of the trainers must know a friend of a friend of a friend. Go pigeon hole Sir Jim Ratcliffe, see if he’s into racing. I just checked the Sunday Times rich list and Alan Howard is at number 100 with a fortune of 1.75bn; surely there are some people above him who would love to get into Racing and have Cheltenham runners/winners; it would also seem a perfect time now to acquire new owners between both of the festivals.
Get in with Godolphin/Qatar Racing and the like and see if you can acquire their so called decent cast offs at the end of the season.
Who are all the top British owners? Someone touched upon this in another thread and i think there’s only Ronnie Bartlett, Kenny Alexander, Munir/Soude and to a lesser extent Tony Bloom (correct me if i’m wrong). Ask Munir and Soude why they only have a handful of horses left in this country.
None of what i’ve suggested may work but lets at least try.Think that this is getting out of hand, as sport is virtually the only meritocracy left and i would hate to see restrictions being put into place or bonuses for GB trained winners etc. British trainers need to improve, simply as that. Yes it’s easy just to say that and i don’t know what some of the answers are but improve they must. I do though agree with the win and you’re in concept, as it seems ridiculous to have National trials and the winners not ending up in the race. Personally, even if one of the winners of these trials were currently number 60th in the list they’d automatically qualify.
One thing that caught my eye from Cheltenham was that David Pipe (although not the trainer he was), had only two runners at 100-1 and 150-1. The reason i’ve brought his name up is because the lowest rated in the Kim Muir was 127 and he, like a lot of other British trainers, didn’t have anything to field in this race; that to me is just unbelievable.I don’t have a problem per se where all the horses are trained, whether it be here, Ireland or wherever, think the Prestbury Cup is pointless. Going by the original topic and nothing whatsoever against Willie Mullins but i always think back to 2015. All things being equal and the following being trained elsewhere, we could have had a Champion Hurdle containing Faugheen, Annie Power, Vautour, Un De Secaux, Hurrican Fly and Champagne Fever!
Yeats, I think you were being slightly disingenuous to Kevin Blake. We need people like him (and more), to put these concerns down in print otherwise it’s guaranteed nothing will change. Hope might be pie in the sky but at least it’s something we can cling onto.
I’m no equine doctor, so if he’s clear by Friday is that sufficient time for Cheltenham? I don’t want to see them rush him to Cheltenham, just because it is Cheltenham. If that happened then you could throw the rubbish about “doing what’s best for the horse” out the window.
We are all entitled to our opinions Stilvi but I must take issue with your comments regarding Kevin Blake. To me he is one of the very few people who identifys problems within racing and actually comes up with valid solutions.
Hats off to the Favoir backers, I got it totally wrong thinking this would be a midfield run, then dropped a few pounds for Cheltenham. Let’s keep it simple and just back all of Skeltons in the County.
Wish you hadn’t posted that Yeats, as I’m still adamant that the I’ll fated Ten Plus would have won.
Sorry but I can’t have Favoir for love nor money. Skelton to my eyes is planning another Cheltenham run to replicate last year. Favoir will be either beaten a distance or pulled up and then dropped a couple of pounds for the County.
Cheers Ian, as my knowledge of point to points is severely lacking I’ll follow these when they next run; especially as one contains my daughters name and the other is the follow up album to the first every record I bought on vinyl!
Paul Townend can choose to ride any horse in the Mullins yard. On the four occasions that they met, Townend has always been on Lossiemouth and the other time Gala Marceau ran Townend was on what he thought was the better horse. If Gala Marceau arrived at The festival and it was Willie’s only runner in a particular race, Townend would be on it.
It will be a three horse race, as one of the big two won’t turn up! Great bit of placement by Dan Skelton.
Ginger, to me you’ve hit the nail on the head, he will be the best hurdler but not necessarily the best horse. We are now resigned (due to his brilliance) of egg and spoon races leading up to Cheltenham and possibly four wins on the bounce and then being retired when the last of those becomes an effort. If only he was trained at Ditcheat, he would have seen a fence by now…
Why is having eleven meetings a bit mental? They are spread around the country (could have had one though in Scotland to be honest), so they allow a wider range of people to attend, if they want to. Historically, what are the attendances today around the country? Personally, I don’t want racing on Christmas Eve and Day, as it makes Kempton a bit more special.
