A Few Thoughts on the National Hunt Season and also the Need to Change the Novice Chase Programme

Owners for Owners will have its first ever runner in Acey Milan at the Punchestown Festival on either Thursday or Saturday, provided that we aren’t balloted out. Bearing in mind that in one of the races Willie Mullins has 17 entries, I’m hoping there will be mass defections and we can kick off a new season and / or end the old one with a cracking performance. After a stellar bumper year, our horse unfortunately like a few others had a very bad chest infection this season and we haven’t really been able to build momentum and get back on track. No matter what happens in Ireland, he still looks a lovely prospect for staying races, particularly on soft / heavy ground, from October onwards.

While we weren’t able to scale the heights of the previous year, we still had more than 10 wins with horses including Acey Milan, Dr Dunraven, Lord Condi, Melekhov, Scented Lily and Sojourn. Another horse I’m associated with, Nobby, put in a couple of excellent runs including almost winning the Listed bumper at Newbury for us for the second year in a row. On the Flat, Sunday Prospect won as well, and has now been sold to race in France.

Looking to the future, we’ve increased our involvement in NH foals and yearlings, as it is proving increasingly difficult to buy ex-point-to-pointers with form for anything other than prodigious prices. We’ll be continuing with this policy, as we have had more success, at a higher level, with youngsters that we’ve brought through and developed from foal days rather than buying the finished article. It has also provided great pleasure for us, our co-owners and their families. We’ve decided to go one step further on the Flat, having set up the first ever Owners for Owners breeding partnership with Mayfair Rock, who we are hoping is now in foal to the former Karl Burke trained super sprinter, Havana Grey. We saw her at Whitsbury Manor Stud recently and couldn’t be more pleased with the way she has let herself down and relaxed into her new role.

As for the season that has just finished, all credit has to go to Altior for his record-breaking 19th consecutive win. Richard Johnson had 200+ winners up for the season and was duly crowned Champion Jockey again. As I always say about Richard, he’s a champion person as well as champion jockey, and a tremendous ambassador for the jumps game. Bryony Frost, who rode one of the horses we were associated with during the season, became Champion Conditional Jockey and her lyrical way of speaking has engaged everyone. She really is another great asset for our sport. The hour at the Cheltenham Festival when Paisley Park won the Stayers’ Hurdle, immediately following Frodon in the Ryanair, was one of the best moments I’ve experienced on the racecourse. The atmosphere was electric and for everyone connected with the horses it was a joy to behold. Our friend and agent Gerry Hogan had purchased Paisley Park as a youngster, and it was excellent to see him have a winner at the highest level. He’s one of the most honest and genuine agents you’ll ever come across – thoroughly recommended to anyone wanting to buy an NH prospect. He is also a grand fella.

The jumps season, however, certainly didn’t lack for controversy, what with the equine flu disruption, trainer boycotts of ARC racecourses, not to mention the frustration of unseasonably fast ground for most of the winter, which made it very hard to plan a race programme for the horses. There were also a few silly and embarrassing incidents, not least caused by BHA interference in activities that should be left to the grass-roots trainers and stewards to sort out. It is definitely time for the BHA to rise above that, and bring all the key parties in racing together for another round of strategy creation so that the sport can deal with the potential £60 million black hole emerging from the loss of media rights payments due to the likely closure of betting shops as FOBT stakes are compulsorily reduced to £2. Hopefully the strategy will be developed with purposeful, collaborative intent by all the key stakeholders – BHA, RCA, Horsemen’s Group etc. – as the last thing we want to see in racing is public falling-out and parties resorting to direct action such as the Ralph Beckett-led boycott of races. While it may have achieved its short-term purpose, it was terrible PR for the sport, particularly in the eyes of government.

It won’t surprise the reader of this blog that I’ve got my own ideas about the required strategy for British Racing and the priorities within that. I’ll leave the content, though, till another day. One element of that is the way the race programme is formulated. As this blog has primarily been about National Hunt, one major change that I’d like to see is a complete rationalisation of novices’ and beginners’ chases, with a dramatic reduction in number and frequency, and with them organised into a series rather than single, stand-alone events. At the moment far too many of them are unexciting races between a couple of horses from a couple of top yards, and absorb far too much prize-money.

That’s it for this month. Bag packed and off to Punchestown!

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Harold Macmillan Said that Governments were Brought Down by “Events, dear boy, events”. Racing has had Two Big Events in February – Fast and Furious Response to Equine Flu and Now The Beckett Boycott Against ARC. Are They Appropriate Responses or Over-Reactions?

If I ever take part in a pub quiz on racing (which is extremely unlikely), at least I’d be able to ask the question which was “Which National Hunt horse won the first race back after the great equine flu epidemic – which didn’t happen – of February 2019?” Easy, really – it was our horse Acey Milan, who won over an inadequate trip at Plumpton on 13th February. Well done, Ace!

Either side of the weekend of 9th and 10th February, British racing had introduced a six-day lockdown of 174 yards following the discovery of a US strain of equine flu at the yard of Donald McCain in Cheshire. A fast and furious wave of biosecurity activity took place as thousands of horses were tested for this highly contagious virus. No racing took place in the UK; yards were disinfected, either through low-tech spraying or high-tech fogging machines; horse movements were curtailed; and an enormous range of views expressed. A number of trainers, such as Charlie Mann, Nigel Twiston-Davies and Nick Williams, became very hot under the collar, saying that it was a “massive over-reaction” by the BHA and not even the vets seemed able to agree on the appropriateness of the lockdown and various measures. The Veterinary Committee of the BHA played a straight bat and were highly supportive, whereas some of the grass-roots practitioners such as Peter Ramzan of Rossdales in Newmarket and Ben Brain, the UK’s foremost wind surgeon, were very sceptical. After six days and a huge amount of coverage in the media, racing resumed and fortunately only a total of ten racehorses tested positive. Normal service was resumed – other than for the trainers who had not had their animals vaccinated in the past six months. This caused some resentment, as it meant that some top-class horses missed their Cheltenham preparatory races, and because there was no grace period, the BHA had in effect changed the vaccination rule overnight. In their defence, they had issued an “advisory” notice about vaccination earlier.

My personal view is that one of the BHA’s primary objectives is properly to protect racing’s future, and one key element of that has to be equine welfare. The horse must genuinely come first. Without the extensive testing of horses in the lockdown period, it would have been impossible to gauge whether the UK was on the verge of an epidemic; fortunately that was not the case, but imagine the public outcry if we had been. It may well be that a very small number of horses always get equine flu, but it goes undetected or unreported. The whole episode certainly demonstrated that “racing matters” in the eyes of the public, and not just for racegoers and punters. A lot of column inches were dedicated to the equine flu cases in all the newspapers, as well as extensive reporting on TV. The general consensus seemed to be that temporary inconvenience through the lockdown was far better than having an epidemic on your hands. The BHA took the right steps to contain it even if, with hindsight, it might have contained itself.

And then at the end of February another “event” broke out, this time a major row over prize-money as a result of ARC’s precipitate decision to cut its prize-money allocation by £2.7m while, through its actions, excluding itself from accessing a further £4.5m from the Levy Board through the Appearance Money Scheme. The last time there had been a boycott of racing was at Worcester a few years ago, when trainers withdrew all their horses with the exception of one, who had a walk-over for Nigel Twiston-Davies who then allocated the prize-money between all other trainers in the “race”. This time the President-Elect of the National Trainers’ Federation, Ralph Beckett, orchestrated an aggressive response to ARC with the withdrawal of horses in a couple of novice races at Lingfield before proposing a second wave attack with trainers being persuaded not to make entries at Fontwell, Lingfield, Newcastle and Southwell next week. Anyone who saw Ralph being interviewed by Nick Luck last Sunday could not have failed to be impressed by his cogent attack on ARC and his barely concealed anger. It was definitely a case of Bombardier Beckett in the trenches with the pins out of the grenades, ready, willing and able to go over the top on behalf of racing, and particularly the grass-roots owner.

I have every sympathy with the stance being taken by the NTF and indeed had instructed all the Owners for Owners trainers not to enter our horses in any races where the total prize-money is less than £4,000, unless there is a compelling reason to do so. I’ve just ensured that our horse Sojourn is withdrawn from Fontwell next week and will race at Wincanton instead, while Melekhov also won’t go to Fontwell but be switched to Taunton. When these decisions were made, the prize-money was over 50% higher at the non-ARC tracks. Since then, ARC has made what appears to be a “concession” by temporarily reassigning prize-money from more valuable races to those of lower grade, thereby unlocking levy funding. This doesn’t strike me as much of a concession, as no new money is being found; it’s just a different way of slicing the prize-money cake.

Direct action, boycotts, aggressive attacks on fellow stakeholders isn’t really the way to manage British Racing, and it’s really necessary for the current tripartite structure to contain the aggression and re-channel it on to problem-solving and solutions. The macro-economic reality is that while no-one knows the precise figures, the government’s decision to reduce the stakes on fixed-odds betting terminals to £2 is guaranteed to lead to the closure of a substantial number of betting shops thereby significantly reducing levy yields and media rights payments. Some commentators believe that £40-60m of annual income could be lost, which puts the ARC reductions into perspective. Racing, as a matter of urgency, needs to create a strategic plan of how it is going to boost income from the middle of this year onwards, or a lot more grenades are going to be thrown around.

Harold Macmillan would surely have identified with the way that “events” can blow up in your face, just like grenades.

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Congratulations to Richard Johnson OBE, Some Terrific 6yos and Our Own Winners from 2018. Here’s To Many More in 2019

The whole of racing must have been delighted on the announcement that Richard Johnson is to receive an OBE in the New Year’s Honours List. He is a terrific ambassador for our sport, a role model for all aspiring jockeys and one of the most genuine and nicest people you’ll ever meet. We have had more winners ridden by him than by any other jockey and it never ceases to amaze me how he can be unceasingly polite, friendly and positive to every owner, no matter how minor. He has ridden a couple of winners for our Racing Club at Martin Keighley’s and each time he has been kissed senseless while enduring endless selfies being taken with him. Top rider : top bloke.

One of the real pleasures of being an owner is the way in which you get to know so many friends, their families and their wider racing network. I always try to follow the horses that our owners have with other trainers and it gave me real pleasure over Christmas to see the successes of John Finch with Doitforthevillage at Paul Henderson’s, Jamie Wadge and Shaun Beach with Suggestion at Phil Kirby’s and then Ged Shields with Kemboy and Willie Mullins. As always in racing, so many stories around these various horses: Paul Henderson is a maestro at sourcing reasonably-priced horses in Ireland, getting them on to the right mark and then reaping the rewards; Phil and Pippa Kirby, from their base near Bedale, are steadily climbing through the ranks and it was wonderful to watch their star mare, Lady Buttons, win for the 11th time at Doncaster last Saturday. All grass-roots yards need a stable star, and they have got one with her.

And then of course, Kemboy – only a 6yo but he romped home in the Savills Chase with his emphatic victory shortening his odds for the Cheltenham Gold Cup from 40/1 to 6/1. Ged and Brenda Shields had arranged a super weekend for themselves at Newbury when Kemboy was due to run in the Ladbrokes Trophy, and were devastated when the stormy weather and rough crossing for the ferry forced the horse to miss the race. I phoned Ged just after the race at Leopardstown and he was absolutely thrilled, and kept saying a single word: “Wow!” Delighted for all the connections in the syndicate, organised by Supreme Racing. If Kemboy makes it to the Cheltenham Festival in either the Gold Cup or the Ryanair, it would be the highlight of the week for me – unless one of our own horses manages to get there.

Two other 6yos made a big impact as well over Christmas: Clan Des Obeaux, under a magnificent ride from young Harry Cobden, duly won the King George VI Chase at Kempton and looks a real star; and then when my wife and I were at Chepstow we enjoyed watching Elegant Escape win the Welsh Grand National, having come 2nd in the Ladbrokes Trophy (the race Kemboy should have won) at Newbury. We had a chat with Tom O’Brien just before the race, then another one when he came back. He was ecstatic and it’s a real pleasure to watch Tom winning races such as this, particularly as he’s having his best-ever season. He has also ridden many winners for us and is one of the most sympathetic riders around – a real horseman.

A year ago today, Acey Milan won the 4yo Listed Bumper at Cheltenham for us, and that kicked off the year in the best possible way. Six other horses won through the year: Dr Dunraven and Lord Condi (Martin Keighley), Melekhov (Philip Hobbs), Scented Lily (Charlie Longsdon), Sojourn (Anthony Honeyball) and Sunday Prospect (Karl Burke). Another horse in which I have an involvement, Nobby (Alan King) also won twice, including my first-ever win at a Point-to-Point, namely the Barbary Castle International. We were lucky enough to visit his breeder, Ray Bailey, fairly soon after Nobby was born, and fell in love with him straight away. Before you ask, he’s named after Nobby Styles, the footballer.

Winners Galore in 2018 …. Hoping for More in 2019

The New Foals – Stars for 2021+

There is something adorable about foals. Not only are they such beautiful creatures, but it is the sense of renewal as young horses enter your life to replace those who have retired and moved on. We managed to buy three this year, and they are loving their life in the Condicote paddocks at Martin’s yard. Most of the shares in these foals are now taken, but there are still a few left so if you would like to be involved in “future stars”, please let me know. For many grass-roots National Hunt owners this is one of the few ways of getting involved at a reasonable price, with the enormous hikes in sales prices of the established stallions. Indeed, just before Christmas I noticed that Envoy Allen had won for his unusual NH owners, Cheveley Park Stud, for Gordon Elliott (cost a cool £400,000 at Cheltenham’s February sale) and while at Chepstow I watched Ask For Glory winning his bumper on debut (a mere £280,000). The startling sums being paid never cease to amaze me.

From today I am switching to only one blog a month, but will continue to lobby for improvements in the total owner experience, not least because I’m going to promote the Racehorse Syndicates Association and help them with their press releases. Lots of improvements are still required if owners are going to be brought into the sport and retained.

Finally, very best wishes for 2019: may it be happy, healthy and successful, with lots of winners if you’re an owner.

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Hats Off to the Mighty Mullins and the Punchestown Festival. Great Racing, But Are Duopolies Good For the Sport?

Well, yet another National Hunt season drew to a close last weekend. Personally I didn’t think it was one of the best we’ve experienced in the UK, marred as it was by terrible weather, the lack of the best horses running frequently against each other and in particular Messrs. Henderson and Nicholls’ domination of small field novice races, particularly the chases. The main reason though is that we’re now obviously in an era where the Irish completely dominate the sport.

The concentration of buying power in the hands of a small number of billionaire owners such as Michael O’Leary and J.P. McManus has led to the whole supply chain of top horses being routed into a small number of top yards. The virtuous circle of acquiring these horses and then harvesting the top races with them appears to have moved to an altogether new level in the last few years. There’s probably never been a period when the grass-roots owner has had less chance of acquiring a top horse. As readers of this blog know, it has forced a major rethink of how Owners for Owners purchases its NH horses, as we’ve deserted the ready-to-go but very expensive ex-point-to-pointer in favour of foals, yearlings and store horses. So far we’ve been very lucky with Acey Milan and Melekhov, but I suspect we’ll find that the prices of these youngsters will steadily climb as many owners and trainers do exactly the same as us. I’m expecting the 3yo store horse sales to be very competitive indeed this Spring / Summer.

You only have to look at the prize-money of the top Irish trainers to see what is happening. Mullins finished the season on c. €6 million of prize-money, Gordon Elliott c. €5 million, then a long way behind them Joseph O’Brien (€1.5m), Henry de Bromhead (€1.3m), Jessica Harrington (€1.3m), Noel Meade (€1.2m) then a huge gap to Charlie Byrnes in 7th place with only €400k. In effect the lesser trainers can no longer compete and it must be extremely dispiriting coming up against the Elliott and Mullins juggernauts day in, day out. It’s hardly surprising that there’s been a continuous decline in the Irish NH trainer ranks as so many throw in the towel and quit the sport. Indeed, as another graphic example, Willie Mullins started the Punchestown Festival on Tuesday €0.5m down on Gordon Elliott yet finished €800,000 ahead, which is quite extraordinary. In fact if he’d only started the season on Tuesday, with no previous winners, he’d have been 2nd in the trainer ranks five days later. This was Willie’s 11th successive season as top trainer.

Almost every day at Punchestown there were startling and head-scratching performances by Mullins. He won six of the seven races on the second day. In the Champion Novice Hurdle, all nine runners came from Mullins and Elliott (actually that’s a lie – one was from Margaret Mullins!) I was very interested in this race as it was won by Dortmund Park, who I bought two years ago but then didn’t go ahead with the purchase because he was failed by the vet. The Champion 4yo Hurdle was the third time in a season that a Gr.1 race was contested only by the two major yards. There were seven runners and the first three home were all Mullins’. Gordon Elliott had set a trainer’s record earlier in the year for the number of runners in one race when he saddled 13 in the Irish Grand National; Mullins then topped that with 15 runners in one of the races. Apparently this is a world record and in my book, a very discouraging one.

You just have to ask whether this duopoly domination is good for the sport. I think for many of the betting public it probably has no effect, as they often revel in a head-to-head in the training ranks and on the track. There was certainly a lot of media hype going into Punchestown, and the overall quality of racing at the meeting last week was superb. Wasn’t it magnificent to see the mighty machine, Faugheen, bounce back to his best? That certainly stands out as one of the season’s best performances for me. The others would be Native River in the Gold Cup; Tiger Roll in the Cross-Country and Grand National; Altior unbeaten; and the horse I most enjoy watching, Samcro, when he strolled home in the Deloitte Novice Hurdle at the new Leopardstown Festival. I do hope they keep him hurdling and go for the Champion next year.

It’s impossible to see the dominance changing soon. In the world of business the academics argue that companies compete through their networks of suppliers and partners. In racing the key networks now are the small number of the very top trainers working with their agents and breeders to ensure that the very best bloodstock, regardless of price, ends up in their yard. While this has always been the case in Flat racing, it now unfortunately seems that the same applies to National Hunt. All sports need competition and diversity. While there is obviously going to be superb competition on the racetrack, as we saw at the Festivals that now dominate our sport – Cheltenham, Aintree and Punchestown – there is a risk that the lesser owners and trainers become discouraged and we end up with a two-tier sport. Not surprisingly, nothing would give me greater pleasure in the new season than our young horses Acey Milan, Lord Condi, Melekhov and the as yet unnamed 4yo Presenting managed to compete in the premier league. Everything crossed for the next year.

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Two Magnificent Cheltenham Experiences in March – Hopefully Many More To Come

I’ve lost track over the years of how many times in my head I’ve been commentating on one of our horses as it puts in a heroic performance at Prestbury Park. It tends to be something along the lines of: “… and as the field surges down the hill on the final circuit, there’s one horse travelling notably well, hard-held by his rider. Now they’re swinging round the final bend and the horse is still on the bridle. His rider’s aiming straight for the running rail on the stands side, absolutely cruising. Now he’s hit the bottom of the hill …. but has just hit a flat spot and is being challenged on the outside. The rider’s throwing everything at him now and he’s staying on again, almost at the line …..”

Well, finally, in March 2018, I got to experience this sensation, not just once but twice, and although the commentators weren’t quite so positive, coming down the hill on both occasions I thought we had a cracking chance of a winner.

The first horse is Acey Milan, running for Owners for Owners and trained by Anthony Honeyball. He’d put in three excellent winning performances going into the Festival, including two Listed bumpers. Although 4yos don’t have the best of records in the Champion Bumper, he was all the rage on the day and was backed in to favourite, up against Ireland’s best from Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott. There was a bit of an alarum when the horse jinxed going down to the start, giving Aidan Coleman a (thankfully) soft fall, but he managed to hold on to Acey Milan; there were no further mishaps. In the race itself one of the Mullins horses stole five lengths at the start and our horse cruised along behind him in 2nd or 3rd place. He tanked along coming down the hill and looked the winner swinging into the straight, but then lost his action a bit on the desperate ground and for a while looked as though he might fade out of contention, before putting his head down and battling himself into 4th place, with three Mullins horses ahead of us and one Elliott behind. There weren’t many British horses over the week capable of doing that, and indeed Acey Milan is probably the best bumper horse in this country by half a stone. He’s given all the owners a huge amount of fun this season and we’ve lots to look forward to next year, when he could easily shape up into a decent 2½ mile hurdler.

I don’t think that I expected to have a similar excitement, albeit in a very different type of race. Martin and Belinda Keighley’s elder son Freddie, having turned 10, was eligible for his first Pony Club race, which duly happened at Cheltenham last Friday. Freddie and his 16yo pony, Boston Bell Boy (aka “Bubbles”), had been in serious training all year and the whole yard was looking forward to this debut with as much enthusiasm as for a horse running at the Festival. The Keighleys had their own support team at Cheltenham together with a number of key owners, and I have to say that the whole event was incredibly well organised. The young riders had to turn up at 10:00 am for a briefing and a walk of the course; they changed in the normal jockeys’ room, with Freddie hanging his clothes on the peg with Any Currency’s plaque on it; they weighed out on the same machine as the jockeys; were attired in racing silks (in Freddie’s case those of the Martin Keighley Racing Partnerships and Club); paraded before going down the walkway to the start, and then raced down the hill over seven furlongs on a well marked-out section of the course. The commentator picked up quickly that Freddie intended to race handily and within 100 yards he was already in the lead, with only two ponies in behind able to go with him. You probably know what’s coming …. He swung into the straight on the bridle, aimed straight for the stands-side running rail with Bubbles tanking along before hitting a flat spot, losing the lead but then staying on again under a great ride from Freddie to be beaten only half a length into second. A magnificent debut, and Freddie’s smile when he came in said absolutely everything. Once prizes had been received, the whole group repaired to The Hollow Bottom in Guiting Power for a lunch that carried through almost to dinner-time. A magnificent way to start Easter, and the Pony Club is a terrific way of training young jockeys of the future. Well done to all the organisers, and especially to Cheltenham for making it such a special day.

Just one comment on the Festival, as we’re now a few weeks on from it. My biggest disappointment, as in the previous year, was the flagrant breaches of the whip rule. Either the rule has to be tightened up so that the jockeys are penalised far more severely, or the prescription of the number of times you are allowed to hit a horse has to be scrapped. Two of our trainers have seen their horses beaten by other riders, in effect, cheating. Last year Pendra in the 3m 2f Kim Muir for amateur riders was given an excellent ride by Derek O’Connor before Gina Andrews threw everything at her mount Doomsday Book, ignored the whip rule completely and got up to beat Pendra by ¾ l. If O’Connor had done the same, Pendra would have won. This year Ms Parfois, in the 4m National Hunt Challenge Cup for amateur riders, was only beaten ½ l by Rathvinden under an incredibly strong ride from Patrick Mullins. Again, Mullins ignored the whip rule whereas Ms Parfois’ rider Will Biddick stayed within the rules. While Ms Parfois didn’t help her chance with a mistake at the 2nd last, she might also have won.

And then of course the Champion Jockey Richard Johnson did the same, winning the Gold Cup on Native River. A £6,000 fine is neither here nor there for Richard. In fact I felt that this was one of the rides of the decade and it really just flags up how poor the current whip rule is. It would be far better to allow local stewards complete discretion.

Aidan Coleman, on Acey Milan, gave our horse a typically fine and strong ride while staying within the rules. Young Freddie Keighley wasn’t even allowed to have a whip, but again gave his pony a fine ride.

Surely the whip rule needs to change? Personally I hope this happens by the time of next year’s Festival. Here’s hoping that we have more runners at the Olympics of our sport. What an excitement March was. I hope I live long enough to see young Freddie come over the last and storm to success up the famous hill.

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The Cheltenham Festival – The Ace in the Pack. It’s Certainly Bigger, But Is It Better?

My wife and I went along to The Centaur at Prestbury Park on Sunday to listen to an excellent OLBG-sponsored preview evening chaired by Jeremy Kyle, with the panel consisting of Ruby Walsh, A.P. McCoy, John Francome and Fergal O’Brien. John was definitely the star of the evening – informative and witty in equal measure. I believe, probably like many people, that he’s the finest NH jockey I’ve seen and certainly the one with the best sense of humour. Throughout the evening he was the butt of lots of Kyle comments, but he wafted them away with wit and aplomb, even at the interval when Kyle kept emphasising that the show had to stop to enable John to go to the toilet. Rather grossly, when he came back, he enquired whether he’d had time to “empty his bag”. We all know that Mr. Kyle spends lots of time with losers, so he’s probably not used to dealing with one of the all-time stars of the game. At one point during the evening John was reflecting on how, in the early days, he had to fill in a form stating who he wanted contacting in the event of a serious accident on the course. He just wrote on the form, “a doctor”. Oh, for the days when racing was more light-hearted, and real characters dominated the stage.

Listening to John also had me thinking back to the first time I went to the Festival in 1981. What was the big talking point on Day One that year? Anyone who was there will immediately say it was the famous Francome pull on Sea Pigeon going into the last hurdle. The horse was travelling so well, he didn’t want to hit the front too early, so the brakes were put on before he scampered away from the magnificent Monksfield to win by seven lengths at the top of the hill – the most breathtaking piece of riding I’ve seen in National Hunt.

Nothing like nostalgia in our sport, is there, and all the debates on who the greatest horses of all time would be, and the best trainers, jockeys and dare I say it, even owners. Mentioning Monksfield is what the marketing and media types call a “segue” – a link to another subject. He wasn’t a big horse at all, but an incredibly game battler who had a huge, raking stride on him. In Owners for Owners, we’re in the really fortunate position to have a horse with a similar and almost freakish action in Acey Milan, who at the time of writing this blog is 3rd favourite for the Champion Bumper and on form, having won two Listed bumpers at Cheltenham and Newbury, is the second top rated horse in the race and the highest rated bumper in Great Britain. He’s had quite a long season now, with four races – three wins and one second – so how well he does depends on whether he has held his form going into the Festival. As he can only have a fifth bumper run in a Listed race, we didn’t really have any choice but to head into the Champion, and once he’d won the top-quality Newbury bumper by 11 lengths we all decided that he had to take his chance. No matter what happens this week, he looks a lovely prospect for the future.

The only similarity I have with John Francome is age, and the four days of the current Festival certainly take their toll – on the liver and the aching knees as I rack up miles of walking around the course and mountainous climbs up the various stands. It sometimes feels like a test of endurance, with similarities to the 4m National Hunt Chase on Day One, which hopefully Anthony Honeyball (trainer of Acey Milan) will win with Ms Parfois.

One of the recurring themes throughout the week is bound to be whether the predominance of Cheltenham is sometimes to the detriment of National Hunt racing. Superficially it seems obvious that the whole Festival frenzy is a most wonderful promotion of racing as well as a huge revenue-generator. When I saw Sea Pigeon the attendance was a quarter of what it is now, and the facilities were dreadful in comparison. This week, over a quarter of a million people are likely to attend. If they all spend, say, £100 minimum getting in and having a few drinks on the course, then as the Americans would say, “do the math”. Indeed with Guinness at a fiver and a glass of wine at a tenner, it doesn’t take long to get past that minimum figure.

It’s probably inevitable that the four-day Festival will soon span five days, with the Gold Cup on Saturday. For the large numbers of people for whom the Festival is all about being at a big occasion and drinking yourself horizontal, it doesn’t really matter. If you’re an afficionado who wants to see the most competitive, highest quality racing, then the risk is dilution of that through a wider range of additional races that trainers can pick and mix from. As we’re now in an era where four trainers in Messrs. Elliott, Henderson, Mullins and Nicholls, and prime owners such as Gigginstown, J.P. McManus, Simon Munir / Isaac Suede and Rich Ricci, there is an increasing risk that trainers and owners with their top horses can avoid the competition that genuinely produces champions. However, I’m sure that economics will prevail and that the mighty, heroic clashes of yesteryear become less frequent, which is a real pity.

In the last blog I mentioned how much I’d enjoyed going over to Leopardstown for the two-day Dublin Festival. Even in my dotage I think that I could survive a two-day Cheltenham Festival, which of course is never going to happen, but that would be my absolute ideal. Three days I thought was excellent; I’m dubious about four; and I definitely wouldn’t attend five. Of course, if Acey Milan has ended up by winning the Champion Bumper, then I can probably invest in a top-of-the-range zimmer frame.

Enjoy the week, everyone.

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Book the 2019 Dublin Racing Festival into your Diary – An Antidote to Dreary Winter Racing

At the beginning of February, my wife and I and a few owners went over to Ireland. Some went direct to Dublin while others went via County Tipperary, where we called in to see a couple of our youngsters who are being brought along superbly by P.J. Colville and his wife Grainne. It was probably a foretaste of what was to come when we were sitting in Mikey Ryan’s Bar and Restaurant (interestingly, owned and renovated by John Magnier, who apparently fancied a nice place in Cashel to have his supper), savouring a pint of Guinness at 7pm, watching the Ireland vs. France rugby game on TV. When Johnny Sexton slotted in his wonderful dropped goal to grab the game back from the French, the place absolutely erupted. Never have I been kissed by so many people in such a short period of time. The dinner wasn’t bad, either.

From then on, the weekend only got better. We went up to Leopardstown for Day 2 of the superb inaugural Dublin Racing Festival. Racing is always bandying around such phrases as “Sensational Saturday”, but this time the whole meeting lived up to it in spades. I don’t know about you, but I have felt that the 2017 / 18 NH season has been something of an anti-climax, with very few stand-out performances and lots of small field races being mopped up by Messrs. Henderson and Nicholls. An indication of that is the number of horses that Buveur D’Air has actually beaten, and his average starting price of about 1/5. There used to be a time when the Saturday NH meetings really did seem to be something to savour, with heroic performances from horses and riders. Somehow we seem to have lost that sparkle, with the whole of the season having shifted to an undue focus on the Cheltenham Festival. Horses aren’t racing against each other with the frequency that they used to, and it increasingly feels as though we’re just waiting for the denouement without really having enjoyed the lead up to it.

The Irish racing authorities seem to have felt the same, with a number of their better races spread over a period of weeks. They decided to consolidate the best races into the two-day Dublin Festival, and the competition and the craic were magnificent, with so many sparkling performances: Faugheen vs. Defi Du Seuil, Min vs. Yorkhill, Samcro vs. Sharjah, Footpad vs. Petit Mouchoir and then a fairytale outcome to the Irish Gold Cup with the “horse who came back from the dead” Edwulf putting in a gallant performance, although admittedly helped by the last fence fall by Killultagh Vic, who seemed to be travelling best of all. The Leopardstown stand erupted and it must have been 50 deep around the winner’s enclosure. It’s a long time since I’ve seen so many hats being thrown up into the air. It almost felt like going back in time to the great win of Dawn Run, which still stands in my memory as the most emotional and heart-felt reception for any NH horse. The whole atmosphere at Leopardstown was captivating – real enthusiasts, there to savour the racing rather than just the alcohol …. although there was a fair bit of that consumed as well.

Lots of English fans travelled over for the meeting. It was surprising though how few English trainers and horses made the journey, which is pretty unenterprising. Indeed the British trainer who gave the meeting the greatest support was Phil Kirby, and he doesn’t have many horses. Even stranger when you consider how many horses Nicholls and Henderson took up to Musselburgh on the same day, and stranger again when you consider the prize-money. Cheltenham Festival Trials Day only managed £204,688 of prize-money whereas Day 2 at Leopardstown was a whopping great €825,000, at an average of €103,000 per race and with prize-money often down to 8th. I’ve already said to all our trainers that if we have any horses suitable for this meeting next year, we’ll definitely make it the season’s target.

One of the themes discussed by the Brits in Ireland was whether we need to strengthen the British season with a similar high-profile mid-season festival. For some time there has been a debate about whether the Kempton King George meeting could be significantly upgraded, although the refrain seems to be that “logistical challenges” (whatever they may be) preclude it. That seems a real pity.

Anyway, a couple of weeks on from Ireland we were lucky enough to have a runner – and emphatic winner – at Newbury during Betfair Super-Saturday with Acey Milan (who may now go for the Champion Bumper at Cheltenham). The sponsorship of Betfair has brought in significant money, which we were lucky enough to participate in; the total on the day was £303,102. This triggered the thought that maybe Newbury and Betfair could work together to stage a Wonderful Weekend as a stepping-stone to Cheltenham. Indeed, as we were supping celebratory Champagne in the Royal Box after Acey’s victory, I floated this to a couple of the directors of Newbury and it definitely seemed to strike a chord.

As a postscript, I can only congratulate Newbury for the huge improvements that have been made at their course. Their spanking-new Owners’ Club is one of the best facilities on any British track and the investment all round the course from car parking to pre-parade has transformed the track. They have just started the second phase of their developments and Newbury must now be the course with the greatest improvement trajectory in our sport. A huge change is taking place, not just in investment and infrastructure, but just as importantly in mind-set. For those with a long memory I wrote a couple of scathing blogs about the course following a PR disaster in December 2013 (the link is to “Nonsense at Newbury”). The Chief Executive was fired shortly afterwards, to be replaced by Julian Thick, who can be commended for all the changes that have been made. Here’s hoping that they can put on a Wonderful Weekend – or maybe even two of them – so that they replicate Leopardstown’s Champions Weekend on the Flat as well as the Dublin Festival.

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“The Ace in the Pack” …. But with More to Come, Hopefully. The Change of Plan Pays Off with Acey Milan

As anyone who reads this blog regularly will know, I’ve been astounded by the huge increases in bloodstock prices for National Hunt horses in recent years. Horses that used to be selling for £30-40k are now going for £60-100k, and there is no shortage of very rich owners who are prepared to pay considerable multiples on top of that. The average hammer price now for a three-year-old store horse at the top sales in Ireland is €50k, so with sales commissions on top, and then maybe a year’s training before you get the horse to the track, you’re knocking on the door of £70k or more on average and, unfortunately, paying that amount of money most definitely doesn’t guarantee you a nice horse. In fact increasingly it looks as though the good horses are being taken out of the equine supply chain very early in their life, and there is no shortage of trainers and agents scouring England, Ireland, France and Germany looking for them.

So, back at the end of 2014, in Owners for Owners we decided to change tack and adopt the policy of “if you can’t beat them, join them”. Rather than buying the majority of our horses as ready-to-go point-to-pointers with some form on the page, we created a new buying plan in conjunction with trainers and agents. The focus shifted to foals, yearlings and the occasional unraced 3yo store so that we had more confidence that we were dealing with a “blank canvas” and not buying into someone else’s problem. Fortunately we found quite a few owners who shared a very similar philosophy and had come to the same conclusions. They all wanted to enjoy the development journey of watching a youngster grow up into a racehorse, and were prepared to fund that for three years or more. Patience became the key virtue, with absolutely no pressure whatsoever to kick on with the youngsters too soon.

In 2014 / 15, we bought the first three foals, all by proven or up-and-coming sires: Milan, Sholokhov and Oscar. We also bought a beautiful year-older Getaway at the same time, and since then two more foals, one by Beat Hollow and one by Mahler, as well as a 3yo by Presenting. Quite an investment in seven youngsters, and inevitably with horses there will be one or two disappointments. However we felt that if we managed to achieve better results than we had been doing with the ready-to-go horses, it would be a vindication of the policy.

I’m not in any way crowing about this because, alas, we did have a tragedy with one of them, which hit all his owners extremely hard. But with one of them, Acey Milan with Anthony Honeyball, we appear to have a seriously smart animal on our hands who won the Listed bumper at Cheltenham and then, last Saturday, following up in the top bumper of the season so far, at Newbury. He annihilated the field, going away to win by 11 lengths, in the process probably establishing himself as the best bumper horse in England and entering the betting as 4th favourite for the Champion Bumper at the Festival. He’s the only four-year-old of the first 20 horses. The last 4yo to win this bumper was Cue Card!! Whether or not we go there will very much depend on whether the horse is in the same form by mid-March, and if he starts to train off in any way after four bumper runs, we’ll put him away and look forward to staying novice hurdles in the autumn. He is running over two miles on heavy ground at the moment but there is a view that he might be better over 2½ miles plus on better ground.

It was obviously amazingly exciting to win the two Listed bumpers as well as one at Wincanton in November, but the real source of pleasure has come from watching Acey Milan develop. When we bought him from Bryan Murphy’s stud near the Dunraven Arms in Co. Limerick, he was pretty small and quite sickly. Anthony and Rachael Honeyball came over to Ireland with us, and when we were shown him we were all very impressed by his beautiful long stride. The deal was done on the basis of that. Nothing in the meantime has changed our view of his conformation and action, and it is a noticeable feature when he’s racing. As you can see in the three photos below, he has developed considerably since, although he is still not a big horse – just a very fluent athlete. We used to joke when he was still a little tiddler that he was saying to us, “Don’t worry – when I grow up I’m going to be a racehorse”. None of us lost the faith, and it is tremendously satisfying to be where we now are. Special mention has to go to his groom all the way through, Chloe Emsley, who as you can see on one of the pictures to the right absolutely adores him. There was a day up on the gallops with Anthony back in the early autumn when Acey Milan was doing a breeze with Regal Encore. Chloe gave him a bit of rein and he shot past his older companion. Anthony just looked at me and said, “Hello …..” We haven’t really looked back since.

We’re just about to start partnering out a couple of new babies and store horses, and if you’d like to get involved in a similar journey, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Here’s hoping we have lots more Aces in the pack.

I am always interested to hear your views so please do leave a comment. If you can't see the comment box at the bottom of this post then navigate to the post using the right hand navigation or click here > and scroll to the bottom of the page. Look forward to hearing your views. Thanks very much for sharing them.