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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A.P. McCoy’s Retirement: “Time waits for no man. And it certainly isn’t going to wait for me.”

As you get older, you definitely struggle to remember names, telephone numbers and where you left the car keys. But for some strange reason you never forget winning bets. Rolling the clock back: a grey, drizzly day at Plumpton, 9th December 1997. A scratchy-actioned trainer in signature black donkey jacket leads a horse out from the parade ring, taps the boot of the rider and quietly emphasises, “Maximum persuasion, Anthony, maximum persuasion.” The horse in question was an unremarkable 101 hurdler who had only managed to win once in his 17 previous runs, in an ordinary bumper in Tipperary. However, this was the first run for Unsinkable Boxer for Martin Pipe and Tony McCoy. Backed down to 11/10 favourite, he hacked up by 8 lengths, before going on to win his next six races. His mark jumped to 150, taking in both the Cheltenham and Aintree Festivals. At Cheltenham this horse turned in one of the most impressive handicap wins ever, ridden with supreme confidence by A.P. (and irrelevantly, my largest-ever NH bet to date riding with him) in a 3m 1f hurdle. The race report doesn’t quite capture the ease of the win: “Held up and behind, steady headway 8th, led on the bit approaching 2 out, won in a canter.”

There must be millions of punters around the world who have their own similar memories of the phenomenal, record-breaking rider, A.P. McCoy, who unexpectedly announced his retirement after his 200th winner of the season on board Mr. Mole in the Game Spirit Chase at Newbury. Many of us will have a “J.F. Kennedy” reaction of “Where were you on Saturday, 7th February 2015?” I’ll certainly never forget it – not least because I was at Uttoxeter with one of our horses, where Anthony Honeyball’s Rouquine Sauvage, ridden by his fiancée Rachael Green, was taking part in a 2m mares’ handicap hurdle. There were no connections present to cheer on horse or rider, so my wife and I, together with friends, became “honorary owners” for the day and I had the enjoyable experience, after a super winning ride from Rachael, of being called up to receive the prize as “Mr. J.P. McManus’s representative”. A.P.’s 200th winner was also in J.P.’s silks.

Obviously the statistics relating to A.P. are phenomenal: barring accidents, he will be lifting the trophy for his 20th consecutive jockey championship in the spring; the first jockey ever to ride 4,000 jumps winners (at Towcester, 7th November 2013 – I was also there that day, with a runner); galloped past Gordon Richards’ record of 269 winners with a total of 289 in 2001/02, and probably for A.P. a milestone that really mattered in passing Martin Pipe’s career tally of 4,191 on 18th July 2014. From then on there was only one more record, realistically, for him to break, and that certainly seemed likely at the start of this season: he had had his fastest-ever 50th, 100th and 150th winners when a bone-crunching fall at Worcester dislocated his collarbone, cracked a few ribs and punctured a lung, before a few weeks later breaking the same collarbone that he had earlier dislocated. The goal of 300 winners in a season then became impossible.

After the announcement of retirement, lots of commonality in the descriptions: determined, obsessive, driven, phlegmatic, disciplined, iron man. In his own words, one comment summed him up. “There have been loads of better riders than me: John Francome, Richard Dunwoody, Peter Scudamore, Charlie Swan, Ruby Walsh, Richard Johnson and Barry Geraghty. But I’ve been an over-achiever ….. The trick is that you mustn’t get too up, and you mustn’t get too down. It’s the fear of losing that matters, rather than the enjoyment of winning. That’s what keeps you going.”

So from now till the end of the season there is quite rightly bound to be a celebration wherever he rides, and it is most definitely a public relations godsend for racing. From the very next day, the Sunday after his retirement, the sports pages were full of photos and commentaries. Without any doubt there is a tremendous amount of goodwill towards A.P. and his family, and everyone is now hoping that he gets through to the end of the season in one piece and good shape, before deciding what to do next. It’s a real pity that racing doesn’t have its own version of the U.S. Hall of Fame to capture and acknowledge his immense stature and contribution to National Hunt racing.

The final comment is from J.P.: “Anthony was a great man to have on your side. To be sure, I wouldn’t have wanted to have him against me.”

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.