Wholeheartedly agree with the highlighted point for 99% of good quality/champion horses. (The 1% will always be there for expemptions! Hahahaha...)Originally Posted by Drivemecrazy
How many times do you hear a trainer say, "Ohh if I could just get this bloke's head right, he could be anything..." Those horses end with terrible records/careers mainly down to manners.
A lot of it is still I believe in the education. We rush breaking-in these days to get them up for futurity series because they show raw, natural ability when sometimes, it would have been far and away better long term to take longer and a more patient approach to their education, yes potentially forgoing some early money.
The horse fails early and is deemed' mad and the trainer wants to sack it, yet let the horse be a horse early and break it right, nice and steady and things may well have been vastly different.
As for the 'Midas Man', brilliant read and I'll treasure mine for the rest of my days as it was signed by the great man himself, TJ Smith before he passed away.
Last edited by Old Frank; 02-03-2012 at 12:42 AM.
(A lot of it is still I believe in the education. We rush breaking-in these days to get them up for futurity series because they show raw, natural ability when sometimes, it would have been far and away better long term to take longer and a more patient approach to their education, yes potentially forgoing some early money.)
Now here is someone saying something that should be listened to.
The SINGLE biggest thing that TJ had going for him was Percy Sykes. He was a BRILLIANT Vet.
TJ was not only great trainer but a master at doing form and brilliant at setting a horse for a race. he was also a Massive winning punter who bet huge amounts in pounds.you would not get half of his bets on today decades later even if you placed in dollars what he bet in pounds .
That's something I have always been in awe of...Trainers who can time it so that their horse hits its peak in a specific big $ race or otherwise have it at its best when they put their $ down. It's an incredible talent.
I guess JB Cummings is the master of getting a horse to peak on a specific day!
Brett Pelling was an absolute master at it too. When the big $ was on offer his horses were trained to the minute.
Yup, you see it in all codes of racing, and in some of the other equine sports. we are all trying to make furturities, and make babies do a mans work.
A horse is not mature till he is 4 .. but our biggest money is sometimes for the 2yr old and 3yr old seasons.
But horse breeding is a business. People want a quick profit. they dont want to wait 4 or 5 years to see what happens.
but having that well trained youngster .. helps with that quick profit.
Hi Tazmin . It costs about 30K to get a horse to the races as a 2YO . Service fees , registrations , training fees etc etc . Add another 20K to wait till 4YO . The only money worth chasing is as a 2 or 3YO . Breeding would cease without that .
So TJ couldn't train for 32 straight premiership winning years, it was simply down to the vet?
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