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....Frankie and Johnny....
It's October. The shape of the 2004 season is pretty clear by now. It will be Godolphin's year.
Frankie Dettori is heading the race for the Jockey's Championship. An indicator of just how good a season the Godolphin operation is having. Not that Godolphin supply the fire-power for his numbers of winners but their success at the highest level feeds Frankie's confidence and creates the desire to pursue winning rides at the run of the mill level.
Johnny was having a lousy season but it picked up last weekend when two of his colts took Group 1 honours in top juvenile races in Newmarket and Paris. Ad Valorem and Oratorio are the colts that have put John Magnier's Coolmore/Ballydoyle empire back on the winning trail.

......Transparency goes wobbly.....and the Cat came back.
In the piece below we mentioned Sharmadal, a Gr.2 winning colt from the first crop of Giant's Causeway. Briefly the colt's history is as follows. A $485,000 RNA as a Keeneland weanling, a Gns50,000 Tattersalls Houghton yearling (nomination fee either Punts75,000 or $100,000, either way a pretty good loss for the breeder it appeared) and now a two year old worth a seven figure number. Well in the Racing Post of August 9th it now emerges that maybe nobody lost out after all.
Here's why.
The horse was diagnosed as a Grade 3 wobbler some time after not selling at Keeneland and the insurance company paid out, as a horse with this condition is as good as dead. We've read that the sum insured was $1,000,000. The horse was then bought by a loss adjuster and sent off to an alternative therapist who treated the conditon and cured it. The price paid by the loss adjuster is not disclosed. The new owners now entered the horse for the Keeneland September Sale but Keeneland declined to accept it. So the horse was sent across the Atlantic to Tattersalls for the Houghton sale. Tattersalls accept it. Ted Voute consigns it and takes it to the sales with neck x-rays, unusual to have these but Ted knew about the wobbler history and had the horse cleared by vets before agreeing to consign him. The horse is inspected and vetted three times pre-sale at the Houghton, although there was apparently no interest in the neck x-rays. Mark Johnston bids on the horse until Michael Goodbody, acting for one of his patrons tells MJ that he'll get the horse anyway so MJ stops bidding. Goodbody signs the ticket. Gns50,000 after commissions and costs goes to the loss adjuster. Maybe they made a profit, who knows?
The horse wins a Gr.2. A shrewd cheap buy by a good judge. But would he have bought if he knew the full story? Should he have been told? By whom? Mark Johnston in the RP says they would not have bid if he knew the full story at the time.
Now what if the horse had turned out to be useless? Would the purchaser ever have found out about the wobbler history? If they had found out could they have asked for their money back?
Horses diagnosed as wobblers do recover. Anabaa, winner of the July Cup for the Head family and now a successful sire in France was given to the Heads by his owner, Sheik Hamdam after he was diagnosed as a wobbler as a two year old.
We are not pointing the finger at any of the parties and it could just be that in the Sharmadal episode no-one has suffered. If you discount the insurers who paid out the claim. Maybe they will use a different vet next time. However it could all have played out different if the full story had been known to all parties at every stage. Transparency went wobbly in this case.
Meanwhile a mystery was cleared up at the Curragh on Sunday (August 8). One Cool Cat won the Gr.3, 6 furlong sprint. No irregular heartbeat was reported. That only happens when he is asked to compete in a higher grade over a mile. The cat came back, we thought he was a gonna but the cat came back 'cos he couldn't stay away.

.....Goodwood. Soviet Song's Sussex....
James Fanshawe produced Soviet Song to beat the colts. Refuse to Bend, did this time and Haafd didn't. You remember him he won the 2000 Guineas.
The really interesting horse at the meeting was Sharmadal, Giant's Causeway's first proper Stakes winner (sorry boys but we're not counting the Listed winner in Italy) who won the Gr.2 Veuve Cliquout Vintage Stakes. Congratulations all round, cue advertising. But what's the advertising going to say? This horse was not sold as a weanling for $485,000 at Keeneland November when he was consigned by Eaton Sales as agent. The horse was offered again as a yearling at the Tattersalls Houghton Sale by Ted Voute as agent and was sold to Michael Goodbody for Gns50,000. Errr come again? Eaton Sales ran an ad in TDN taking credit for consigning the horse, Tattersalls did the same for cataloguing the horse at their sales. We haven't seen an an ad yet from Ted. Where does this figure in the new era of transparency?

.....July and it's Godolphin's year so far....
They won the Eclipse with Refuse to Bend and the King George and Queen Elizabeth Stakes with Doyen. Dubai Millenium had his first stakes winning two year old in the Group 2 July Stakes at the Newmarket July meeting and Oude looks a good prospect by him too. Ballydoyle's year continues dismally with One Cool Cat finishing fifth in his comeback race at the Curragh. It was the irregular heart-beat again. The Lords keep up a strong pace with Lord Derby's Ouija Board doing the double with victory in the Irish Oaks.

.....Royal Ascot.....
The honours this year went to Godolphin with six winners. Sadler's Wells lead the sires table. Surprising that, because his offspring are generally considered to prefer some ease in the ground and for the whole five days the going was good to firm or faster. Steve Drowne, reckoned that the only thing missing was the cat's eyes and then it would really have been a road.

.....No Triple Crown for Smarty Jones....
He got caught in the shadow of the wire by Birdstone in the Belmont. We listened to the live commentary on the NYRA website. Very atmospheric and brilliantly called but why wasn't it on TV here? NBC covered it and as history was in the making you would think that Sky or At The Races would have bought the signal. And while we're at it why does the NYRA refuse to show webcasts of their racing?

..... The English Classics - Lords 3 : Sheiks 1....
Northern Light won the Derby, bred at Ballymacoll Stud and running in their colours, formerly the colours of Ballymacoll's owner Lord Weinstock. The Oaks was won by Ouija Board, owned and bred by Lord Derby and as it's his only horse in training we have to ask whether he used one when he made the decision to keep her rather than sell her. Selling wasn't on the agenda for Northern Light, he went into training with all the other Ballymacoll home-breds and the star of the crop for them was Snow Ridge who they did sell, at the end of his two year old year, to Godolphin. Snow Ridge was joint favourite with Northern Light but was not in the money. The long time ante post favourite had been the Balldoyle colt Yeats, but he was taken out having not overcome a muscle strain that he'd been carrying.
So, the Classics were won by the Duke of Roxburghe, the Earl of Derby, Lord Weinstock and Sheik Hamdam and they were all home-bred to boot.

.....the follow up to the first weekend in May....
 Haafd skipped  Irish the 2000 Guineas to wait for the St. James's Palace Stakes. One Cool Cat got a sick-note from Ballydoyle and the revisionists are already asking if he is going the same route as Hold That Tiger. In the end it was a double for the Dukes, Bachelor Duke was an unfancied but decisive winner running in the colours of the late Duke of Devonshire who died this month. In the 1000 Guineas it was the Duke of Roxburghe's Attraction who became the first filly in history to do the English and irish Guineas double and continued her unbeaten run
Meanwhile in the USA Smarty Jones has already won the second leg of the Triple crown at Pimlico and is now being talked about as the second coming of Seattle Slew, he will make history if he wins the Belmont Stakes on June 5th and will probably be the biggest money earner in the history of the thoroughbred as a result of adding the $5,000,000 Visa bonus on offer.

.....His Bobness gets sent a horse.....
Nothing unusual there you might think, although it is a multiple Group 1 winner, but listen to what the owner said.
"the reason I decided to make the switch had nothing to do with the trainer. I changed trainers because I could not trust myself with making bad decisions with Toccet anymore and I didn't listen to my trainer with his advice on the horse. I asked Frankel to take over his training because he is known for being his own boss, with little exception".
Absolutely right. We've had horses trained by a number of trainers and with one exception they have ended up asking us to make the difficult decisions. The exception is Christophe Clement.

....the first weekend in May, the Kentucky Derby and the Guineas....
A weekend  for owner breeders.
The 2000 Guineas was won by Haafd, bred by Sheik Hamdam from his racemare Al Bahathri by a stallion, Unfuwain, that he also bred. The 1000 Guineas was won by Lord Roxburghe with his homebred filly Attraction making his lordship the first duke to breed and race a Classic winner in England for 60 years.
At Churchill Downs another homebred won. Smarty Jones went into the race unbeaten and stayed that way. He is a Pennsylvania bred. Last years winner Funny Cide is a New York bred.
What is especially interesting is that the horses that finished second, behind the homebred winners, in the 2000 Guineas and the Kentucky Derby were both owned by two of the most avid purchasers of thoroughbreds in the business. Godolphin (which is really Sheik Mohammeds vehicle for world domination ) had Snow Ridge in second place in the Guineas a horse that was bred and raced as a two year old by Sheik Hamdam. In the Kentucky Derby the second placed slot was filled by one of Michael Tabor's purchases Lionheart. Godolphin did not have a runner in the Kentucky Derby despite the amount that has been spent by them at the US sales in the last half decade.
Coolmore had a deja vue Saturday. Like 2003 they went into Saturday with the 2000 Guineas the massively hyped favourite. Last year it was Hold That Tiger and this year it was One Cool Cat. Both horses are by Storm Cat and both were huge disappointments, finishing nearly last. One Cool Cat was reported after the race to have an irregular heart beat. Not as irregular as a lot of the punters who had fallen for the hype for the second year running.

 Random Notes from the 2002 and 2003 seasons: (for full text click here)

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