4 Results Found For: June 2015

30th June 2015

Hamilton’s top jockey, Joe Fanning, with a 21% strike rate at the track, rides in just two of the seven races there today. He has one ride for me, my only runner, and one for Irish trainer Lee Smyth. No other British trainer is using him. Why?

Some of it is most certainly down to the fact that I had entries in five of the seven races and so he may well have been perceived as unavailable. There may also be a feeling that, due to his loyalty to us, he is unlikely to be available for the horse next time. But the same applies to most top jockeys. It’s puzzling.

25th June 2015

Another two individual two-year-old winners yesterday taking our tally of two-year-old wins for 2015 to 31 and our number of individual two-year-old winners to 25. It is really great and I am thoroughly enjoying this change of emphasis in the yard but I am not giving you these figures in order to boast about my achievements. If, however, like me, you enjoy looking at the trainers and jockeys statistics, you will probably, like me, be very confused by what you read in the Racing Post.

It is no fault of the ultra-reliable Racing Post. I have little doubt that their figures, both in the paper and on the website, are accurate (it is rare, but not unheard of, for them to make mistakes). But the paper doesn’t give us figures for two-year-olds of 2015 (the season having started on 9th November) and the website, where you can find the figures for the number of wins by looking into data on individual trainers, does not give us any details on the number of individual two-year-old runners. I was able to ascertain, by looking at all the horses I have run this year, that we have run 50 individual two-year-olds in 2015, that 25 of them have won, and that they have won a total of 31 races. So, as far as my yard is concerned, you must deduct two wins, two individual winners, and ten individual runners from the figures given in the Racing Post newspaper. I have no idea what the situation is for other trainers and so it is difficult to gain a proper perspective on what we have achieved, so far, this year.

15th June 2015

Announcement from ARC today:

“Today Arena Racing Company (“ARC”) announces changes to its Racing Department.

ARC Racing Director Jim Allen has decided to leave the company at the end of the year. In addition to his role at ARC Jim is a licensed flat trainer and will be moving to the USA in 2016 to set up his own training yard.”

I suppose he knows better than anyone how bad prize-money is in the UK when compared to the USA. He’ll also have some inside track on what the future holds for us here with ARC’s emphasis on all-weather racing and quantity ahead of quality.

2nd June 2015

Some great examples of ‘sliderule handicapping’ with my horses this week. Sliderule handicapping, as I have explained before, is the term Jim McGrath gives to the policy of moving horses up and down by small amounts while leaving them in the same grade and, effectively making no difference whatsoever to their chances of winning a race.

Bizzario dropped 1lb to 76; Casila dropped 1lb to 64, after a 56 length defeat at Brighton; Cassandane dropped 1lb to 56 after finishing 6th of 9 beaten 14 lengths; Maid in Rio dropped 2lbs to 95 for finishing 10th of 10 beaten a whopping 97 lengths; Regal Ways dropped 1lb to 71 after finishing last beaten 26 lengths; and Yorkindred Spirit dropped 2lbs to 57 after yet another unplaced run. What is the point?

Coversely, Leaderene went up 10lbs for winning a very weak Newmarket handicap in which she started at 11/10 favourite, presumably due to only one of the other six runners having been placed this year and that was back in February on the all-weather.

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