2008 Departures

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Uncle Goober, I have never been involved in racing at any level, other than as a punter.

I dont have any scientific evidence upon which to base my argument, other than a rich man is more likely to be able to give a horse he owns a happy retirement and pay for vets bills if injured in action, than an averagely financially endowed man.

I hate the way people who work in the bloodstock game get so defensive.

I am not saying all animals end up being carted off abroad, but equally there is a problem which exists and none other than Peter O'Sullevan and Lord Oaksey have campaigned tirelessly to reverse.

I think people in racing tend to take any criticism as a threat to the whole industry (a bit like the hunting fraternity refused to meet the anti-hunt lobby halfway).

The over production of the breed is the big issue that needs addressing - but there seems little will to do anything about this.

To the poster who owns the 0-45 animal you are to be commended. However I would suggest you are in a minority of less wealthy owners who, as much as they may want to, haven't the finance to give their horses happy retirments or stays of execution as soon as the green screens go up.
 
Tell you one thing Useful;

If you get a syndicate horse or a cheap horse with hobby owners the horses normally become pets and get good homes, yet these owners like myself aren't in the brackets of some.

Credit where Credit's due as J P gives all his horses a good home, however you will find its the Sheikh's and many of your big owners who don't actually care about their horses and believe it or not get shot when its career is over for them as they would rather kill it than find a new owner or home in case it turns a new leaf.

Look in a sales catalogue and tell me how many of the horses there are small owner owned or big owner owned. Normally you find those with money care for horses less. Not too long ago a Grand National winner was found starving in a field.

If Sheikh Mo has a selling plater and it cant sell, well without being sick , its hello London Zoo, first stop cats enclosure.

You may think because they have more money they may care more but this is not true, you go to any big owner and ask how many keep the majority of their horses for retirement if there not very good, you won't find many.

Sheikh so and so buys 200 juveniles every year, of which about 50 stay in training. 100 get bought at the sales, now I can assure you the other 50 ain't sat eating grass enjoying retirement at the age of 3 somewhere.

I took a horse 16 months ago off a big owner for a hack, he was once a 97 rated flat performer and he had lost all his condition. He was far from
cared for before he came to me. Also my 16 yo pointer was a 154 rated chaser that won its owners well over 100k in prize money. When the owner died it was shipped off to a no-ones yard and was not a happy horse when i retrieved him after the will.

I was not impressed one bit. Both are in great nick now and if you looked at two sets of pictures of them now the horses are barely noticeable.

Personally I feel big owners should be vetted more than small owners. Most small owners can get livery or a lad to look after a horse after retirement, a big owner wont try. McMannus is an excellent exception and he is someone I feel is a proper racing person.
 
Hello Useful and welcome to the forum....

Have you forgotten the case of Hallo Dandy Owned by Richard Shaw and trained by Gordon Richards.. Shaw subsequently loaned Hallo Dandy to the Earl of Onslow, a Tory member of the House of Lords .. Onslow rode him to hounds with the Fernie Hunt in Leicestershire, and the horse disappeared from public view, only to emerge eight years later... at the age of 20 Hallo Dandy was turned out in a field on Onslow's Surrey estate. In 1994, he was in very poor condition, emaciated, with his hooves cracked and overgrown, ribs pushing out against his blistered skin, and suffering from rain scald......

Mr Shaw would have been devestated im certain to hear what had happened to Hallo Dandy , this was a High Profile Horse and his story shocked the Racing World ....... "Werent these Rich Men ".....?

Their are Good Owners and Bad Owners... Rich or not so rich ...
 
People like to try and say how things should be done but do not say themselves where the line should be drawn, or justify their reasons for that line.

Overproduction is a subject on which people like to have their say and I sometimes wonder myself why certain stallions are standing at stud but then all I have to do is not send a mare to that stallion. If other people want to waste time sending their mare to a crappy stallion thats up to them, the produce will probably fail and supply and demand will sort it out, but where should officialdom draw the line on which horses should be ALLOWED to breed ?

People want to have their say over which mares should breed. That they have to have won a race is a common line drawn in the sand.

Have a look at this list ;

LIGHT SHIFT (Niarchos)
ATTRACTION (Lord Roxburgh)
OUIJA BOARD (Lord Derby)
AUTHORIZED
RUSSIAN RHYTHM (Cheveley Park Stud)
SCORPION ( Coolmore)

Of the 25 classics run in England over the last five years, the above six winners are out of mares that either did not race at all, or failed to win a race having run.

Are we to say these horses should never have been born because their dams failed to win a race ?
 
Hello Zebs, no I haven't forgotten Hallo Dandy and his case is truly regrettable.

As for Sheik Mohammed, he is at the forefront of the over breeding scandal that besets the breed.

Having said that, the humane killing of a horse for whom no home can be found is better than live shipment abroad for meat or worse.

As I stated before there are problems with how the industry deals with its horses for whom a racing career is no longer viable - that is undispited and the work of Messrs O'Sullevan and Oaksey have highlighted that. I am not saying just because you are rich it guarantees a safe and happy passage into retirement for that persons horses. However, I believe that wealth does give the owner the means to keep the retired string on his/her land (a la J P McManus), or to nurse injured horses back to health.

We were all shocked to see Richard Guest implicated in an animal cruelty case, and he had the patronage of Paul Beck at the time.

In terms on injuries, euthanasing the horse is often the ONLY option to most owners because the vets bills are too high. The cases of Nick Dundee and Barbaro are heart warming indeed, but how many animals are destroyed because the owners are too poor?
 
I think, Chris is right here.

A small owner, with just one or two horses, is much more likely to become attached to and care for his horse(s).

Even if he can't keep the horse and look after it himself, he can make arrangements for the horse to go to a good home and even ensure that the horse isn't sold on.
 
I am happy to accept that small owners are not the problem if that is the case, in terms of horses being happily retired.

Where owners are unwilling or unable to keep horses then a bullet in the head is probably the best solution - selling the horse on to the meat trade or as a work horse is not right.

I think the people arguing on here for the small owner appear to argue from a position of personal experience.

What is without question is the sport of racing has an unenviable record in terms of dealing with horses after their racing careers are over, whether through injury or old age.

More needs to be done to rid the sport of owners who are not prepared to care for their horses throughout the horse's life. This means the governing bodies need to make it harder to become an owner, and existing owners with poor track records need to be removed from the sport.

Perhaps with less owners, the breeders would be forced to produce less, and both problems would be solved - those of over production and poor animal welfare.
 
UG, all the studies that have ever been undertaken on the subject show that the most likely begetters of high class racehorses are high class racemares, followed in second place by the daughters of high class racemares or producers. Non-winners are generally at the bottom of the pile.

There are always plenty of exceptions, the innate genetic variability of the thoroughbred will always see to that, and non-winning stallions can produce champions - Arkle, Golden Miller, Pendil and Flagship Uberalles are testaments to that - but the basic rules apply. The "fault" when yet another poorly-conformed, unathletic racehorse is bred usually lies with the mare.
 
Not sure how fair it is to include Flagship U in that list since his sire was well bred and never ran.
 
So he never won a race!

The sires of Golden Miller and Pendil never ran either, and it would be hard to find a better bred horse than Pendragon.
 
Chris, if truth were told, you wouldn't want your horse to be rated 45 or less, and did you not also contemplate giving up on him not so long ago?

My question still stands - who in their right mind would pay c. £20k per year to keep a banded horse in training to pick up a £1200 race? It's simple economics! Not all horses cost that much to be kept in training, true - your horse, Chris, for example - and neither did Kahlua Bear.

A horse who you have a damn cheek to bring up in such terms, Headstrong - and despite owning a lowly rated horse, I am still entitled to my opinion that overproduction should be controlled and what I have or have not owned in the past has little to do with that. Not least when the horse wasn't as useless as you are desperate to make out he was - he won two races before dying prematurely of a bout of colic, for Christ's sake.

UG, I cannot agree with you re: overproduction. I, personally, wouldn't breed from a non-winning mare as I see little point in it. I take your point that every now and then you get decent horses out of non-winners (you know yourself that my horse wouldn't be here if you could only breed out of winners, even though we were told his dam had won before I bought him!) but it's not that common. I don't know how it could be done or policed as there would have to be discretionary measures employed - for unraced, well bred mares for example and others I'm sure.

The trouble is that all you get at the moment is a glut of poorly bred scabs being bred every year who are never going to trouble the judge and there are only so many homes on offer to such creatures when they have to be retired from the track.

Oh, and incidentally, you mention Soviet Song, I wouldn't have bred from the goat that produced her either, there are exceptions - nay minor miracles - to every rule I guess!
 
You cannot agree with me about over production ? Well I didn't say there aren't too many horses of no ability, what I am doing is questioning the criteria for quality control.

For decent horses out of non-winners a strike rate of 6 classic winners out of the last 25 is not a minor miracle or 'every now and then' though is it ? I would say thats common enough!

The question lies in what criteria do people want to use in order to term a mare a scab ?

I didn't have to do that much research to discover that simply ruling out a mare for the fact that she never won is not the answer.

The glut of poorly bred scabs (as you call them) that never troubled the judge keep good company at the back of the field with plenty of their more illustrious and expensively purchased 'better-bred' distant relatives.

Discretionary measures to let in well bred mares then ? Who wants to start by defining well bred?
 
I appreciate the statistical analysis and the conclusions drawn. Everyone has their criteria when scouring a catalogue for potential big race winners and plenty would be guided by the conclusions from the analysis in that link and with just reason, for you cannot buy every horse that looks nice on paper and a criteria is needed.

Following that guide, the conclusion is to favour the progeny of a mare with good race form over that of a mare with just a strong family to increase a buyers chances in the long run, of selecting a stakes winner.

Of course that does not alter the fact that the latter mares breed winners, though at a lesser frequency in stakes races, and that unraced mares or mares that did not win also breed winners but with an even lesser frequency in stakes races.

I appreciate anyones efforts to make total sense of overproduction but I stand by the fact that you cannot simply rule out of the breeding pool mares that did not win when in a ten minute search I uncovered Light Shift, Ouija Board, Attraction, Russian Rhythm, Authorized and Scorpion from just 25 winners of the highest class. The excitement and stories that have revolved around these horses that may never have been born if unwinning mares were banned, but someone can send a 50rated winning mare by Paris House to something like Monsieur Bond or Majestic Missile and take the moral breeding high ground.

I dont think there will ever be a broodmare-ban for there are too many grey areas, and I think there are a few unraced stallions that have had a little success too ...
 
You could go back another year and stick High Chaparral into your survey, UG.
 
Then you get a mare like KALINKA who raced only 12 times, inc twice over hurdles. She won once, was 2nd once and 3rd once, winning a total of just over 8000K.

She is one of only around 4 mares - woudl have to look it up - which have foaled a Group 1 winner under *both* codes [Soviet Song and Penzance, vastly different animals]. You just never know.
 
Jesus 8000k; blimey thats some achievement 8m for only the one win.

Where can I find them races :)
 
Originally posted by chrisbeekracing@Jan 23 2008, 07:25 AM
Jesus 8000k; blimey thats some achievement 8m for only the one win.

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:eek: I thought 8000K was 8 Grand! isn't it?
 
I was never any good at maths! So I should have said 8K, that's it isn't it

By the way does anyone know if the David Johnson horse which fell today got up OK, I didn't have pictures

Another thing: Kirtlington Stud lost their teaser Kylian last year and they're looking for a replacement to buy or on loan. Please pm if you have any ideas
 
Originally posted by Headstrong@Jan 23 2008, 06:42 PM
I was never any good at maths! So I should have said 8K, that's it isn't it

By the way does anyone know if the David Johnson horse which fell today got up OK, I didn't have pictures

Another thing: Kirtlington Stud lost their teaser Kylian last year and they're looking for a replacement to buy or on loan. Please pm if you have any ideas
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Noble Sham definitely got to his feet HS. No idea about anything after that though
 
Thanks Martin, that was the one.

Sorry to hear about the Huntingdon fatality - I had a badge today courtesy of one of the jocks but stayed out v late last night and didn't feel up to the drive :rolleyes: Quite glad really, I hate it on course course when that happens
 
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