Category: Horse Racing Guide

Run over a mile and a quarter on dirt and, nowadays, worth $6 million in prize money, the Breeders’ Cup Classic is the most valuable and prestigious race run at the Breeders’ Cup World Championships. Indeed, such is its standing in North America that, alongside the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes, the race forms one version of the so-called ‘Grand Slam of Thoroughbred Racing’.

The Breeders’ Cup Classic is open to horses aged three years old and upwards but, at the time of writing, in 39 runnings, only Tiznow, trained by Jay Robbins in California, has won the race more than once. On November 4, 2000, at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, the three-year-old son of Cee’s Tizzy took the scalp of the so-called ‘Iron Horse’, Giant’s Causeway, trained by Aidan O’Brien. Having made the early running, Tiznow was briefly headed by Albert The Great with three furlongs left to run, but regained the lead inside the final quarter of a mile and, although eyeball-to-eyeball with Giant’s Causeway in the closing stages, was driven out to win by a neck.

Tiznow won the Eclipse Award for Horse of the Year in 2000 but, having won his first two starts of 2001, suffered a strained lumber vertebrae, which kept him off the track until the Grade 1 Woodward Stakes at Belmont Park in Elton, New York on September 8. He was beaten, albeit not far, in that race and on his next start, at Santa Anita in Arcadia, California, a month later, but nonetheless returned to Belmont Park on October 27 to defend his Breeders’ Cup Classic title. In what would be his last race, he overhauled the leader, Sakhee, in the final hundred yards and ran on well to win by a nose.

It’s an interesting question.

Now it will come as no surprise that certain horse trainers are very shrewd when it comes to tipping and betting on horses while others have no interest at all and some are just a poor judge. So the key is understanding the merit of the horse trainer.

There is a well-known tipping company called Trainer Quote who have a select number of horse trainer on their books who give their thoughts and I guess tips on horses they train. I have no idea how successful this is but I guess it they want to keep their retainer they had best detail the ‘good stuff’.

I have had little to do with horse trainers bar a Julia Feilden who I believe is one of the horse trainers with Trainer Quote. I met her a couple of times when I joined her racing syndicate Newmarket Equine Tours and a lovely lady she is too.

From my personal perspective, if I were a horse trainer and an owner was paying good money for a horse in training I would be very careful giving out information. Why? Because if you get it wrong a few times I can imagine an owner taking the huff and going elsewhere. So I can imagine most trainers (even if they strongly fancy a horse) would say: ‘I think it has a small each way chance.’ Trying to distance themselves as far from the ‘winning punt’.

Who could blame them.

As my good friend Eric Winner says: ‘They aren’t racing them for us!’

No truer word said.

I remember Clive Brittain, now retired, who trained at Newmarket. One of my favourite handlers because of his new say die attitude running horses at the highest grade when they looked to have little hope on form. He was the most optimistic trainer in the world. And it worked for him. Consider Terimon runner up in the Epsom Derby at 250/1. I have no idea if he advised the owner to have a bet but it wouldn’t have surprised me. He used to say: ‘Never be scared of one horse.’ He kept it to himself that he wasn’t scared of the whole field.

For a horse trainer to give tips it really is a thankless task. They have little to gain but much to lose.

I’ve know a few horse owners and they smart when they chatted tot he trainer the day before and didn’t say anything about a couple of winners that went in the next day. But why would they tell? Again, they have nothing to gain apart from irritating an owner who saw the odds on his or her horse shorten before they had placed their bet. The owner has no preserve over whispers or a punters view that they have seen value.

The best approach to understanding of a horse trainer doesn’t need to come from their mouth or the ‘horses mouth’ as I’ve heard from many an owner. It comes from data and what that says. If you have enough data you can learn how a trainer works and which horses have any real hope of winning. Don’t believe me, just do a bit of groundwork and you will soon appreciate the truth.

So are horse trainers good tipsters.

You can only judge each on their merits but you can tell that certain trainers are very good and know a winner when they see one.

A trainer knows his or her horses but whether they have a grasp of anyone else’s is an open question. That’s the problems with specific rather than global knowledge you can’t know everything and it only takes one or two horses in opposition to make you look a fool

Established in 1920, as a showcase for French thoroughbred breeding, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe is run over 2,400 metres, or approximately a mile and a half, at Longchamp Racecourse in the Bois de Boulogne in western Paris, traditionally on the first Sunday in October. Colloquailly known as the ‘Arc’, the race boasts total prize money of €5 million, making it the most valuable Flat race run in Europe and the most valuable run on turf anywhere in the world. The Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe is a truly international event and, in just over a century, its roll of honour has featured winners not only from France, but also from Germany, Ireland Italy and the United Kingdom.

As far as British-trained winners are concerned, the inaugural winner, Comrade, was a three-year-old owned by Frenchman Evremond de Saint-Alary, but trained by Peter Gilpin at Clarehaven Stables in Newmarket. Another three-year-old, Parth, trained by James Crawford in Ogbourne, Wiltshire followed in 1923, but it would be another 25 years until Migoli, trained by Frank Butters in Newmarket, broke the course record in 1948 and 23 more before Mill Reef, trained by Ian Balding in Kingsclere, Hampshire did so again in 1971. The next four British-trained winners were

Rheingold (1973), Rainbow Quest (1985), Dancing Brave (1986), and Carroll House (1989), albeit that Rainbow Quest was awarded the race in the stewards’ room.

Since then, Italian jockey has ridden six British-trained winners, namely Lammtarra (1995), Sakhee (2001), Marienbard (2002), Golden Horn (2015) and Enable (2017 and 2018). All six were trained in Newmarket, the first three by Saeed Bin Suroor and the last three by the most recent occupant of Clarehaven Stables, John Gosden. Two more Newmarket-trained horses, Workforce (2010), trained by Sir Michael Stoute, and Alpinista (2022), trained Sir Mark Prescott Bt, complete the list of 16 British-trained winners of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.

Dubbed ‘The Finest Chaser of the Century” by the ‘Sporting :Life’ in 1934 – which was, of course, over two decades before the birth of Arkle – Golden Miller was the most famous steeplechaser of the interwar years and rightly so. He was retired from racing in 1939, but remains the most successful horse in the history of the Cheltenham Gold Cup, having recorded five consecutive victories between 1932 and 1936, and the only horse ever to have won the Cheltenham Gold Cup and the Grand National in the same season, which he did in 1934, prompting the aforementioned newspaper headline.

Almost as famous was his owner, the Honourable Dorothy Paget, the daughter of Almeric Paget, Lord Queensborough and, at one time, the richest unmarried woman in England. A nigh on impossible child, who was expelled from no fewer than six schools, Paget was little or no better as an adult and her eccentrities become the stuff of legend. An arrogant, overweight, chain-smoker, who paid little attention to her appearance, she was, nevertheless, one of the most significant female racehorse owners in British history, amassing over 1,500 winners, under both codes, during her lifetime. Paget was also an inveterate gambler, betting, and often losing, huge sums of money on a daily basis, including at night, thanks to her peculiar, nocturnal lifestyle.

As far as Golden Miller is concerned, Paget bought the gelding as a four-year-old in 1931, along with Insurance, who would go on to win the Champion Hurdle twice, in 1932 and 1933, for a total of £12,000. She did so at the behest of trainer Basil Briscoe, who would saddle Golden Miller to his first four Cheltenham Gold victories, but fell out with Paget after the 1935 Grand National – for which, despite carrying 12st 7lb, ‘The Miller’ started 2/1 favourite, but unseated rider on the first circuit – leading to an acrimonious parting of the ways. For the remainder of his career, Golden Miller was trained by Owen Anthony.