BIG-5 Pull A Move

If you been in racing long enough to pick up a bit of breeding knowledge in addition to your day to day punting, then you will love the yearling sales.  If ever there is a microcosm which imitates the wild world outside then the sales has it all.

Breeders have a product to sell that takes two and a half years to manufacture.  The seed costs could be anything.  The risks are enormous and what you see in the catalogue are the survivors in the ultimate game of attrition.  Above it all they had to guess what the fashion would be this season: Daylami off a 80 grand service fee or Dynasty at 12k?  Buyers compete with other buyers to sniff out the hidden gems, and have to guess just how high they will have to go to succeed.  Everyone is watching everyone, it's a sizzling hotbed of intrigue.  Brilliant!

Of course, whenever racing people get together, rumours percolate too.  This time it's the breakaway of the Big-5, and I don't mean there are lions and rhinos wondering around.  The mill says that 5 strong breeders have decided that the trip from Cape Town to Jo'burg no longer holds that keen sense of anticipation anymore and that a sale where the horses are bred is the way to go.  

Next year, some time around the Met, buyers can expect a sale of the first order to be held at the Cape International Convention Centre (http://www.cticc.co.za/public/Main/Home.aspx).  Three hundred and fifty horses of the best and brightest will be on offer in the free zone, in peak Cape Town summer season and carefully selected by an international judge.  I would book my ticket now!

The old "Goodwood" sale is gone, and resurrected in it's place is The New National Sale.  One wonders about the old National Sale.

It's a dramatic turn of events, especially when read in context to the state of the game now.  In the early 90's the breeding industry had the capacity to supply the almost 10,000 horses in training and now it's about 5,500.  The shrinkage of every aspect of the sport is obvious and some reaction was inevitable.

I can only speculate that the TBA who are the representative body of all the breeders resisted the urgings of some of their major members who felt the time had come to relocate the top end of the market to a more cosmopolitan city which is also a 1000 miles closer to the breeding sheds.  What could have been a serious diversion of paths seems to have settled into a more peaceful cooperation which nonetheless leaves the National Sales normally held at the TBA's HQ at Gosforth Park gutted and one of the regional Cape sales now extinct.

At some point it will hit the media and we'll get an official rendition and spin.

Yearlings & Stallions

I had my yearlings for sale at my normal venue and 2010 will have to go down as a tough year for me.  I guess a number of others too.  My sense is that the market is spoilt to the extent that producers will often (have to) sell at a loss.  Either too much supply or not enough interest.  Most sellers look to attract the attention of the very few strong buyers and hope that a couple of big prices will bail out the rest of their string.

Certainly there are many yearlings for sale who will not have siblings to follow as the great cull began some time ago.  I have been wondering which area has shrunk fastest: supply or demand.  It's really possible that horses can get expensive again because the breeders have cut back so much.

I anticipate that while breeders wait for times to get better, that they will have to have a hard look at the money they are prepared to spend on stallion service fees.  Stallion owners have already cut prices but young stallions are going to face increasing pressure to get the number of mares that will give them a chance to make the grade.  The market is extremely judgemental and the fate of a new sire can be decided before it has properly begun.

There is some smoke that indicates some big changes are coming very soon.  That it has taken so long for a radical change is what really surprises me.  I began to suspected that the breeders pockets' were bottomless and maybe they could go on indefinitely.  Even though there was a very real surge in income a few years back, a great share of that found it's way into the accounts of very successful stallions who literally held the whole show to ransom.  At any rate over a long drought it was just a shower.

Eliminate discretion

One of the great things about racing is that something will always come up to surprise you.  Here’s a situation that is so obvious that I’m shocked it never occurred to me before.  Although it apparently hasn’t occurred to the handicapper either so I’m in good company.

On ABC some whiner complained that his horse (with diabolical form) was eliminated from a handicap race while horses with lower ratings ran in his place.  I looked up the race http://www.gallop.co.za/cgi-bin/fgresult?20100309:18:6:1 and the horse (Red Mist) has a rating of (93) and was carded as the 2^nd reserve runner and 3 horses in a field of twelve had ratings of 91, 88 and 87.

The rules for eliminations in a handicap race are “7.2.4.1 From the lowest net merit rating upwards.” but if the handicap is a feature race then “At the Handicapper's discretion” would come into effect.  As it happens the race was a non black type feature and the handicappers invoked the discretion rule to overrule their own Merit Rating with a “form” consideration.  It’s a side issue that I can’t find the definition of a “Feature”.

Now I have to apologize to the ‘whiner’ because he has every right to complain.  Merit Ratings are by definition separate from form.  If the handicapper uses ‘form’ to override ratings, he admits that his rating is incorrect.  A current rating is a measure of expectation, and if he puts an (87) horse in before a (93) using ‘discretionary’ powers, he says loud and clear that he expects that this (93) horse is not competitive with even the lowest rated horse in the race. 

It stands to reason then that the handicapper should immediately bring the rating of the (93) horse (he eliminated) to the rating of the lowest horse he put in front of it, in this case (87).  Red Mist would have had to carry 56.5kg to Ryan’s A Lion’s 53.5kg and if the handicapper eliminates Red Mist in favour of Ryan’s A Lion, all reason and common sense tells us the rating of the eliminated horse should be set to equal to or lower than the lowest horse that was accepted.

Many trainers have argued ‘form’ when discussing the ratings of their horses with the Handicapper only to be swatted down with a counter argument of how the horse ‘rated’ against its peers and how form is therefore meaningless.  The handicapper has argued that ratings (as we use them) is NOT an expression of maximum ability as may be applied elsewhere, but a working handicap figure.  This they argue is why our ratings are so fluid from race to race.  To see the same handicapper now apply form above their handicap figure is stunning to say the least.

How can Red Mist have an official figure, that does not get him into a race which that figure qualifies him to?

If I were the owner, I would immediately initiate an objection to Red Mist’s rating of (93).  Eliminating the horse is an acknowledgement that the horse is not competitive off its rating, and this is an official opinion, in print!  It’s a double jeopardy to have the horse rated too high AND not allowed to run off the rating.  I would love to see them insist on the 93 when they themselves have just made the case against.