sea the stars, the irish derby & Aidan and Willie.

​Mr. Robert Coppini of Worcestershire started a thread with another letter in the Racing Post exulting Sea The Stars as one of, if not the, greatest horses of all-time. I countered with my usual argument that shooting stars and gilded lilies should never be rated above horses who won at the top level for 2, 3 or 4-seasons. Since the publication of his latest letter on this topic, Mr.Coppini has found one fellow Sea The Stars fan and I’ve had one reader supporting my argument.
The problem here is that I am not denigrating Sea The Stars. For nine-months he was undoubtedly the best 10 to 12-furlong horse in Europe and I would not argue against him being possibly the best in the world. Also, he has proved a brilliant sire. I am critical, not of the horse but his owner and trainer for confounding logic by suggesting the horse had nothing else to prove on the racecourse. Of course he had plenty to prove. We will never know if he would have physically or mentally stood another year in training; we will never know if he was able to give weight and a beating to the following generation of 3-year-olds.
No matter the standard of horses Frankel had behind him in all his races, the fact is he withstood racing for 3-seasons, won in a canter on the occasions the ground was not heavy, won a classy Juddmonte International at his only attempt at 10-furlongs, and on the bridle, suggesting to me that dear old Henry had campaigned the legendary horse over the wrong distance for most of his life, and emphatically defeated the previous season’s generation of 3-year-olds.
I have no grudge against Sea The Stars, nor Dancing Brave, the other horse I put forward as a shooting star or gilded lily. I speak in defence of the sport and the need for owners of top racehorses to keep them in training for as long as possible as a gift to the sport and to do all that can be done to help this sport survive. We do not need more stallions; we do though need the very best 4-year-olds in competition with the following season’s top 3-year-olds.

Still people, racing journalists amongst them, put forward the idea that to save the Irish Derby from falling off the pattern charts, the heritage of the race should be kicked in the teeth by reducing its distance to a distance that has nothing to do with ‘Derbies’. Derbies are run over 12-furlongs; to reduce the Irish Derby to 10-furlongs, to copy the French, and to hope for the best is wrong-headed and as a strategy, if it should be implemented, it deserves to fail. The problem is not the race but the modern breeder who has forgotten about stamina and the good of the breed and has gone all out for speed and throwaway two-year-olds. 
I would suggest Leopardstown and its sponsors resort to a bonus scheme to induce the connections of any horse placed in the Epsom Derby to travel to Leopardstown, with double the prize-money for any horse that either wins or is placed in the Irish Derby. Give owners and trainers a reason for targeting Leopardstown. 
Instead of having the Irish Derby as an island in the sun, reschedule the race for later in the season, perhaps on the Irish Oaks card or go off-the-wall and stage it on Irish Champions Day. But please, for the sake of the breed, to give breeders no further reason to produce milers and sprinters, stick with 12-furlongs. If you do not, the rumbling you hear might be Vincent O’ Brien and Paddy Prendergast tossing and turning in their graves.

When Michael Dickenson ruled the National Hunt waves, other trainers were keen to know his ‘secret’ training method; it was the same when Martin Pipe was the perennial champion trainer. When their ‘secrets’ were revealed, other trainers changed their tried and tested method of training and accepted that Dickenson and Pipe were one or two steps ahead of them and if they wanted to catch-up, they had to get in step pretty lively.
The things with our present ‘kings of the turf’, one king of summer, the other king of winter, is that with the exception of Willie Mullins’ deep Wexford sand gallops, no one, it seems, is trying to replicate their methods. Of course, no one, with the possible exception of Gordon Elliott, has anywhere like the same number of equine A-listers in their stable. Yet does any trainer follow Willie’s example and run their very best horses in January and February, rather than wrapping them up in cotton wool until March? Does any flat trainer copy the bold strategies of Aidan? This weekend at Saint Cloud he won a Group 1 with a two-year-old who had only made his debut on a racecourse only 8-days before. Gosden would not dream of such a turnaround, or any other British trainer, even with an older horse, let alone a two-year-old.