YESTERDAY AT NEWMARKET, Mr. CLARKE OF GUILDFORD IS INCORRECT & ODD INCIDENT AT THE END OF THE CAMBRIDGESHIRE.

Occasionally, trainers come along whose training methods change the perception of how other trainers train their horses. These people are usually National Hunt trainers, Michael Dickenson and Martin Pipe come to mind. Yet no flat trainer seems minded to copy the training ethos of Aidan O'Brien, with the possible exception of his sons. 'Win or Learn' is the ethos of the O'Briens, with Aidan of the opinion that when a horse is fit and well the best policy is to keep running them until they tell you enough is enough. No other flat trainer of my lifetime, or as far as I can recall while sat here tip-tapping away, would run their best 2-year-old eight-times and still have one or two targets left to fulfil. If Aidan decides to run Sun Goddess twice more this season, finishing at the Breeders Cup, she will have run 10-times. The majority of top fillies might not have ten-starts in their whole career.

Yes, Aidan and his owners are in the enviable position that if Sun Goddess does not train on next season, there will be a whole host of other fillies to step into her shoes. I doubt any trainer from any age has season after season had available to them such a supply of top-class horses as afforded Aidan. Yesterday at Newmarket and The Curragh he won with three 2-year-olds, all of which are high in the ante-post markets for next season's classics. Why British trainers do not copy his methods is hard to understand. Not only does he run 2-year-olds many more times as a juvenile than any other trainer but he also has a policy of giving other horses plenty of time to mature, so he is no one-trick pony. His horses are also exercised seven-daya a week, unlike the customary thinking of a horse needing a day of rest. 

I have no idea, nor has anyone else, if Sun Goddess will train on as a three-year-old but given she cost 120,000 guineas to purchase and has won over £1-million, I should imagine the 'lads' will be beside themselves with glee at what Aidan has achieved with the filly. Haffner, on the other hand, will doubtless train on, as will Noble Exhibit. Whether there are one, two, three or ten, better prospects for the classics at Ballydoyle we will only know come May or June of next year.

As with many of us who have letters published in The Racing Post, Mr. Clarke or Guildford makes an arse of himself today by proposing that racecourses should suffer financial penalties if they stage a day of uncompetitive racing. Why he ignores the well-documented ever-shrinking foal crop playing no small part in the three, four and five-runners races in  National Hunt races at the moment, it is not for us to know. What I do know is that at this time of year it is normal for small-fields to be the order of the day. As Mr. Clarke points out, there are too many jumps fixtures in the months between June and October but even when there was no summer jumpings, field sizes were always on the small size until the larger stables became active in November. And if we do not get persistant rain over the coming weeks, small fields will prevail right through November as well, I would imagine. The fault does not lie with the racecourses but factors outside of the remit of racecourses, the B.H.A. or anyone of human origin, politicians excluded.

The following, quoted from The Racing Post's analysis of the Cambridgeshire might be usually found in a Dick Francis novel. '... vet reported colt appeared to show evidence of possible administration of a substance with a swelling present in the region of left jugular vein...'. The horse in question is Spanish Voice, trained by Andrew Balding. The horse finished 12th and so it is baffling as to why, if indeed there is a why, someone would administer 'whatever' that occassion the horse to finish mid-division. If he was 'got at' - I cannot believe for a single moment that Andrew Balding was involved in whatever has gone on - he should either have run out of his skin or finished tailed-off last.

There must be an innocent explanation, and Andrew's vets supplied the stewards with a record of medication given to the horse - perhaps throughout the season - and the trainer assured the stewards the horse had only received normal food and water in the run-up to the Cambridgeshire. I suspect this will be a story in The Racing Post tomorrow, though I hope it will be coupled with an acceptable explanation to nip in the bud the doubtless frenzy of speculation, which I maybe starting, that will follow in the coming days.