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Raiders lost the Arc – among others!
It has been an odd year for British-trained horses on the other side of the Channel. There have never been so many making the journey – by New Year’s Eve the tally may well pass the 400mark for the first time – but the strike-rate (little more than 10%) has been poor and the quality of the races won largely underwhelming. For instance, this will be the first year since 1984 that Arc weekend has passed without a single victory for ‘Les Rosbifs’ and the 27 Gallic Group 1 races have produced just three relatively minor British triumphs – from Havana Gold in the Prix Jean Prat, Elusive Kate in the Prix Rothschild and Tac de Boistron in the Prix Royal-Oak. Remarkably, there have been as many notable wins for visiting National Hunt trainers as for their Flat counterparts, albeit one of them was a Grade 2 race rather than a Grade 1. As eulogised about last month, Reve de Sivola won the Grand Prix d’Automne for Nick Williams on November 2, while Paul Nicholls won the Prix Renaud du Vivier with Ptit Zig a week later to go with the Prix La Barka that his Celestial Halo had annexed back in May. And one successful Flat raid did have a nasty twist in its tail. As reported in October’s column, Lambourn handler Stan Moore did
GEORGE SELWYN
FRA
Jan_113_Continental_Tales_v3_Owner Breeder 13/12/2013 15:55 Page 33
horses did at least get some return, albeit just 30 krona. Your horse is also insured against death (allowing funds to purchase a replacement) and, thus far, all competing horses have managed at least two runs. As you can probably gather by now, the Swedish Jockey Club has put a great deal of thought into the intricacies of the competition. Its success (“we have got a lot of new people into racing this way,” said its Director Of Racing, Nicholas Cordrey) is much down to Helena Gartner, who has somehow found the time to lead the project while maintaining her other responsibilities within the Jockey Club’s licencing and education departments. “We have spread the horses around the country,” said Gartner. “In 2014, three will be based in Stockholm, two in Malmo and one in Gothenberg. “And we choose the trainers carefully, paying particular attention to their communication skills – blogging, tweeting and using Facebook
THOROUGHBRED OWNER & BREEDER INC PACEMAKER
Ptit Zig was one of the rare big winners for Britain across the Channel this year
particularly well to plunder four claiming races and pick up decent prize-money on a dozen other occasions. But one of his winners, the juvenile gelding Cockney Bob, was claimed for £13,824 by Chantilly handler David Windrif after he had
to keep shareholders up to date with the latest news of their horse is particularly important. “We have a rule that the winning trainer is guaranteed the chance to be part of the competition again the following year and the trainer who sells all 1,000 shares the fastest also gets that guarantee. “The trainers have their budget of 375,000 krona [roughly £35,0000, financed by 1,000 shares at 375 krona each] and they can spend whatever proportion of that sum they want on buying the horse, leaving the remainder to cover their training fees. We restrict them to buying horses who will be three years of age when the competition is on, as there is a good three-year-old programme here and it means they should be able to race on for some time once the competition is over.” All three winners so far have each managed an exceptional five victories within the competition’s April 1-October 31 timeframe, and each has been sourced in Britain – Street
scored at Clairefontaine in August. He has since gone on to become one of Europe’s hardest-working two-year-olds, winning no fewer than five of his nine subsequent starts, amassing over £63,000 in prize-money and even getting placed in Listed company.
Band (bought out of Henry Candy’s yard for 4,000gns), Free House (11,000gns from Brian Meehan) and Senator Sam (£15,000 from Ann Duffield). The cost to the Jockey Club has been relatively small – maintenance of www.riksgaloppen.se, marketing, roughly £10,000 on the winner’s party, plus covering the shortfall if all 1,000 shares in a horse are left unsold (split 50/50 with its trainer). This final expense has yet to amount to much – in its first year the competition was a complete sell-out and although four horses were undersubscribed last year it was by only a handful of shares each. So how about a British version of Riks Galoppen? Racing clubs are commonplace here but there should be a niche in the market if costs can be kept as low as they are in Sweden. Our current leading racing club, Elite, charges an annual fee of £185, over five times the price of a Riks Galoppen subscription.
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