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gawn
R.IP.
nice fella
R.IP.
nice fella
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I remember him balding with glasses ?? Seemed a nice enough guy in interviews back in the day.
Don't think he was balding, had snowy hair as i recall, RIP also owned Mastermind didn't he?
I remember after Kauto Star won the £1 million bonus at Cheltenham CS came in the Betfair hospitality box and let everyone have their pic taken with the Gold Cup. Made a lot of peoples day. He came across as a decent bloke, didn't seem up his own harris.
Played golf with him a few times. Nice man and very down to earth.
Told me story why he fell out with Pumpkin. Really shocking greed.
RIP to great gentleman.
Told me story why he fell out with Pumpkin. Really shocking greed.
RIP to great gentleman.
Wasn't the row to do with what was going to happen to KS after his retirement?
Give us a clue Hibore.
The story they put out was what Bin Bagged said about KS
The story they put out was what Bin Bagged said about KS
It was about how a horse cost before and after it left France. I’ll leave it at that.
It may be totally apocryphal but the story was that Clive and Anthony Bromley (dead ringer for Viz character Student Grant) went to France to buy Garde Champetre.
Only they got gazumped by Frank Berry & JP.
So they ended up with Kauto.
One horse won umpteen G1s inc 2 Gold Cups. The other won the X-Country.
One is minded when Barcelona were in for Beckham but got Ronaldinho instead...
Only they got gazumped by Frank Berry & JP.
So they ended up with Kauto.
One horse won umpteen G1s inc 2 Gold Cups. The other won the X-Country.
One is minded when Barcelona were in for Beckham but got Ronaldinho instead...
No, that story is not quite correct the latarps.
I dont think it is from memory, but you can check it easily enough.
Garde champetre was sold for fortunes at the time through the ring at I think Donny , but you need an RP sub to check sales. From memory GC cost something like 360 but might have been 400k even, I just remember it was a lot at the time.
Sorry I can't remember more..
I dont think it is from memory, but you can check it easily enough.
Garde champetre was sold for fortunes at the time through the ring at I think Donny , but you need an RP sub to check sales. From memory GC cost something like 360 but might have been 400k even, I just remember it was a lot at the time.
Sorry I can't remember more..
I don't have an rp sub so can't check sales info to see if my memory is correct but your story is definitely just a "story" and not correct as GC was racing in france in 2003 and started in uk 03, and Kauto was racing in france until mid 04
And I know GC went through the ring and Kauto definitely didn't, he was a private purchase.
The most famous chaser since Arkle left his box in Ditcheat after eight years amid tears and scenes of great emotion.
Owner Clive Smith and trainer Paul Nicholls effectively ended a partnership that had spanned nearly a decade when the five-time King George winner and twice Cheltenham Gold Cup hero walked through the stable gate and boarded a horse box bound for a new career in the dressage arena.
Relations between Smith and Nicholls had been strained for some time, but matters came to a head when the owner announced plans for Kauto Star’s post-racing career at a press conference promoting Kempton’s King George VI Chase in London on Monday, without apparently warning the trainer
Nicholls interpreted this as the last straw and their relationship, which had also enjoyed outstanding success with the champion two-mile chaser Master Minded, was finally rendered irreparable.
In a statement, made through his sponsor Betfair, Nicholls said: “It is with great sadness that I have to report that Kauto Star has left the yard for the last time.”
“It has been no secret that Kauto’s future has been a great source of debate since we announced his retirement.
“And, to be brutally honest, this morning I felt the time had finally come for me to take control of the situation, and to start making the decisions.
“Now, I am fully aware that Kauto is Clive’s horse and he can do as he wishes, even though I would personally have loved Clifford [Baker] to have looked after him for the rest of his years.
“But what upset me and my team here is when Clive announced that he had spoken to experts about the horse’s future – but failed to consult and listen properly to the team that had looked after him here for the past nine years. That really upset us.
“So we had a team meeting here this morning. And after listening to everybody involved I rang up Clive, said I don’t want to fall out, but we think it is in the best interests of everybody concerned to take Kauto to Yogi Breisner’s this afternoon so that he could start his new career in the dressage field as soon as possible.
Owner Clive Smith and trainer Paul Nicholls effectively ended a partnership that had spanned nearly a decade when the five-time King George winner and twice Cheltenham Gold Cup hero walked through the stable gate and boarded a horse box bound for a new career in the dressage arena.
Relations between Smith and Nicholls had been strained for some time, but matters came to a head when the owner announced plans for Kauto Star’s post-racing career at a press conference promoting Kempton’s King George VI Chase in London on Monday, without apparently warning the trainer
Nicholls interpreted this as the last straw and their relationship, which had also enjoyed outstanding success with the champion two-mile chaser Master Minded, was finally rendered irreparable.
In a statement, made through his sponsor Betfair, Nicholls said: “It is with great sadness that I have to report that Kauto Star has left the yard for the last time.”
“It has been no secret that Kauto’s future has been a great source of debate since we announced his retirement.
“And, to be brutally honest, this morning I felt the time had finally come for me to take control of the situation, and to start making the decisions.
“Now, I am fully aware that Kauto is Clive’s horse and he can do as he wishes, even though I would personally have loved Clifford [Baker] to have looked after him for the rest of his years.
“But what upset me and my team here is when Clive announced that he had spoken to experts about the horse’s future – but failed to consult and listen properly to the team that had looked after him here for the past nine years. That really upset us.
“So we had a team meeting here this morning. And after listening to everybody involved I rang up Clive, said I don’t want to fall out, but we think it is in the best interests of everybody concerned to take Kauto to Yogi Breisner’s this afternoon so that he could start his new career in the dressage field as soon as possible.
27May04
Doncaster May
709 Property of Million In Mind Partnership from Manor Farm Stables Timmy Hyde 530,000 GBG Garde Champetre
Doncaster May
709 Property of Million In Mind Partnership from Manor Farm Stables Timmy Hyde 530,000 GBG Garde Champetre
Relations had been strained for some time…that is the key statement. Nothing to do with Kauto or MasterMinded. It was the next horse he was buying with Pumpkin that caused the problem.
My lasting memory of Kauto Star was not on the racecourse but in his box at Ditcheat. The day after one of his King George wins, I was there with a group of owners to see a horse we had just bought called So Now. I walked into the main yard and Kauto Star was the first head to come over his door and the alert clear eyed, eager expression was of a horse that wanted to run today, not one that had just won a Grade 1 race.
Reservations about both Clive and Paul, marmite figures each, but would love to know what Ruby really thinks.
I didn't know him but used to see him occasionally at local point to points so he must have been a true lover of jumps racing.
Not all about the "glitz" of a top meeting. He liked to get out there in the cold and the wet and go and see the horses racing at local pts when he didn't even have any runners. Makes him ok in my book.
Not all about the "glitz" of a top meeting. He liked to get out there in the cold and the wet and go and see the horses racing at local pts when he didn't even have any runners. Makes him ok in my book.
Ruby could have gone anywhere but he rode for Paul Nicholls for many years. Yes he was also loyal to Willie Mullins but he is Irish after all. The success of the Skeltons, Harry Derham, Harry Fry, Joe Tizzard to name a few of those who have worked at Ditcheat is a tribute to the culture there. As for pointing, that was also part of the Ditcheat culture with Paul and Richard Barber often starting young horses in point to points and they all turned up at places like Didmarton to watch their young horses race.
I thought there was something linking mr Smith, Kauto & Garde Champetre. Just not in France....
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/horse-racing/16258179
Clive Smith (a Surrey-based golf course entrepreneur) gives an insight into what it means to be associated with the French-bred horse, the highs and lows, and how he nearly missed out on buying him.
BUYING THE HORSE
"I bought Kauto Star after being outbid for another horse, Garde Champetre, by JP McManus [jump racing's biggest owner].
"Who knows, he might have stayed in France? One or two people looked at him and just didn't go for him - they thought he was too expensive.
"I just missed out on buying Garde Champetre, and was in the frame of mind to be buying horses. I certainly liked the look of Kauto straight away on the tape. He was spring-heeled and had a drive to finish a race off. He went through the field like a knife through butter and I thought he was the one to buy. In the end, Garde Champetre went for about £530,000 and Kauto sold for 400,000 euros, which was about £280,000 at the time."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/horse-racing/16258179
Clive Smith (a Surrey-based golf course entrepreneur) gives an insight into what it means to be associated with the French-bred horse, the highs and lows, and how he nearly missed out on buying him.
BUYING THE HORSE
"I bought Kauto Star after being outbid for another horse, Garde Champetre, by JP McManus [jump racing's biggest owner].
"Who knows, he might have stayed in France? One or two people looked at him and just didn't go for him - they thought he was too expensive.
"I just missed out on buying Garde Champetre, and was in the frame of mind to be buying horses. I certainly liked the look of Kauto straight away on the tape. He was spring-heeled and had a drive to finish a race off. He went through the field like a knife through butter and I thought he was the one to buy. In the end, Garde Champetre went for about £530,000 and Kauto sold for 400,000 euros, which was about £280,000 at the time."
Sad, the greatest steeplechaser of my lifetime of gambling, after retiring, was tasked with a second career totally alien to what Kauto had so gloriously achieved! What was Clive's motive? Why did he want more of his once-in-a-lifetime Star!
Why is it sad?
Maybe he wasn't ready to stand in a field.
Maybe he wasn't ready to stand in a field.
He would never have been standing in a field other than in the summer sunshine. Would have gone hunting and team chasing like many ex Nicholls horses.
FAIRWAY TO HEAVEN; Clive Smith built golf courses for the masses, then built his fortune by selling them to the Japanese. Now he owns the best jumper in years.
THERE are some who would have you believe that golf is nothing but a good walk spoiled, but they get the shortest of shrift from Clive Smith. Neither will he be told it is the preserve of the middle-aged, the middle class and those with funny trousers.
In his palatial home in Surrey's leafy stockbroker belt, the spruce 64-year-old may look every inch one of the archetypal 'men with small white balls', but beneath the veneer of corporate accountancy and club captaincy there lies a fervour that sets his love of the game apart.
For Smith, golf has been a lifetime passion and its democratisation a life's work. It has also brought him a considerable fortune and a life of some luxury but, ever sensitive to the needs of the hoi-polloi, he has recycled a chunk of his hard-earned wealth to the benefit of horseracing fans throughout the country.
Thanks to a keen eye for the main chance, a new-build golf course for the common man and a clutch of exceedingly generous Japanese businessmen, Smith has been able to deliver us Kauto Star, the immensely gifted, boldly campaigned and intriguingly flawed favourite for Cheltenham's Totesport Gold Cup. And for that, we thank him.
Of course, it is highly likely this Gallic phenomenon would have arrived on these shores anyway, wafted by the breeze of a thousand fluttering cheque books, but perhaps it was for the best that he fell into the hands of a man for whom racing has always been a secondary interest, and who, as a result, has proved refreshingly keen to put the thrill of winning above the fear of losing.
The consequence has been a season that, to date, has offered us five chances to watch the most exciting chaser of his generation in full flight against all-comers. The prospect is of a Gold Cup to savour, and Smith has the taste for it.
"I die for Cheltenham," he says. "I absolutely love it. I wasn't brought up with horses and golf took over my life when I was 14, but this horse has given me the greatest thrill of all. If you've got a great horse and you can see how much people are enjoying him, why not run? That's my view. He's a racehorse and that's what he does."
It's a policy that fits right in with the ethos of Paul Nicholls, the trainer charged with nurturing Smith's investment. The pair share a sense of sporting adventure, but it took the owner a long while to find his racing soulmate, after spells with Jenny Pitman, David Elsworth and Nicholls' arch West Country rival, Martin Pipe.
SMITH had a winner with his first runner, in the shape of the Pitman-trained Hawthorn Hill Lad; he had some "inspirational" times with Elsworth, who was "a bit of a lad"; and spent 12 years as part of the furniture at Pond House; but through it all he was looking for the right time and the right place to take his investment to another level. The time proved to be 2003, the place, Manor Farm Stables, Ditcheat. The end result was beyond anybody's wildest dreams.
Smith recalls: "From 1987, I had one or two horses, maybe three, with Martin, but even though we'd won a Cathcart with Royal Auclair, he had David Johnson in the yard and David got first chance at the good horses. I wanted to get a bit more serious, increase my number of horses and get some nice ones to see me through my 60s, when I can really get out and enjoy them.
"I wanted a trainer who would be relaxed, friendly and open with me, and from what I'd seen of Paul, I thought he was the right man. I'd been meaning to find a way to bump into him, so when I went down for my brother's 60th birthday party, near Yeovil, and found myself only ten miles away, I just drove round and walked into the yard.
"It was a Sunday morning and Paul was in his office. I said: 'Morning, anybody at home?' He popped his head out of the window and I explained I was an owner with Martin Pipe and I had a horse called Royal Auclair, who of course he knew all about. He said: 'I'll be right down.' We sorted it out there and then."
Nicholls must have thought all his Christmases had come at once, but the full value of Smith's buying power was yet to be revealed. And some buying power it was, thanks to that golf course and those Japanese gentlemen, but its origins were far more tin pot than claret jug.
As a pupil at Windsor Grammar School, the teenaged Smith had been asked by a classmate to caddy at the local club, and quickly found that it was far more fun and a lot better paid than a paper round. The seed was sown, but it was some years before it would bear fruit.
Missing out on university thanks to an ill-timed romantic interest that helped him fail the requisite exams, the floundering youngster used his caddying contacts to land a spot for himself as an office boy on the Stock Exchange. The business appealed, but the speed of advancement didn't, so he went off to get himself some qualifications, enjoyed a delayed university stint, and then worked his way up the corporate ladder at Ford and Chrysler.
FINALLY, he decided that the letters after his name should be used to spell success for himself rather than for somebody else, so he dabbled in property building, made a few bob, was asked to become captain of a golf club, and soon mixed the two interests to produce a rich and intoxicating cocktail.
He explains: "I'd been to a lot of the elite clubs but I couldn't work out where the ordinary ones were. I decided there was room in the market for courses for the ordinary guy to play golf, so I advertised in Farmers' Weekly for a sporting site and found one near Bagshot.
"I had some savings, I sold my house and the car I'd got from Chrysler. I bought an old banger for a couple of hundred quid. And I got the machines in, designed the course myself. I did everything myself. My father was very handy with machinery, so I was cutting the greens myself with mowers that he kept going.
"I didn't even have a clubhouse, just an old caravan that cost pounds 100, plus pounds 30 delivery. I remember being there one day and getting up to go out and my Wellington boots were frozen to the floor. It wasn't exactly Wentworth, but I bought part of an old garden centre that was advertised in Exchange and Mart, turned it in to a clubhouse and it's still there today.
"I just had to last out the two years I spent building it without going bankrupt. It opened on May 15, 1978, and they never stopped streaming in. From day one it was absolutely mad and I thought, 'I've hit the jackpot'."
He hadn't. The jackpot came when he built his second course, on the old racecourse at Hawthorn Hill, near Maidenhead, and his new-found Oriental friends coughed up a cool pounds 8 million to take it off his hands. It allowed Smith to start taking his golf seriously again, at all the elite clubs, and to put a couple of Lagondas in the garage, but it also allowed him to build up a fighting fund for racehorse ownership.
He took some knocks in his early years in racing, but he was a lucky owner, never short of a winner. Royal Auclair's 2002 Cathcart was the high point, but Smith's biggest stroke of luck was just around the corner. Two strokes of luck, really. The first was being outdone for Garde Champetre, recommended to him by Nicholls but snapped up by a killer bid of 530,000gns from J P McManus. The second was being given a sneak preview of a video belonging to ace bloodstock agent Anthony Bromley - the star performer, filmed on location at Auteuil, being none other than Kauto Star. Since being sold, Garde Champetre has won once, a pounds 6,500 novice chase at Carlisle. Since being liberated from France by Smith, Kauto Star has landed two Tingle Creeks, a King George and a few other piffling Grade 1s to boot.
The biggest thrill to date, says Smith, was the first Tingle Creek, the race that announced him to the world as a major force. The moment Smith knew he had a true champion on his hands came after his stunning victory in the Betfair Chase last November.
He recalls: "At Newbury, when he beat Foreman over two miles as a four-year-old, we thought he had a bit of talent, but we didn't know how far he'd go. When we went to Haydock, Ruby thought he'd stay the three miles, but you never know, do you? And he really came up trumps - as we went in to receive him, Paul turned round and said: 'This is a horse in a million.' That was exciting, to know we'd found something really special."
Soon, we will find out just how special. Smith will be at the festival all week, with his partner, Janet, to watch Turthen in the William Hill Trophy or the Kim Muir, and Royal Auclair in the Sporting Index Cross Country Chase, but mostly to join the rest of us in admiring a rather more special beast. The man who made his money bringing golf to the man in the street has opened up the Kauto Star Owners' Club to the masses, and they will be out in force to see him bid for immortality in the bountiful but unforgiving arena of Prestbury Park.
Smith says: "He's become a public horse now and the crowd would love to see him go and do it. If he got his stride right and bounded over the last and strode away to win, the crowd would love it. And that's what I'd like, too. I'd like to see him get it all right this time."
THERE are some who would have you believe that golf is nothing but a good walk spoiled, but they get the shortest of shrift from Clive Smith. Neither will he be told it is the preserve of the middle-aged, the middle class and those with funny trousers.
In his palatial home in Surrey's leafy stockbroker belt, the spruce 64-year-old may look every inch one of the archetypal 'men with small white balls', but beneath the veneer of corporate accountancy and club captaincy there lies a fervour that sets his love of the game apart.
For Smith, golf has been a lifetime passion and its democratisation a life's work. It has also brought him a considerable fortune and a life of some luxury but, ever sensitive to the needs of the hoi-polloi, he has recycled a chunk of his hard-earned wealth to the benefit of horseracing fans throughout the country.
Thanks to a keen eye for the main chance, a new-build golf course for the common man and a clutch of exceedingly generous Japanese businessmen, Smith has been able to deliver us Kauto Star, the immensely gifted, boldly campaigned and intriguingly flawed favourite for Cheltenham's Totesport Gold Cup. And for that, we thank him.
Of course, it is highly likely this Gallic phenomenon would have arrived on these shores anyway, wafted by the breeze of a thousand fluttering cheque books, but perhaps it was for the best that he fell into the hands of a man for whom racing has always been a secondary interest, and who, as a result, has proved refreshingly keen to put the thrill of winning above the fear of losing.
The consequence has been a season that, to date, has offered us five chances to watch the most exciting chaser of his generation in full flight against all-comers. The prospect is of a Gold Cup to savour, and Smith has the taste for it.
"I die for Cheltenham," he says. "I absolutely love it. I wasn't brought up with horses and golf took over my life when I was 14, but this horse has given me the greatest thrill of all. If you've got a great horse and you can see how much people are enjoying him, why not run? That's my view. He's a racehorse and that's what he does."
It's a policy that fits right in with the ethos of Paul Nicholls, the trainer charged with nurturing Smith's investment. The pair share a sense of sporting adventure, but it took the owner a long while to find his racing soulmate, after spells with Jenny Pitman, David Elsworth and Nicholls' arch West Country rival, Martin Pipe.
SMITH had a winner with his first runner, in the shape of the Pitman-trained Hawthorn Hill Lad; he had some "inspirational" times with Elsworth, who was "a bit of a lad"; and spent 12 years as part of the furniture at Pond House; but through it all he was looking for the right time and the right place to take his investment to another level. The time proved to be 2003, the place, Manor Farm Stables, Ditcheat. The end result was beyond anybody's wildest dreams.
Smith recalls: "From 1987, I had one or two horses, maybe three, with Martin, but even though we'd won a Cathcart with Royal Auclair, he had David Johnson in the yard and David got first chance at the good horses. I wanted to get a bit more serious, increase my number of horses and get some nice ones to see me through my 60s, when I can really get out and enjoy them.
"I wanted a trainer who would be relaxed, friendly and open with me, and from what I'd seen of Paul, I thought he was the right man. I'd been meaning to find a way to bump into him, so when I went down for my brother's 60th birthday party, near Yeovil, and found myself only ten miles away, I just drove round and walked into the yard.
"It was a Sunday morning and Paul was in his office. I said: 'Morning, anybody at home?' He popped his head out of the window and I explained I was an owner with Martin Pipe and I had a horse called Royal Auclair, who of course he knew all about. He said: 'I'll be right down.' We sorted it out there and then."
Nicholls must have thought all his Christmases had come at once, but the full value of Smith's buying power was yet to be revealed. And some buying power it was, thanks to that golf course and those Japanese gentlemen, but its origins were far more tin pot than claret jug.
As a pupil at Windsor Grammar School, the teenaged Smith had been asked by a classmate to caddy at the local club, and quickly found that it was far more fun and a lot better paid than a paper round. The seed was sown, but it was some years before it would bear fruit.
Missing out on university thanks to an ill-timed romantic interest that helped him fail the requisite exams, the floundering youngster used his caddying contacts to land a spot for himself as an office boy on the Stock Exchange. The business appealed, but the speed of advancement didn't, so he went off to get himself some qualifications, enjoyed a delayed university stint, and then worked his way up the corporate ladder at Ford and Chrysler.
FINALLY, he decided that the letters after his name should be used to spell success for himself rather than for somebody else, so he dabbled in property building, made a few bob, was asked to become captain of a golf club, and soon mixed the two interests to produce a rich and intoxicating cocktail.
He explains: "I'd been to a lot of the elite clubs but I couldn't work out where the ordinary ones were. I decided there was room in the market for courses for the ordinary guy to play golf, so I advertised in Farmers' Weekly for a sporting site and found one near Bagshot.
"I had some savings, I sold my house and the car I'd got from Chrysler. I bought an old banger for a couple of hundred quid. And I got the machines in, designed the course myself. I did everything myself. My father was very handy with machinery, so I was cutting the greens myself with mowers that he kept going.
"I didn't even have a clubhouse, just an old caravan that cost pounds 100, plus pounds 30 delivery. I remember being there one day and getting up to go out and my Wellington boots were frozen to the floor. It wasn't exactly Wentworth, but I bought part of an old garden centre that was advertised in Exchange and Mart, turned it in to a clubhouse and it's still there today.
"I just had to last out the two years I spent building it without going bankrupt. It opened on May 15, 1978, and they never stopped streaming in. From day one it was absolutely mad and I thought, 'I've hit the jackpot'."
He hadn't. The jackpot came when he built his second course, on the old racecourse at Hawthorn Hill, near Maidenhead, and his new-found Oriental friends coughed up a cool pounds 8 million to take it off his hands. It allowed Smith to start taking his golf seriously again, at all the elite clubs, and to put a couple of Lagondas in the garage, but it also allowed him to build up a fighting fund for racehorse ownership.
He took some knocks in his early years in racing, but he was a lucky owner, never short of a winner. Royal Auclair's 2002 Cathcart was the high point, but Smith's biggest stroke of luck was just around the corner. Two strokes of luck, really. The first was being outdone for Garde Champetre, recommended to him by Nicholls but snapped up by a killer bid of 530,000gns from J P McManus. The second was being given a sneak preview of a video belonging to ace bloodstock agent Anthony Bromley - the star performer, filmed on location at Auteuil, being none other than Kauto Star. Since being sold, Garde Champetre has won once, a pounds 6,500 novice chase at Carlisle. Since being liberated from France by Smith, Kauto Star has landed two Tingle Creeks, a King George and a few other piffling Grade 1s to boot.
The biggest thrill to date, says Smith, was the first Tingle Creek, the race that announced him to the world as a major force. The moment Smith knew he had a true champion on his hands came after his stunning victory in the Betfair Chase last November.
He recalls: "At Newbury, when he beat Foreman over two miles as a four-year-old, we thought he had a bit of talent, but we didn't know how far he'd go. When we went to Haydock, Ruby thought he'd stay the three miles, but you never know, do you? And he really came up trumps - as we went in to receive him, Paul turned round and said: 'This is a horse in a million.' That was exciting, to know we'd found something really special."
Soon, we will find out just how special. Smith will be at the festival all week, with his partner, Janet, to watch Turthen in the William Hill Trophy or the Kim Muir, and Royal Auclair in the Sporting Index Cross Country Chase, but mostly to join the rest of us in admiring a rather more special beast. The man who made his money bringing golf to the man in the street has opened up the Kauto Star Owners' Club to the masses, and they will be out in force to see him bid for immortality in the bountiful but unforgiving arena of Prestbury Park.
Smith says: "He's become a public horse now and the crowd would love to see him go and do it. If he got his stride right and bounded over the last and strode away to win, the crowd would love it. And that's what I'd like, too. I'd like to see him get it all right this time."
I hal, if you refer back to sageforms earlier post where he went to ditcheat the day after kauto won a gr1 and he was stood head over the stable door looking perky and looked like he wanted to race again that day.
Sometimes horses are like humans - you know the story about how some people that are healthy and busy come to retirement and go from being very active to dropping dead soon afterwards.
well the same analogy can be applied to horses. Some are happier doing things and a lot of horses are happier out and about being active and kauto was one of them by all accounts. Standing in a field just isn't for them.
So it's actually what the horse wants, he would prefer to be doing something. So not cruel or anything like that.
Sometimes horses are like humans - you know the story about how some people that are healthy and busy come to retirement and go from being very active to dropping dead soon afterwards.
well the same analogy can be applied to horses. Some are happier doing things and a lot of horses are happier out and about being active and kauto was one of them by all accounts. Standing in a field just isn't for them.
So it's actually what the horse wants, he would prefer to be doing something. So not cruel or anything like that.
irrelevant
he had decided the horse was doing dressage before it had spent a munute retired. as if the thing hadnt done enough for him. made his solitary life joyous
if the horse had taken retirement badly-dont forget it enjoyed the summer in a field for 10 years-then by all means find somethig for it to do but leave it alone until you can be sure
tragic(and mysterious) end for a great horse
he had decided the horse was doing dressage before it had spent a munute retired. as if the thing hadnt done enough for him. made his solitary life joyous
if the horse had taken retirement badly-dont forget it enjoyed the summer in a field for 10 years-then by all means find somethig for it to do but leave it alone until you can be sure
tragic(and mysterious) end for a great horse
We've all been witness recently to how demanding the dressage regime gets their subjects to conform to dressage requirements, dwell for a moment on the shocking thought that if that turned out to be the retirement fate of ARKLE,Kauto's only master,we would have seen an insurrection!
Nice post Cider. Wonderful insight into the mind of mr Smith
Seemed to be a very humble, but very shrewd and successful man. Very sad news to hear. RIP Mr Smith.
Mitolo, I hal,
I don't know why but this topic always seems to cause arguments/ disagreements on here.
I don't want to argue with you but I had this same discussion on here before and got slated for trying to explain the thought process behind it as a horse 'person ' I thought I might be better qualified to try and explain than a non horsey punter .
Mitolo , He was still young and in the prime of his life. Why would he want to stand in a field ? You could see from all the times you saw him racing how he thrived on crowds and competition.
He was retired from racing be ause as a champ he deserved to go out at the top and as soon as he gave a sub par run at top level they pulled him up and retired him from racing. Not retired him from life !
Does any sportspeople who retires from football, jockeys, athletes, retire in the prime of their life and go and live with a load of pensioners in an old people's home ? No.
They find another less physical calling. The same with Kauto.
And dressage would have suited him. He had the most amazing natural paces and floated .
It was a nice idea for him.
Ihal , dressage is not like the instance you refer to.
What charlotte duerdin did was trying to get a horse to do movements at grand Prix level.
Riding club, roar level is just basic dressage and very natural. They might do a bit of shoulder in or half pass at most.
I don't know why but this topic always seems to cause arguments/ disagreements on here.
I don't want to argue with you but I had this same discussion on here before and got slated for trying to explain the thought process behind it as a horse 'person ' I thought I might be better qualified to try and explain than a non horsey punter .
Mitolo , He was still young and in the prime of his life. Why would he want to stand in a field ? You could see from all the times you saw him racing how he thrived on crowds and competition.
He was retired from racing be ause as a champ he deserved to go out at the top and as soon as he gave a sub par run at top level they pulled him up and retired him from racing. Not retired him from life !
Does any sportspeople who retires from football, jockeys, athletes, retire in the prime of their life and go and live with a load of pensioners in an old people's home ? No.
They find another less physical calling. The same with Kauto.
And dressage would have suited him. He had the most amazing natural paces and floated .
It was a nice idea for him.
Ihal , dressage is not like the instance you refer to.
What charlotte duerdin did was trying to get a horse to do movements at grand Prix level.
Riding club, roar level is just basic dressage and very natural. They might do a bit of shoulder in or half pass at most.
I agree 100% with oneten. Dressage movements are exercises to improve a horse's physical condition. They originated in the days of training cavalry horses. More racehorses should do it.
For Kauto Star it would have been the equivalent of an Olympic 400 metre hurdle gold medallist retiring a few years later, but making sure he still carried the shopping home, played football with the lads, and generally kept in good shape. Basically the exact opposite of what Pumpkinhead has done since he retired from being a jockey
For Kauto Star it would have been the equivalent of an Olympic 400 metre hurdle gold medallist retiring a few years later, but making sure he still carried the shopping home, played football with the lads, and generally kept in good shape. Basically the exact opposite of what Pumpkinhead has done since he retired from being a jockey
I will pop down and look at my almost 31yo later this week ,did low level jumping till he was 22 , bits and pieces of dressage and x/c . Only stopped cos the sod ran straight through me one morning turning him out and I didnt want injuries nearing 70 . He has had almost 10 years being a field chaperone for all the lovely young ladies in the yard .
Thanks screaming, well put.
Haha paulo, nice to hear, sounds like he is still full of beans in his old age.
Haha paulo, nice to hear, sounds like he is still full of beans in his old age.
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