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hoping its not as bad as the whipsers that are going around
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Are you talking about the Aga moving his horses from Oxx and sending them to DKW
http://www.irishracing.com/blog/blog/2013/09/09/eaten-bread-soon-forgotten/
If Qatar racing have anything about them, they'll send a few to Oxx now. It would probably be one of the few value for money decisions they could make.
Could someone put up the blog Punchestown is citing.
Eaten Bread Soon Forgotten
September 9, 2013 by Brian O'Connor
The Aga Khan is obviously free to do with his horses as he wishes. And the level of success the Prince has enjoyed over the decades testifies to his ability to make right calls more often than not. But his apparent decision to effectively cut links with John Oxx must be the most graceless call seen in Irish racing for quite a while.
Not sending yearlings to Oxx this Autumn on the back of a single season wrecked by illness will be described as decisive by the Aga’s team but to many of us it smacks of short-sighted desperation and a lamentable lack of regard for what the trainer has achieved for the owner over the last twenty four years.
Eaten bread might soon be forgotten but Sinndar, Alamshar, Azamour, Timarida, Ebadiyla and plenty others would sustain most owners for a lifetime. Not, it seems, the Aga Khan.
The decision to add to his trainer-roster in Ireland was understandable on the basis that Oxx’s sub-par season testified to the potential dangers of having too many eggs in one basket. There is also the precedent of how the Aga has three trainers in France. But the decision not to send yearlings – the juvenile crop for 2014 – is loaded with significance in that it effectively starts the clock on a run-down to the link between the owner and one of the most successful trainers in Irish racing history.
Maybe that link will be re-established in time, but if that’s the case, a total cut on yearlings going into Currabeg is pretty blunt evidence to the contrary.
It’s certainly a hell of a toll for one virulent bug to take. But this move hasn’t come in isolation. It comes on the back of a conspicuous lack of top-flight success by the Aga Khan’s Irish based horses in recent years. Alandi was the last Group 1 winner, and that was in the Cadran, a strictly second-division contest in terms of top-class international thoroughbred breeding. There is also the reality that the Aga’s principal focus has always been on France, a focus aggressively encouraged by the trainers there, and bolstered by prizemoney levels higher than here.
If the primary focus is on France, it’s hardly surprising then there is an element of ‘second-pick’ about Ireland so pointing the finger at Oxx for not coming up with the Group 1 goods is patently offside if the ammunition he gets from the operation isn’t up to scratch in the first place.
It’s not as if the trainer lost his touch since Azamour: there was a certain horse called Sea The Stars who wasn’t too shabby and he was campaigned with a sure touch globally applauded by anyone with even the faintest appreciation of the difficulty involved in producing a top-flight animal.
Oxx has remained typically dignified, and mostly silent, on the issue, characteristically describing the season as a ‘temporary little difficulty.’ There is though a lot of sympathy for a man so widely liked and respected within the game. However even if Oxx was as popular as scabies, the suspicion would remain that the Aga Khan’s trigger-finger has twitched way too quickly.
Sentiment is clearly lacking here, but also a long-term professional view: it has been said many times before, but that doesn’t make the phrase redundant: form really is temporary and class really is permanent.
Good to see adventure gaining the day in the Champion Stakes with The Fugue overcoming concerns about the sodden ground while Declaration Of War enjoyed a day-off due to the state of that same ground.
Team Ballydoyle were perfectly within their rights to take the horse out due to the change in going but the fact The Fugue emerged best really must have provoked some second-thoughts since she is widely perceived to be as much in need of a fast surface as Declaration Of War.
The worst she’d ever raced on prior to the weekend was good to soft and she was beaten on both of those occasions. In contrast, Declaration Of War boasts a win on heavy, and on soft. Both were against inferior horses, but there’s nothing inferior about Toronado and Dawn Approach and he was only just off them in the Sussex on good to soft.
There’s little doubt the colt is better on a fast surface but the going clearly can’t have been that bad if The Fugure got through it so impressively. She beat Al Kazeem by a length and a quarter. Declaration Of War was two and three quarter lengths ahead of the same horse at York. Conditions might have been different, but it was hardly a bog at Leopardstown, and isn’t Declaration Of War supposed to be a bit of ‘toughie?’
Certainly, there can’t have been anyone happier to see him taken out that John Gosden.
Finally, a crowd of 8,778 for a card that doesn’t get much better in terms of flat racing: are we starting to get nostalgic for that day when ‘only’ nine thousand showed up for Sea The Stars? It’s only a marginal decrease, but it’s only the latest one. The graph is going the wrong way.
And that’s something to bear in mind this time next year when the new showpiece Group 1 weekend takes place. Anyone expecting massive fillips to attendance figures at Leopardstown and the Curragh is probably deluding themselves. And there’s always the real chance that weather conditions will prove to be a spoilsport, again.
But on its own merits, and with reasonable expectations, the concept still has to be worth a try
September 9, 2013 by Brian O'Connor
The Aga Khan is obviously free to do with his horses as he wishes. And the level of success the Prince has enjoyed over the decades testifies to his ability to make right calls more often than not. But his apparent decision to effectively cut links with John Oxx must be the most graceless call seen in Irish racing for quite a while.
Not sending yearlings to Oxx this Autumn on the back of a single season wrecked by illness will be described as decisive by the Aga’s team but to many of us it smacks of short-sighted desperation and a lamentable lack of regard for what the trainer has achieved for the owner over the last twenty four years.
Eaten bread might soon be forgotten but Sinndar, Alamshar, Azamour, Timarida, Ebadiyla and plenty others would sustain most owners for a lifetime. Not, it seems, the Aga Khan.
The decision to add to his trainer-roster in Ireland was understandable on the basis that Oxx’s sub-par season testified to the potential dangers of having too many eggs in one basket. There is also the precedent of how the Aga has three trainers in France. But the decision not to send yearlings – the juvenile crop for 2014 – is loaded with significance in that it effectively starts the clock on a run-down to the link between the owner and one of the most successful trainers in Irish racing history.
Maybe that link will be re-established in time, but if that’s the case, a total cut on yearlings going into Currabeg is pretty blunt evidence to the contrary.
It’s certainly a hell of a toll for one virulent bug to take. But this move hasn’t come in isolation. It comes on the back of a conspicuous lack of top-flight success by the Aga Khan’s Irish based horses in recent years. Alandi was the last Group 1 winner, and that was in the Cadran, a strictly second-division contest in terms of top-class international thoroughbred breeding. There is also the reality that the Aga’s principal focus has always been on France, a focus aggressively encouraged by the trainers there, and bolstered by prizemoney levels higher than here.
If the primary focus is on France, it’s hardly surprising then there is an element of ‘second-pick’ about Ireland so pointing the finger at Oxx for not coming up with the Group 1 goods is patently offside if the ammunition he gets from the operation isn’t up to scratch in the first place.
It’s not as if the trainer lost his touch since Azamour: there was a certain horse called Sea The Stars who wasn’t too shabby and he was campaigned with a sure touch globally applauded by anyone with even the faintest appreciation of the difficulty involved in producing a top-flight animal.
Oxx has remained typically dignified, and mostly silent, on the issue, characteristically describing the season as a ‘temporary little difficulty.’ There is though a lot of sympathy for a man so widely liked and respected within the game. However even if Oxx was as popular as scabies, the suspicion would remain that the Aga Khan’s trigger-finger has twitched way too quickly.
Sentiment is clearly lacking here, but also a long-term professional view: it has been said many times before, but that doesn’t make the phrase redundant: form really is temporary and class really is permanent.
Good to see adventure gaining the day in the Champion Stakes with The Fugue overcoming concerns about the sodden ground while Declaration Of War enjoyed a day-off due to the state of that same ground.
Team Ballydoyle were perfectly within their rights to take the horse out due to the change in going but the fact The Fugue emerged best really must have provoked some second-thoughts since she is widely perceived to be as much in need of a fast surface as Declaration Of War.
The worst she’d ever raced on prior to the weekend was good to soft and she was beaten on both of those occasions. In contrast, Declaration Of War boasts a win on heavy, and on soft. Both were against inferior horses, but there’s nothing inferior about Toronado and Dawn Approach and he was only just off them in the Sussex on good to soft.
There’s little doubt the colt is better on a fast surface but the going clearly can’t have been that bad if The Fugure got through it so impressively. She beat Al Kazeem by a length and a quarter. Declaration Of War was two and three quarter lengths ahead of the same horse at York. Conditions might have been different, but it was hardly a bog at Leopardstown, and isn’t Declaration Of War supposed to be a bit of ‘toughie?’
Certainly, there can’t have been anyone happier to see him taken out that John Gosden.
Finally, a crowd of 8,778 for a card that doesn’t get much better in terms of flat racing: are we starting to get nostalgic for that day when ‘only’ nine thousand showed up for Sea The Stars? It’s only a marginal decrease, but it’s only the latest one. The graph is going the wrong way.
And that’s something to bear in mind this time next year when the new showpiece Group 1 weekend takes place. Anyone expecting massive fillips to attendance figures at Leopardstown and the Curragh is probably deluding themselves. And there’s always the real chance that weather conditions will prove to be a spoilsport, again.
But on its own merits, and with reasonable expectations, the concept still has to be worth a try
I wonder did the fact thax Oxx continued to use Murtagh after Murtagh's split with the Aga piss off the "Main man"?
Thanks Punchestown.
If only John Oxx had heeded Polonius advice to his son Laertes.
If only John Oxx had heeded Polonius advice to his son Laertes.
Guess who, has a farm for sale today in the papers?
disgusting..i hope oxx can get himself back in the bigtime next season..
mitch, i hope your never tempted by one those murder mystery weekend holidays, if you are, i recommend that you should not go, for fear of embarrasing yourself.
yeah if you say so. i presume its hh aga khan but why dont you just come out and say it.
"guess who" you big child.
"guess who" you big child.
irish guy i didnt know either..come out and say it ya eejit
Both please looks at the title of the thread. I don't mean to be cryptic. Tony57 knew and made it obvious.
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