So Wille and Aidan are God like creatures but?

Greaser,

Have we discussed this topic before? (How hammered are you?)

Please God no one wades into this 'debate'.

Yes they do ozy, I feel sorry for all the sycophants that fool themselves that the likes of Ruby Walsh and Willie Mullins are pulling off acts of God when all they're doing is winning with the best horse.

I hate to ruin the party.

I tell you what, Greaser.  Stick up a few tunes that you like. 

It will help take your mind off the while Trainer/Jockey issue.

* whole

Does P Rothwell do what other trainers do?

good little number this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkkicpRcvSk

AGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHH PULL HARDDDDD...there is always one!

FFS don't antagonise the inmates.

back to the tunes, Greaser, stick up one you like..

Can't we just put up an old greaser thread........one of the thousand or so that has covered this subject.....

It's ok, I've becalmed him, he has logged off and will sleep it off...

Phew.

Ozy I love my music, but I'm sick of been knocked down when I bring bundles upon bundles of evidence to knock the sycophancy right out of the ball park.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D2qcbu26gs

Kind of appropriate track don't you think Ozy?

hole, paulie hole, too much sauce Paulie?

The anwser is probably somewhere in the middle Sil, like most debates really.

Neil, what do they do that other trainers don't do?

I've asked this question a millions times and usually I get abused, but not one and I meen not one could give me an answer that could actually stand the closest scrutiny.

Horses win horse races not jockeys not trainers, horses!!.

Its not called trainer racing or jockey racing but horse racing, why?, because its horses racing against each other with little men on top to steer them in the right direction and some dum ass trainer telling workriders through their paces.

Rocket science I think not?

Simplified but true

mean

Just thinking on why it is that Mullins is so far ahead of the pack and is the best at grabbing and holding big owners.......apart from his training skills alone, he also seems to be a real tough fcker.

A few examples I would highlight:
Wasn't the reason JP didn't have any horses with him for years that he wouldn't budge on his training fees?, have I read MOL having similar run-ins with him on such issues too? Plus I've never heard a story of a bad payer in Closutton, not that he'd let it out anyway.


Also, and this is hearsay....like most of the rest of this, but who else in irealnd would have had the balls to turn down an offer to train privately for Ricci? The guy could have upped and gone somewhere else, seems Mullins might have been prepared for that to happen rather than be reliant on one man.

The general way he seems to be able to handle owners and keep his good horses apart when in seperate ownership, he only runs them against one another when one or the other is prepping as far as I can see, probably favouring Fly this season over other viable contenders like Un de Sceaux and Annie Power(who had to travel), both would have won that Morgiana you'd think.

One wouldn't have seen Mullins coerced into running a horse like Pandorama in the Gold Cup, and i doubt he would have put up with the messing that has surrounded the campaigning of the likes of Sizing Europe and Flemenstar.

He seems to be able to take a hard line and maybe the big owners respect him for it and at least know he will put together a well thought out, definite plan and stand or fall by it. Now some might say that it is easy for him to do this because he can always aford to lose an ownner, but maybe this is the attitude he has and this is the outlook that has got him to this point. Maybe it is why the others are not making inroads on him, that they are too accommodating and doing what they think is seen to be right by the big owner rather than what is right for the stable.

Finally, that short arsed sand gallop that we are all so used to seeing on ATR and RTE.......I wonder how many 'experts' told him to rip that up down the years.

His refusal to co-operate with the media re his horses intended targets in order to maximise his advantage. It has led to good opportunities for the like of Thousand Stars when Fly hasn't shown and even his best staying novice hurdler seems to be somewhat avoided at the Cheltenham Festival these days. That Neptune field Pont Alexandre took on really wasn't much, same with Boston Bob's Albert Bartlett the year before.

Maybe this all added together is part of his edge Silver. I'd have some respect for him regardless, took a business from the ground up and built it to be the best of its type in the country.

Really should start proofreading my posts for typos/spelling errors....and b@llshit!!

Fine post neil, but he still can't make a slow horse go fast, or can he?, well some rose tinted glasses seem to think he has Jesus Christ like powers and turn water into the finest wine, when the finest wine is the price of the horse he trains.

BTW Neil, I didn't see the race live as I was too busy selling Moorefield GAA hamper tickets in the local Tesco but having looked at the replay, the winner got first run on Hawkeyethenoo, flashed home, at least I collected my ew.

Good man on the bet Sil and for helping out the local club. I think Mullins advantage is as much that he is a better business man than  his competitors and that is in short what I am saying.

One other thing about Mullins is that even when he is saying nothing or being downright evasive in an interview, he is still a very engaging and unassuming character and I would still enjoy listening to him in a way I would a trainer like Gosden or Cecil.

Is it possible that the likes of MOL and Ricci simply prefer the company of Willie to his competitors? MOL still has horses with Meade, and is his only hope over ever having a good horse again, bu an account here he spent the afternoon chatting with him at Navan last Sunday. Not many other trainers could hold o'Leary's attention for that long I'd say. Meade reminds me of Frank Warren in boxing, a survivor.

His son is the same, talks a lot of sense/is a pleasant interview and has clearly analysed and then duly improved his game as a rider. They seem to have an advantage over a lot of others in that they think about what they are doing and change if it is not working. The campaigning of Simenon shows this, Goldensilver, Adamant Approach another from a bit back.

Even look at the time he gave the likes of Arvika Ligeonairre and is giving Pont Alexandre for minor problems. Unfair comparison maybe, but Rule the World was rushed back in line with the policy Gigginstown have of running the nuts of their horses. Mullins doesn't let them do it with Sir Des Champs though!!!

Sure the same crap was spouted about the Kilkenny hurlers when they were dominating, hard graft does pay in the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMpXAknykeg

Is it possible that the likes of MOL and Ricci simply prefer the company of Willie to his competitors?

I wouldn't have thought so

Just speculating Ozy and I wouldn't or didn't intend to put it forward as a deciding factor.... It is all the little details added together.

They aren't in the game for the money so it is made up of the prestige, the excitement and the social side. why have a horse with someone you found tedious?

Silver's gone to bed.

Neil d
Willie Mullins refused to train for J P McManus because of his aversion to gambling,he only got in there by buying Arbour Supreme who was already there.

He may also be good company but don't mention that to Trevor Hemmings.

He also trains the horses as if they were his own,Glens Melody a prime example although the one man he doesn't mess around is Rich Ricci.

The man is a genius of a trainer,we have given example after example of horses being transferred to his stable and improving stones,Beroni and Thousand Flowers two that spring to mind,so much so that other trainers are whispering among themselves.

Arklearkle I had no choice my damn internet went down all night only came back on 10 minutes ago.

It is going to get to the stage where Mullins will have so many top horses/owners that they will have to take on each other more frequently. He will be doing well to juggle all those big egos.

good problem to have for willie!!

A decent, honest, hard working man who has built up a serious stable of horses and owners...........good luck to the man.

I would see it as a big time plus if the trainer "trains them as if they were his own". I can understand that any trainer worth his salt should insist on doing it his way. Ok if an owner says well in advance that he wants his horse to run at Galway or Bellewstowm in say July that is fine. There were rumours that some owners were informing jockeys in the parade ring that "today is not the day". I have a fair idea what WM would say to that and perhaps that and all that goes with it tells us why the man is top of the pile. To Silver I would say not all trainers are the same.

"Really when you think about it there really is nothing to horse training"


A classic statement from silver...right up there with the best of his quotes and there have been some classics.I wonder if any of the hundreds of failures in the training game would agree..or maybe you should run a consuntancy course in it!!

Of course in classic silver fashion he links his original question to a totally different one and then claims his original argument is correct.In this case because no one can answer what WPM or APOB do differently he seems to think he has proven his theory that they are no better than any other trainer.I haven't got a clue what they or any other trainer do but whatever it is they do it better and that is by any measure of performance...even from the time that they didn't have the benefit of their current patronage.

Straight question silver...if John Magnier thought Wachman could even lace APOB's boots would he not have him in situ in Ballydoyle?

The Glacken Report.

Close association with C.J. Haughey.

Tax Exile.

A BRITISH CHAIN of care homes for people with learning disabilities owned by a group of famed Irish investors has been warned that it must either make serious improvements to the standard of its services or to face closure.
The Castlebeck group, which owns 23 homes across England and Wales, was told to instigate “root and branch improvements” by Britain’s Care Quality Commission (CQC), which made unannounced visits to each service.
Of the 23 homes, inspectors found “serious concerns” at four facilities, as well as identifying another seven which were “not compliant with one or more of the essential standards of quality and safety”.
The CQC’s report also found evidence of “company-wide themes” including inadequate staff training and staffing levels, a failure to notify the relevant authorities about safeguarding incidents and a generally poor standard of care planning.
The Irish Times explains that the group had come to prominence after a BBC Panorama investigation in May which uncovered abusive treatment towards patients at one of its homes in Bristol.
That home, Winterbourne View, has since been closed down.
The Irish Independent said that the Castlebeck group is 80 per cent owned by a group of investors that includes JP McManus, John Magnier and Dermot Desmond. It is run by Denis Brosnan, a former CEO of the Kerry Group.
Brosnan told that paper he was “appalled” at the conditions found by the inspectorate.

Haughey did this,

His most significant contribution to an area in which he had abiding interest took shape in 1968 when, in his capacity as Minister of Finance, he introduced legislation as part of the Finance Act that made stallion owners exempt from tax on stud fees, and removed the requirement to make returns relating to stallion income.

Haughey's regard for Coolmore boss John Magnier was illustrated when he used his prerogative as Taoiseach to appoint Magnier to Seanad Eireann (the Irish Senate) as one of his personal nominees, to represent the interests of the bloodstock community.

One of Ireland’s richest horse owners has launched a constitutional challenge to the Joint Labour Committee agreement which protects the wages of agriculture workers. The Coolmore and Ballydoyle studs, owned by multi-millionaire, John Magnier, have lodged papers outlining the constitutional challenge to the legally-binding Joint Labour Committee (JLC) in the High Court. The current minimum hourly rate for an adult worker under the agricultural JLC is €9.10.

Magnier’s personal wealth was valued at €592 million in this years’ Sunday Times rich list.

It was revealed that the horse breeder has joined the attack on the JLC system in the week that Queen Elizabeth will visit the Coolmore Stud and during which Linley Investments, an investment company controlled by Magnier, faced prosecution at Clonmel District Court for breaches of employment law.

Going gets too hard for racing’s fast set
For years Charles Haughey has concealed his dealings with Ireland’s top stud farm owner. But with the courts in hot pursuit, he’s riding for a fall.
By Cal McCrystal and David Connett in Fethard

THE VILLAGE of Fethard lies in Ireland’s ‘Golden Vale’, so called because of its lush pasture and fine livestock. On one side rises the 3,200-ft Sliabh na mBan – or Mountain of the Women – about which expatriates the world over are inclined to croon; and on the other, which rises more gently, is 2,000 acres of prime land known as Coolmore – or Big Quiet Place – where mawkish sentiment is noticeably absent and silence is as golden as the vale itself.

Coolmore is a stud with an extraordinary reputation for breeding champion racehorses. Such is its roster of stallions, all the leading race-horse breeders have to be its customers – including the Queen, the Aga Khan, and even those oil-rich horse-racing obsessives, the Maktoums of Dubai, with whom the Coolmore people enjoy an uneasy rivalry.

It is absolutely the world’s pre-eminent nursery of thoroughbred talent. It is also at the centre of an unprece-dented controversy affecting world breeding practices, tax exemptions and dealings with Irish politicians while sitting as government Ministers. Un-imaginable sums are involved in Coolmore’s activities.

Coolmore is run by John Magnier, one of the richest men in Ireland – that is, when he is in Ireland. Much of his time is spent abroad as a tax exile. In Fethard (pronounced feathered), a community of 1,400 people in South Tipperary which has derived economic benefits from Coolmore’s fame, Magnier is known as ‘The Boss’.

Among his friends and frequent clients is Charles J. Haughey, also known as ‘The Boss’ from his years as Ireland’s Taoiseach (Prime Minister). Haughey – whose Gaelic surname, Eachaidhe, means ‘horseman – appointed the taciturn Magnier to the Irish Senate (the second parliamentary chamber) in 1987, a move which was greeted with considerable surprise. Magnier shares with Haughey a passion for both horseracing and mystery. He spoke only three times in his three years in the Senate and, even now, refuses to talk to the press. Not once, for example, has he been quoted on demands that the enormous tax exemptions the Irish stud industry enjoys – as a result of legislation introduced by Haughey – be revoked. Haughey, too, once the roguish Irish leader, revered by his closest aides as Il Duce, has always fought against self-disclosure -as even now he fights judicial probes into the questionable origins of his personal fortune.

Haughey and Magnier became acquainted through race meetings and connections within Haughey’s party, Fianna Fail, in the early 1970s. Since 1985, most of Haughey’s mares were serviced by Coolmore stallions, though what if any fees were charged is unknown. Coolmore, boarding the best stallions in Ireland – some the best in the world – charges fees ranging from £10,000 to £120,000. The syndicate has all but cornered the flat-race stallion market in these islands, dominating three-quarters of the Irish market alone.

Among these connections is Haughey’s married daughter, Eimear Mulhern, who chairs the Irish Thoroughbred Breeders Association. As a bloodstock agent she has business ties with John Magnier. Magnier, meanwhile, is the son-in-law of Vincent O’Brien, the famous Irish racehorse trainer, himself a member of the Coolmore syndicate.

In 1990, 11 Irish passports were granted to the Saudi racing and breeding enthusiast Sheikh Mahfouz and his family in return for a promise to invest £20 million in Irish job-creation schemes. Haughey personally presented the passports to the sheikh over lunch in the Taoiseach’s grand man-sion at Kinsealy, north of Dublin.

Because the official certificates for them had yet to be signed by the responsible Minister, the handover was in breach of regulations. Only £17 million of the sheikh’s promised £20 million can be traced as having been invested as planned. But £4 million of the £17 million which was invested ended up in a chain of tennis clubs in Britain, in which the biggest shareholder is John Magnier.

Informality, or carelessness, appears to be at the heart of frustrated judicial attempts to locate 150 files missing from the Irish Department of Finance. Five relate to the period when Haughey was Finance Minister, and are believed to relate to exchange-control issues. Following a tribunal request for the files, the Department of Finance says it had searched 12 buildings for them, to no avail.

However, enough is already known about Charles Haughey’s irregular behaviour to embarrass some former friends. Last year, for example, he was found to have accepted as Taoiseach £1.3 million from an Irish supermarket chief, Ben Dunne. Having for most of his life vaulted over seemingly impossible hurdles, Haughey today is unhorsed. In the villages around Coolmore he is no longer seen as ‘a player’. If that is so, then his cosy relationship with what the Irish magazine Magill calls ‘the really big fellas’ may soon he over.

His friend John Magnier, worth at least £100 million, spends more and more time abroad – at his homes in Switzerland and Spain or in the coral mansion in Barbados which he calls ‘Laughing Waters’, but which has been nicknamed ‘Gatwick’ because of its enormous size. He will see Haughey less frequently than before. Besides, he will need all his time and acumen to maintain the gilt on the Golden Vale.

Last week Haughey’s bid to prevent Judge Moriarty’s judicial tribunal investigating his financial affairs failed in the Dublin High Court. The judge said that, given his former position and ‘the nature and amounts’ of the gifts he received while in office, ‘he cannot complain that he is, in some way or other, being discriminated against.’ Haughey, 72, recently fell off one of his horses, injuring his leg. At a recent tribunal appearance he hobbled with a stick.

Last week the Irish journalist Vincent Browne – one of Haughey’s most combative
challengers down the years – wrote: ‘It is hard not to sympathise with him in the travails he is undergoing.’

The Observer last week investigated Coolmore’s operations and the Magnier-Haughey relationship, as murmurs of concern spread through Ireland – not least in a recent issue of Magill, which Browne edits. Ursula Halligan, who wrote the article, ‘The Senator and the Taoiseach’, faced a wall of silence from rival stud owners and locals in Fethard.
Others have used words like ‘paranoia’ regarding Coolmore’s security. In Fethard, it is almost impossible to hear anything but praise for Magnier and his stud-owning syndicate – another founding member of which was the British breeder and pools millionaire Robert Sangster.

Sangster has now pulled out, but still has interests there. Asked if he ever gave money to Haughey, Sangster, speaking from a hotel in Melbourne, said Initially he ‘didn’t want to get involved in all that’. He added that ‘In Britain It wasn’t unusual for people to contribute to the Conservative Party’, but he did not want to ignite (in Ireland) the same sort of controversy that surrounded Tony Blair on the Formula One tobacco sponsorship issue.

But one young Fethard businessman volunteered: ‘There’s a lot of people who don’t like Coolmore’s monopoly.’ Fethard has 10 pubs, two churches and an Augustinian friary. At the friary, elderly Father John Meagher spoke affectionately of John Magnier, his syndicate and his famous horses, among them Danehill, Sadler’s Wells, Fairy King and Royal Academy. ‘Mr Magnier is a very fine gentle-man, the priest said. ‘You should see his place – it’s like a city where they speak only in millions.’

Coolmore straddles a Tipperary road, has a ‘security checkpoint’ and a receptionist behind a marble horseshoe desk surrounded by exquisite paintings and sumptuous fur-niture. The stud’s own stallions have their individual star waiting rooms – specially designed chalets – with their names carved above the door. The visiting mares also receive lavish treatment. The receptionist told The Observer ‘You can’t see around without an escort only by prior appointment.’ However, an expensively produced brochure and other publicity literature describes Coolmore as ‘probably the pre-eminent stallion station in the world’ and associate the Magnier family with ‘a long sequence of top-class stallions including Cottage, Fortina, Wrekin Rambler, Even Money and Deep Run’. There are 50 stallions under Coolmore management in Europe, Japan, the United States, South America and Australia. The company occupies, in all, 6,000 acres and employs 600 people – 200 of them from Tipperary.

In McCarthy’s Hotel, on Fethard’s main street, the owner’s son, Vincent Murphy, proudly recalled a celebration in 1985 when the Sangsters and the O’Briens attended a baptismal knees-up for John Magnier’s baby son.

‘Mr Haughey was at that party here, as well as Andrew Lloyd Webber,’ – who has a home, Kiltinan Castle, down the road – ‘Frank Sinatra’s manager Danny Schwartz, and the Irish international rugby team. There was a competition to see who could drink the most Black Velvet [Guinness and champagne).’ As some guests drank themselves into oblivion, the popular group The Dubliners sang ‘Black Velvet Band’. One imbiber-reveller died a short while afterwards.

When it comes to leader-ship, breeding has long been Ireland’s preoccupation. After Haughey first came to power in 1979, the then leader of the Opposition, Garrett FitzGerald, referred to the new Taoiseach’s ‘flawed pedigree’. But questions of pedigree have also preoccupied Haughey himself.

In 1962, earning £3,700 a year as Minister for Justice, he bought the first in a long line of racehorses. Later, as Minister for Finance, he began sending his mares to a stud in Co Dublin owned by Captain Tim Rogers, a former aide-de-camp to Winston Churchill. Haughey held shares in most of the stallions at the Rogers stud and in 1968 bought a stud in Co Meath. A year later, as Finance Minister, Haughey introduced tax exemptions for the horse-breeding industry – when Britain was scrapping them. It has also been established that Rogers made ‘financial contributions’ to Haughey in the late 1960s.
The Coolmore syndicate’s success really swelled in the mid-Seventies, when it devised a strategy of identifying colts which would become future champion racehorses. Cheaper to buy as yearlings, they were then trained into big winners and, subsequently became valuable stallions.

Thus, for the first time, Magnier, Sangster and O’Brien created a merger of the bloodstock and horse-racing industries. Rich American bloodlines were introduced. To make the new system failsafe they decided to buy up all the best yearlings, increasing the chances of winning races and consequently breeding more and more winners. They maximised the scheme when bloodstock values collapsed temporarily in the mid-Eighties.

By the 1990s Coolmore had created the greatest stand of stallions in the world, with branches in North America and Australia. Magnier began to shuttle his stallions to and from Australia, thereby doubling their performance. His animals cover, on average, 25 per cent more mares than do English standing stallions. In 1997, for example, Sadler’s Wells, Magnier’s greatest possession, covered 163 mares, each at a fee of 120,000 Irish pounds. The joy in the ‘Stallion Shuttle’ lies in the fact that, since Coolmore benefits from tax-free status, its overseas operations, using Coolmore-based bloodstock, also qualify for Irish tax exemption.

This is seen both in Australia and other countries – not to mention small Irish stud owners – as giving Coolmore an unfair advantage. What it gains in tax it can spend on buying more and more stallions. It is impossible to measure the full extent of Magnier’s wealth. ‘The Boss’ controls a web of interlinked companies in Ireland, the Isle of Man, Switzerland, the Dutch Antilles and the Cayman Islands. But making sense of all of these is like extracting answers from The Other Boss.

Whether or not Haughey can be persuaded to disclose his financial shenanigans with a host of business people while he held high office de-pends on Ireland’s stomach for seemingly interminable and costly judicial probes. But to quote Haughey himself – when defending his government in a bugging scandal – what has emerged so far is truly ‘grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented’.

Take James Nash for instance a former top amateur and leading workrider for Willie for years and now a horse trainer in his own right, so is it safe to say that James would train his horses the exact same way Willie does after gaining years of experience watching Willies methods?, and if Rich Ricci sent James 20 expensive purchases in the morning he would get the same results?.

Alright Silver i'll bite.........not much on today.........Of he wouldn't train the exact same way....Willie like every trainer makes decisions regarding certain horses every

day.......decisions that he wouldn't explain to James Nash or anybody else......there is no set template to training a horse.

Maybe James would do a better job with the 20 expensive horses............maybe a few would break down.......maybe a few would do well but never fulfill their full

potential.....who knows........but an owner like Rich Ricci knows that Willie will more often than not get those decisions right.

Hey silver look at Roy Keane.  Must have seen Alex Fergusons management style for many years.  It didnt make Keane a good manager!

Jr Willie said the biggest influence on his career was his father, so we can gather then that his training methods have not altered that much from how his father trained his horses.

And we can probably gather as well that both Tony, Tom and inlaw Margaret would've been heavily influenced by Paddy Mullins too yeah?.

The only difference I can see is that Willie seems to have shaken off much of the Kilkenny/Carlow border accent as such he sounds a lot more elegant and intelligent than his brothers who still have pretty heavy accents, that doesnt mean Willie is more intelligent just sounds like he is.

So maybe his gift of the gab has influenced many a rich owner?.

Bigwill, you can't compare like with like, you need good players too, motivation will only go so far, if you havent got good horses you're going to struggle are you not?.
And also you can't shout and roar and throw football boots at a dumb animal to motivate it to run faster, if it can't run fast nothing you do can change that.

So that comparison is null and void imho.

And maybe he's just better at training than them.....as i've said there is only so much you can learn of someone....you still have to stand or fall on your own decisions.

Take Charles and David O'Brien...both were taught by their [god like] father and started they training careers with the same advantages but they are the only comparisons you can make

between them........David was just naturally very good at training horses.

Silver did Rog not send Nash a good one Your Busy - how did he do with that.

Your Busy did alright once Rog got rid.

Ferguson did plenty well enough with Aberdeen who wouldnt have been considered much of a side.

You keep going on that everyone trains horses the same way.  They dont.  Its like saying that all football teams are trained the same way.

I have been in many yards where the horses are 'wrong' yet they continue to work the **** out of them and then wonder how said horse is not performing.  It come s down to the simple fact of whether you are good or not. 

Same in any sport the cream rises to the top 99% of the time.

Get whatever chip you have off your shoulder

James is down as the registered owner now arkle, he's done pretty alright won 5 races and plenty of places, was probably unfortunate not to win at Aintree lately?.

You should be going after the likes of P Rothwell asking how their horses are pulled up so often and then win the odd time out of the blue.

He wasnt unfortunate, he is a bridle horse who travels well but doesnt find much

I've no chip on my shoulder I'm just giving opinions in what I genuinely believe in bigwill.

As far as I'm concerned take it or leave you don't have to agree with me, but I still maintain I bring strong evidence to the table that justifies my stance.

Your opinion's are always welcome Silver inebriated or not not...... but i wouldn't say you have brought any strong evidence to the table.

You have used Nortons coin as an example of how easy training is....if a pig farmer can do it etc but that horse was a 100-1 for a reason....form... and it fact only won once more after

the gold Cup......would you say that horse reached his full potential?.....this was a horse that had the ability to win a Gold Cup..a very good one at that....how many Gold Cup winners

are asked to go and run in a Ascot Gold cup in the middle of June ffs!....could he have been trained better?

JR if Nortons Coin wasn't trained by Griffiths but say Nicholson the horse would probably have been around 33/1.

Nortons Coin was about to hack up in the Martell Cup only for making a horrendous blunder with 1/1 fav Celtic Shot well beaten in 4th, after that he went on to win a grade 2 at Cheltenham beating none other than excellent yardsticks in Waterloo Boy and Pegwell Bay, so he still showed top class form after his Gold Cup success the following season.

The horse only ran in the Gold cup because the trainer missed the entry stage for the handicap chase on the same card.......horse with an abundance of ability.......could he have

been trained better?

even so JR, he still showed some top class form after.

He was a top class horse Silver....thats my point....did he fulfill his full potential.......after running his guts out to beat Waterloo boy a head he ran a couple of weeks later in a gr2

hurdle before embarking to Ascot the run in the Ascot gold cup in June.....does that sound like the way to train a Gold cup horse?....lost his form completely the following season.

Can we make a case for the Willie Mullins trained Cooldine too JR who totally utterly lost its form?.

Very good novice who didn't make the step up....nothing wrong with the way he was campaigned though.

Can you name me a Gold Cup winner that was treated like Nortons Coin?

Strong evidence?You must be joking!!

You were given factual evidence of ten horses that WPM improved by an average of 20lbs from when he took charge of them.You tried to ignore it and then when pressed tried to explain it by implying something underhand.You had not a scintilla of evidence for your explanation.
You constantly mention Nortons Coin as an example of your theory.I would contend the he actually is proof against your theory.In my opinion one Gold Cup for a small trainer is a poor return when you consider the number of cumulative number of horses put through their hands by the hundreds of small trainers over the years.Can you prove that none of these would have won Gold Cups in better hands??
You mention Cooldine as some kind of evidence for your theory.What about Quevega, Hurricane Fly etc...no mention of those??No one is arguing that Mullins is perfect and for whatever reason Cooldine never became the horse he threatened to be.Its unlikely in my view that it was the trainers fault...maybe he was flattered by his Sun Alliance win??
Another example of your inconsistency is your desire to have Hurricane Fly shown up.If he is does it not follow that your idol Istabraq was shown up in his final season??Istabraq's legacy was not damaged  and neither will Hurricane Fly's if it does occur.

If as you say trainers do not matter why among the top 40 Irish trainers do the same trainers consistently have the poorest strike rate??

You use dubious isolated examples as proof that trainers don't matter.It is not isolated examples which prove trainers/jockeys greatness.It is evidence garnered over a period of time which should be used to evaluate trainers/jockeys ability.Your once off examples are worthless.

There's always excuses for willie isn't there?.

Name those 10 horses again Tolmi, and as I said before if a trainer is suddenly able to make any horse improve by such huge amounts then you're entitled to be sceptical as to what means were used to achieve such startling results?.

Strong words Tolmi......

You'd have to concede that perhaps there might be better examples than Nortons Coin to support your case Silver.......

Oh and also Tolmi I'm sure those trainers with poor strike rates would suddenly have a fantastic strike rate if they had a stable full of Rich Ricci very expensive purchases etc?.

I haven't a notion of trawling back over threads to name the 10 horses.Suffice it to say they were produced by another poster(not by me)and that was your reply.

Maybe he was able to improve them by knowing how to train them?

I am sure there isnt a hope in hell of Rich trusting his expensive purchases with some of those lot and you wouldnt either if you had one.

Ya...shark would do well with an expensive purchase alright

Pity Sirrell Griffiths didn't get sent a few more top class horses....would have been fun watching him competing for the 'triple crown'....Guineas....Ascot Gold cup.....triumph hurdle....
Seriously though Silver i am very disappointed......i take the time to contribute to your thread only for you to make no effort to answer any question put to you....

I've answered them all JR, but all you and other contributors do is come back with dubious claims of greatness for Willie.

Griffiths achievement to win a Cheltenham Gold Cup is all the more remarkable that he only had 2 other horses in training, and lived in the middle of nowhere spending most of his time tending to his sheep, but of course all that is conveniently ignored.

As things stand Sirrel has one more Gold Cup victory than William.

You haven't been able to answer any Silver....and i have not offered any opinion on Willies 'greatness'.

My answers are based on fact i.e. statistics both current and historical.Silver's theories are based on a begrudgery of success.

Facts based on the quality of the horse tolmi?, let Willie trade places with say Colm Murphy for a season would Colm still get the same results Willie is getting?, or is it a fact that Willie is really far superior and not the quality of the animals he trains?.

I'll leave you to it......i'd like to say it's been informative.....

I'm off now anyway to sell monster hamper tickets for the local GAA club for 2 hours in Tesco, talk later.

In Newbridge?.....you'll have beat up that foreign national on the door first....

silver your gas..everyone in the world knows a trainer and jockey are integral parts of the whole thing..60% the horse.20 the trainer and 20 the jockey?..would you rather give one to willie or rothwell/hourigan/shark?!?..would you rather ruby/bjg/davy ride it or a lad that has had 6 winners in last 3 years?your argument is nonsensical..same with apob stuff...

DRINK HAS BEEN TAKEN!..my advice to u sil is to give the wife a good rodgering and everything will work out in the end.

JR you're obviously talking about the guy that sells the "Big Issue", that guy must be there 20 years?.

yep..... I was trying to think how long he's been there....incredible amount of time really.

Has anyone ever bought a big issue off him?

Must be on a commission JR as that guys stands there for hours upon hours 7 days a week, and I was bored sitting inside in the warmth selling hamper tickets for just 2 hours.