Once Again I Shook My Head and Just Watched in Disbelief...

And it's started again-the annual round of thoroughbred yearling sales where prices are high, hopes are higher, talk is a plenty, and if you look hard enough somewhere in the sale yards amongst the real sh*t and the bull sh*t, there's a tubby (sometimes I resent that term), gracefully balding 50 something year old racehorse syndicator with his heavily bearded young apprentice trudging around the hundreds of stalls looking for another bargain buy..

And we love it!

By choice, I reckon that when we don the Black and Gold shirts and caps of Grand Syndicates, we're taking on just about the toughest job in racing-and that is trying to compete with the 'big boys' who are spending millions upon millions of dollars on prime thoroughbred yearlings-with our 'not-so-prime' yearlings that are costing on average, less than $15,000.

Everyone wants a winner that's for sure, but at what price? At the Magic Millions Yearling Sale on the Gold Coast last week, we sat back and watched (and as mentioned above shook our heads in disbelief) as yearlings went for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and even a million bucks plus a couple of times! The average price of a yearling last week was $170,000-and that was a cheap one! The same thing will happen plenty more times in the first half of this year most noticeably at Easter where the average price of a yearling last year was over $250,000! Now, we can't be syndicating those into 20 shares at a 'grand' apiece-but we still have to go out and compete against them! 

Fortunately though, there is salvation. And that is, that a horse doesn't actually know how much it costs.PEPPERMINT LANE for example, doesn't know that she was an inexpensive buy at just $9,000.HAWAIIAN ROSE doesn't know that she was a very inexpensive buy at just $11,000, and KHUTULUNdoesn't know that she also was an inexpensive buy at a mere $16,000 (actually I let loose with the purse strings that day)! There's three examples of quality young horses that cost peanuts in comparison to what the big boys spend, but can go out and compete at a city standard level thereby giving their owners some of the biggest thrills of their lives. Also, very fortunately for us and our owners, I'd say that we've got another half a dozen (easily) in the Grand team that are as good as or even better than the above mentioned proven horses. All purchased, not for the price of a house, albeit in an average suburb with the front lawns adorned with wrecked cars (the better properties in those suburbs have TWO wrecked cars), but for the price of a respectable second hand car that would befit a student working his way through college (remember the days when they actually did that?)

So, back to those expensive yearlings. And this is why I shake my head at what people pay for horses. The vast majority of them won't make their sale price back folks! There's not a person in this industry that would bet me that they would. I'll give them even money as much as they like. All they need is a 51% success rate and I'll pay up. As a matter of fact, I'd be surprised if it's even 10% (cue salt bush blowing through the streets...). For some of those buyers though, losing half a million bucks is like you or me losing a couple of dollars down the back of the sofa-they just won't miss it. So who cares? 

The catalyst for me putting pen to paper on this subject was someone the other day rejecting one of our horses because "it was cheap". Cheap's good! We like cheap! Cheap means that you don't have to win five or six Saturday city races just to break even! Cheap means that you don't have to hide your share in a racehorse from the wife! Cheap means that if it's no good, you haven't lost a lot. And cheap means NO STRESS!

Miss Belhus was cheap. $3,000 and she won $80,000. Mexican Mist (the grey horse in the photo) was cheap. $5,000 and he won over a hundred. Mr Bringlebert was cheap. I paid $2,500 for him landed in Perth from SA and he won the main sprint in Geraldton two years in a row. Sure we dabble in higher priced yearlings and proven horses too, and just like everyone else, sometimes we get it right, and sometimes we get it wrong. But I do like 'Cheap'...

So, for the next few months, Sam, myself and our trainers will be there at the various sales this year including Karaka (NZ), Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, searching out those horses that we think have what it takes to win city races-without having to spend the equivalent of a house to find out. Cheap horses. We'll be picking 20 out this year for around the $5,000-$15,000 mark which once again, will give every good citizen of this great country the ideal opportunity to join in the Sport of Kings as an owner without having to pay a Kings Ransom for the privilege. We hope you can be one of them...

Field of fallen riders and wasted lives

By Andrew Rule at the Herald Sun

'I AM here for a good time, not a long time," a broken-down former jockey once told me, opening another drink to go with his smoke.

He was right about "not a long time", but there was nothing good about it. He was well on his way to an early death, steadily and surely self-inflicted. He was his mother's youngest son, a blue-eyed, blond-haired cherub who had become a wizened wreck. Watching that broken-hearted old woman at his funeral was one of the saddest sights you'll see. She kept a big pinboard of photographs of him for years afterwards; they were mostly of him as the bonny, brave boy he had been -- not the alcoholic he had become by 40, with shaking hands and missing teeth.

There weren't many more game riders but, like so many of them, he got heavy. The rides dried up but he didn't: he hardly had a dry day in years. He lost his marriage, then his livelihood, then his self-respect. And, finally, his life.

He was one of the many riders who take their worst tumble after they hang up the saddle. There is a memorial at Caulfield that lists the names of 873 Australian jockeys killed in race falls, but no one keeps the other casualty list: of the suicides and self-destruction.

When Ryan Plumb vanished from Bangholme this week, you can bet most racing people feared for his safety. The best his loved ones could hope for was that he went looking for "a good time" and lost his way.

"Top jockeys have massive egos," Evans says. "The adrenalin rush is so great when you're going well that when you are not riding you take drugs to replace the feeling." Alcohol, he says, is "the gateway drug" -- getting drunk paves the way for other addictions.

A fearless pilot and parachutist once pointed out that race riding is something like skydiving -- but with prizemoney and an audience. Young riders are addicted to the excitement and status, but unravel fast when weight rises, nerves crack and the phone stops ringing. The fact there is a small group of exceptional older jockeys doesn't erase the fact that many, if not most, of the others hit the scrap heap before their 30th birthday.

The dead are many. Phil Alderman, a top Kiwi apprentice before he came to Australia, hanged himself in a Dubai hotel room in 2000 on his way back to Melbourne for the funeral of a friend who had also committed suicide. Keith "Magic" Mahoney gassed himself in his car. Ray Setches, second in two Melbourne Cups, killed himself the same week as Neil Williams. Young Sydney rider Arron Kennedy killed himself, So did Ray Kliese, Rod Smyth, Gary Palmer, Chris Tuppen and Tommy Arnold.

It happens so often most people forget them, especially the ones who weren't well-known. In Victoria in recent years the suicide toll includes Harry Hillier, Ben Smith and Michael Campbell. Queensland champion Stathi Katsidis died after a drug binge before the 2010 Cox Plate. It wasn't suicide but Katsidis always lived on the edge. So does Jason Maskiell (the most talented young rider to emerge from Tasmania since Craig Newitt), who has killed a brilliant career with drug abuse. Lisa Cropp, once one of the finest female riders in the world, tested positive to drugs on the first day of her comeback after a two year lay-off linked to her notorious drug use. "Group One" Gavin Eades didn't come back at all after he fell from grace. The list goes on and on.

It's an open secret in racing that several big-name jockeys binge on drugs from Saturday night until Monday -- one of them, reputedly an "ice" user like Maskiell, is closely related to a noted rider who could kick home winners but not his addictions to alcohol and gambling. The fruit doesn't fall far from the tree.

None of this comes as a surprise to bookmaker John Dow, who grew up in a racing family and has seen generations of riders chewed up in an industry that has become less brutal than it was, but is still plenty tough. After a spate of jockey suicides several years ago, Dow wrote a discussion paper and gave it to an industry executive. He suggested jockeys needed a "transition phase" so they could race but at the same time be licensed to train horses -- a "dual licence" currently prohibited by racing rules for no apparent reason but tradition.

For people barely educated in anything but racing, the move from riding to horse training can be vital, but is hard to pull off.
"The chief steward of the time put it in the too-hard basket," Dow says. "Maybe it's time to have another look."