Mossfun’s retirement has prompted some Golden Slipper hoodoo talk and I’ve been asked to explore how two-year olds are handled by trainers and owners in Australia.
First of all, I don’t think it’s a hoodoo, but making a run for a Golden Slipper is arduous, no question.
For a colt or filly to win, they need to make it through a regime where as a juvenile they cope with the pressure of hard training, growth pains, and competing on race days.
Not a lot of them can do it – not a lot can even make it to compete in a Slipper.
So how do trainers and owners decide to run their young horses as two-year-olds? Trainers and owners must make a call early on. It’s relatively simple – they need to handle the rigours, eat well, stay sound and compete.
Two-year-olds show their precocious talent from the time they are broken in to first in training. If trainers and owners think they are showing the right signs they’ll push forward.
Plenty of two-year-olds are given a run, perhaps they disappoint, and then they’re spelled for a season. If connections think the rigour are going to tax them too much, they won’t proceed. Common sense tells you that.
Some handle it, and some don’t. It’s just like in life – some show talent as youths in football or athletics, and then as the years pass can’t compete at the top-level as teenagers. Often the other kids grow later and catch up. This is just as it happens with horses that show ability as a two-year-old but can’t go on as an older horse.
I can think of a handful of horses that were simply just two-year-olds. Murphy’s Blu Boy was a colt that they said had “lightning in his hooves”. He won the Blue Diamond preview by seven lengths for Damien Oliver. Kathy O’Hara rode another – Chance Bye – that was faster than the rest as a very-young horse but was caught by the opposition as she aged.
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One other issue that has popped up has been the use of jiggers – a battery-operated device that a rider holds to give a horse a jolt.
The penalties for their use are severe, as well they should be – there’s no upside, and it’s possibly a sign of desperation and frustration for a trainer.
I’ve never seen one, but an American jockey was recently caught using one in a race. Jockey Roman Chapa had the book thrown at him. Not only was he given a five-year ban and fined $US25,000, but is facing criminal charges as well. There was a Victorian case in 2007 too, where a trainer and his stable-jockey girlfriend were banned for years.
Authorities are in the right to weed this out. It’s not needed in our sport.
Wicked Intent
Unfortunately on Saturday we had to scratch Wicked Intent ahead of the Ken Russell Memoriam. The two-year-old had a minor hoof setback, getting a bit too close to the white line.
He’s responding well to treatment, and should he come good he’ll run in the Group 2 Champagne Classic at Doomben on May 9.
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