The CTS Million Dollar to be run next Saturday at Kenilworth has brought with it a fervour normally associated with the Vodacom Durban July due to the stakes money on offer, and next week’s CTS Cape Premier Yearling Sale will be busier than ever because buyers have been gripped and will be dreaming of standing in the winner’s enclosure of this innovative race in two-years-time.
Buying power is one factor in ultimate success, but the dream factor has been kept alive by the frequency in which horses with relatively low sales tags become champions.
Recent R2,5 million Lanzerac Ready To Run Stakes winner Budapest was unfashionably bred and cost just R160,000; the current highest merit-rated horse in the country Legal Eagle was dear at R425,000, but was far from being the most expensive; the four-time Gr 1-winning July victor Legislate was knocked down for a mere R100,000.
Therefore, it is apt sponsors Investec have called next Saturday’s racemeeting the Investec Day Of Dreams.
Central to Saturday’s winner will be one of the ten racehorse trainers involved. Firstly, the trainer would probably have liked what he had seen in the horse before accepting him into his yard. He would then have readied him-or-her for possibly the most important race of his-or-her career, the debut, in which a good experience is paramount because horses have excellent long term memories. Having assessed the horse’s potential, he would then gradually have brought him-or-her on to the point where he or she was ready to take on the best of the crop, or in the case of Saturday’s race, the best of the Sales catalogue.
To the vast majority of observers, including the most experienced of them, racehorse training is a complete mystery. This is one reason a book on the market called Strictly Classified by Marten Julian could be essential reading for those wishing to buy that dream horse at next week’s Sale.
The Racing Post described the book thus: “Strictly Classified offers readers a unique insight into the workings of a horseman’s mind, notably in relation to their understanding of a racehorse’s psyche, emotions and character. Calling from his training in psychotherapy and other disciplines, Marten Julian sheds light on how those who work with horses try to unravel the innermost workings of a horse’s mind. He has asked many of the world’s top trainers and handlers how they identify and relate to a horse’s individual personality and thereby encourage it to realise its full potential.
Reference is made to how they address the potential effect of a racehorse’s formative years, their integration into a yard, their emotional range of experiences, their spirit, their will to win and their end days. This is a book specifically about horse people, how they respond to a horse’s character and psychological disposition and it is illustrated with examples of a few well-known horses with which they have been involved.
Robin Oakley wrote an excellent synopsis of this book recently in The Spectator:
Oakley said, “Do horses have souls or a ‘spirit’? When form expert Marten Julian was looking to buy a horse, he asked Declan Murphy to assess it. The former jockey watched it walk then studied its face closely before giving the thumbs-down. ‘That horse,’ he said, ‘has had its spirit broken.’ Murphy’s response led Marten to roam the world of those who work with horses to ask how they try to assess a horse’s individual personality and seek to maximise its potential. In Strictly Classified, the experts debate whether racehorses are still flight animals driven by fear, expecting the slowest to fall to a predator, or whether they have been converted by centuries of human contact, selective breeding and stable disciplines to react more to routine. The result is an anecdotal treasury which confirms that many trainers act as much on sheer instinct as on any structure of historical knowledge. The great Vincent O’Brien paid as much attention to heads and faces as he did to pedigrees. Oliver Sherwood, who trained Many Clouds to win last season’s Grand National, echoes that. ‘The first thing I look at in any horse is the eye, then the limbs and the backside — it’s like looking at a girl.’ Veterinarian and trainer Dermot Weld says, ‘The eyes and the head tell me a lot.’ But is that soul or spirit that they see?
Heartening for those of us who love the sport — and bad news for those who would ban it— is the emphasis so many trainers place on kindness. John Gosden agrees that in the old days ‘breaking’ a horse meant almost precisely that. But now, he insists, ‘The more gently you break them the better. If a horse is frightened by what it is being asked to do then it may become cautious to the point of really wanting to withdraw itself.’ Of the new wave Dan Skelton says, ‘My first job, when I am sent a horse, is to look after him and try to ensure he does not get hurt.’ The scholarly John Oxx insists, ‘The pure business of training a racehorse is to try to get that balance between how hard you work them and how happy they can be.’ For me the best definition Marten Julian drew from a trainer was Luca Cumani’s. In the TV Quiz show A Question of Sport, says Luca, ‘There was a blurred pixelated image of somebody, which they gradually brought into focus. That is how the horse comes to you. They arrive like a blur and step by step the picture clears in your mind and you discover how best to train them.’”
By David Thiselton
