Betfair Official Blog

Trainer Honesty is a policy - just not always the best one

Having opened the floor to questions, this week The Assistant tackles the tricky relationship between trainer and owner...

Why is it that when people give themselves discussion forum pen names, all respect for grammatical convention is forgotten?

Take poshgardener, who posted some questions in response to last week's article. Why not treat yourself to a capital P to launch your nom de plume?

And a space between 'posh' and 'gardener' would help. How am I supposed to know that your name isn't Poshgar Dener? And where does the name come from? Are you a modern day Chance Gardener, as in the Peter Seller's character in Being There? Please explain.

Anyway, Posh asks if trainers are honest with owners and whether they allow them to continue spending money on a horse known to be no good.

Well, the level of honesty between owner and trainer varies dramatically.

Undoubtedly, there are some trainers who persistently lie to owners about the ability and aspirations of horses to keep them paying the bills.

Running a business training racehorses is extraordinarily difficult; requiring a large capital outlay and a steady income stream to cover unremitting monthly outgoings.

Against this, it's no surprise that some trainers are desperate to hang on to the approximate £12,000 in training fees that a horse represents, no matter what they have to tell the owner to secure it.

But although this approach might guarantee revenue in the short-term, most trainers know it is a poor way to build long-term success, which requires owners to stay with you through multiple horses.

There are other trainers that don't necessarily lie, but will do anything not to tackle the issue of racing ability. So any enquiry about talent will be met by platitudes:

"He's a lovely horse, everyone's favourite in the yard."

"He's always first to eat up."

"I really like his character."

However, it's probably unfair to lay all the blame with trainers. There's an old saying in racing that you can tell an owner you're screwing his wife and be fine. But tell them their horse is useless and you're done for.

Many owners - successful and astute in their working lives - turn into morons when dealing with horseflesh; doting on their charges as favourite children with unbounded talent. And just like some parents, they can be blind to truth.

I was involved with a youngster recently who showed absolutely no ability in training at all. We were honest with the owner, but also said that very occasionally a horse would blossom when starting racing and we were happy to carry on if he was. As it turned out racing offered no hope and we suggested the horse was sold as a show pony. But the owner sent the horse to another trainer. He has raced 15 times since and has only beaten half a dozen horses home.

The other element to consider is trainer ignorance. Assessing the ability of horses before they go racing is exceptionally difficult and very often trainers just don't know; taking the attitude that any horse is a star until proven otherwise. Coupled with sponge-like owners, desperate to suck-up a drop of hope about their horse, this means an environment of truth and realism can be difficult to engender.

Timothy and Andy also had questions, which I'll get to next week. And keep the questions coming.