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The Assistant: Time for a Trainers' Championship re-think?

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Our yard insider makes the case for a change...

Trainers' Championship

Now I feel bad. I've just re-read last week's attack on Mike and realise I may have been a little aggressive.

What can I say? Sometimes a girl feels emotional. I'd just had the disappointment of French-film-knickers-man, and then along comes Mike with his disagreeing opinions.

So I was in a bad place, but dedicating a whole article to having a go at Mike was, on reflection, uncalled for.

It is in a conciliatory mood then that I turn attention away from our little midget friends and instead of denigrating their championship, ask whether the trainers' version warrants its name.

The Trainers' Championship is currently decided on the basis of who wins the most prize money. On first examination this seems sensible: a trainer's job is to win money for an owner. Therefore, by measuring a trainer in this way, you incentivise behaviour that maximises each horse's earning potential.

However, this view is simplistic. Because arguably it does little to identify who the best trainer is. Rather, it identifies who is able to attract the most wealthy owners, and with that, the most talented string.

But maybe this is justified. In previous articles I've stated that trainers are much more like CEOs or general managers, having little direct horse contact. So by measuring who is able to build a business that attracts sufficient talent to lift a Trainers' Championship, we are in fact judging what the game is all about.

Perhaps. But there are arguments that a championship could be constructed that better serves the needs of racing stakeholders.

From the point of view of an owner, wouldn't it be great to have access to a series of statistics that identified how good trainers actually were at training? A while back I read an interview with Sir Mark Prescott where he said he aimed to win a race with every horse in his yard every year, something he had previously achieved.

An owner deciding where to send her horse might be interested in a championship based on this - the percentage of stable horses that win a race. Unfortunately, the information required to return these percentages is not currently recorded.

Then there are the punters who, after all, fund the sport, and yet receive little information of value as to who is the best trainer. What about a championship based on a consistency metric, where a trainer is judged on the percentage of times all horses in their care run to their best handicap mark?

Both of these approaches would tell us far more about who the talented trainers were.

What do you think? How would you design the Trainers' Championship? How would Vincent O'Brien have fared in different systems?

You see, I want to read your opinions. And don't worry, I'm not going to fly off the handle at you if you disagree. I'm in a better place now. Sorry again Mike x.