LEWIS CARROLL WOULD APPRECIATE THIS!

Whenever I read a review from any bloodstock sale I always wonder what Lewis Carroll would have made of it.

Lewis Caroll - as I am sure most of you know - wrote Alice In Wonderland.

For me bloodstock sale statistics should be aimed exclusively at the breeding industry rather than the general public and in particular not at the buying or punting market.

Consider this - there is often a general air of smug satisfaction when increased aggregates are reported.

What they should perhaps be saying is this :

Thank you for spending, on average, R 20,000 per lot more than last year. We appreciate the business but are curious as to why.......

Stabling has risen by 10% but stakes have not.

Veterinary services have risen by at least 10% but stakes have not.

We have sold off another racecourse so opportunities to race may have temporarily reduced.

We are breeding much the same soupmeat as last year so appreciate getting, on average, R 20,000 per lot more than a year ago.

Although we live in an inflationary environment we see no reason why this should apply to raising stakes.

Maybe Lewis Carroll could explain this to me. But there does seem to be a certain degree of insanity about this business.

I dont know but its crazy....how many 500k and more horse have been sold and couldnt return the outlay.....90%+?

What did Chris van Niekerk say about whom he will continue to be after winning the July?

Surprising how the Sales of horses have grown yet stakes remain stagnant and racing assets have vanished!
Local turnover they say has dropped?

For the record the champions of yester-year didn't cost an arm and leg.Sea Cottage was a lease horse from the Birch Bros.
Sentinel was a home-bred from Ellis family Hartford Stud.The Oppenheimers bred and raced their own.Mr.George Rowles also
bred and raced successfully as did Chris Saunders and Douglas Saunders, I stand to be corrected.

Politician was a cheapie and the owners were so unimpressed with him, they paid a years keep upfront.Neither did the Tenderinis or M.Javett ever get anything close to him again with the last-named spending a small fortune trying to get another Polly!

The insanely rich are not bothered with money.
You have to sell your assets if your turnover is not sustaining your business, and you running out of mugs to bleed

What do buyers and trainers look at ,when buying a horse on a sale ?
I have looked at catalogues and sales results for some time now and cannot make any sense of some purchases ,
at both ends of the price list.
I have followd a couple of these horses to see how they do, and few have recovered their purchased price .
While some better bred( on paper) horses have been cheaper and done better .
I must say that I have never been to a sale .

Many negatives and always a gamble rather than "investment" however I still think that buying SA horseflesh is better than most other places if u do have the "bug"

What makes racing are horses and people

If racing were first of all an industry, it would be more rational. The corporate world likes good order and forecasts that come true; it runs on concepts such as yields and cost-effectiveness. Racing is not rational and seldom cost effective. The thoroughbred business is based on compulsive loss-making.
Why woud a track rider who is paid peanuts climb back on a horse that has already pelted him off three times this week? Why would a trainer blunder out of bed before dawn to minister to a squealing colt with two proppy legs and lots of bad disposition, and a flea of an owner who is always five months in arrears?
Racing elevates a chosen few and dumps rejects into life’s great tip.
If racing were simple commerce, the interpreter should be Karl Marx. As a financial proposition, racing is about the redistribution of incomes. It’s about socialism in a form so natural you hardly notice it. Tens of millions of rands are each year supplied by businessmen from London to Australia to Johannesburg, by surgeons and solicitors, by owners of car dealerships and merchant bankers, and by tax avoiders from all over. The treasure they contribute is then redistributed – slowly, a little each month so that the trick doesn’t look too obvious – to jockeys, trainers, grooms, farriers, vets, clairvoyants, chiropractors, bottlers of magical elixirs, owners of feed stores, horse psychologists and float drivers. When the cycle is complete the working classes has acquired most of the surplus capital of the bourgeois. The cycle then starts again with new players on the supply side and the same clairvoyants and float drivers on the other side. As someone once said, the horse people provide the experience and the owners the cash. When the cycle is over the horse people have the cash and the owners have the experience.
Racing is a good sport – a great sport when you see the likes of Sea Cottage, Politician and Horse Chestnut. It is seldom good business. Racing is a way of living and a way of thinking. It has its own language and its own humour. It is loaded with danger, physical and financial, and come with a hint of conspiracy. It doesn’t necessarily build character but it throws up some great characters.
Chis van Niekerk - Amen
Apologies to Les Carlyon.

We certainly got better than Lewis Carroll! We got a fantastic interpretation from Thirsty. Well put, sir!