davetheflower wrote: I'm off to Lingfield tomorrow.To watch 2year old run.
Article by Weaver man below.
GIVEN you can’t keep a good man down, it was inevitable Kent trainer John Best would bounce back.
After sending out 20-plus winners a year from 2004 to 2011, the number plummeted to single figures in 2013 and 2014.
He sent out four winners from 191 runners last year for total earnings of £19,000.
Best is more ambitious than most and knew he had to sort it before his owners upped sticks and took their horses away.
The answer was to up sticks himself – only five miles from Hucking to Oad Street – but the results have been immediate.
Best has averaged four winners a month since the start of February and has a 20 per cent strike rate in 2015.
“It is the best decision I’ve made business-wise,” said Best at a lunch for his owners last Sunday. “Eyehorn Farm was the base for the Russian Olympic team back in 2012 so we have 40 large purpose-built boxes and a vast indoor school in which we can exercise horses when it’s raining.
“There’s a five-furlong straight gallop and a round gallop, as opposed to the stiff shorter gallop I had at Hucking, and a parallel turf gallop for the spring and autumn.
“There’s a buzz about the place. Everyone has been happy with the move, notably the horses”
John Best
“There’s a buzz about the place. Everyone has been happy with the move, notably the horses.”
The proof of the pudding is in Best’s results with Mullionheir, Mossgo, Berrahri and Gung Ho Jack all winning four races in as many months.
Soccer agent Mark Curtis, who owns Chelmsford winner Ninety Minutes in partnership with Andy Carroll and Kevin Nolan, was extolling the virtues of racing at St Moritz.
“Berrahri went over for three races in February and we had a fantastic time,” he said. “It’s expensive, mind, but they race on an iced lake. There’s no place like it. You’d love it.
“John has organised some great days and winning there paid for the trip.”
Having a stable jockey has been a boost. Best said of Kieren Fox: “He is here most days and gets to know the horses’ ways – their idiosyncracies.
“It all helps when he is going to be riding them on the track.”
With his two-year-olds yet to race, these are exciting times and Best should be able to build on his excellent start. The best, you feel, is yet to come.
all the best enjoy
