SUNSHINE COAST NEWSPAPER COLUMN: HOW FAR CAN A STABLE GO BEFORE IT GETS TOO BIG FOR ITS OWN GOOD

By Graham Potter | Sunday, March 27, 2016

Graham Potter writes a weekly column for the Sunshine Coast daily. Due to demand from those having trouble accessing the paper these columns are now also published on HRO courtesy of the Sunshine Coast daily.

Peter Moody’s decision to bring a premature end to his training career after being handed a six month suspension on the back of a previous eighteen months of severe stress, financial strain and future uncertainty, is hardly surprising.

In the end it was a highly personal decision.

As the only person who really knows exactly what it has been like to travel in the turbulence he has had to endure over the last eighteen months, it was a call he was clearly entitled to make so I, for one, certainly do not question his thinking.

Whether you are in the camp of those supporting of Moody or whether you are with those holding the door open for him to leave, it is fair to say that Moody, particularly in his association with great mare Black Caviar, has put more pluses in the credit column of horse racing’s ledger than any number he has put in the debit column and for that he must be given full credit.

To that end, the fact that Moody was able to add one final Group 1 to his tally at Moonee Valley on Thursday night, on his last day as a trainer before starting his suspension, was certainly a more fitting farewell to the game from him, for now, than the press conference where he announced his decision to leave the building earlier in the week.

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There was one point, hidden away towards the end of Moody’s press conference that caught my attention.

In referring to a hypothetical, possible return to training way down the track Moody said, “I will never be a large public trainer of the large magnitude I’ve been. I would never want to put myself through having three hundred horses, fifty to sixty staff and a thousand clients. That won’t be happening.”

Which brought me to this question.

Just how big can a stable get before the stable procedures have more weak links, in terms of possible integrity issues, than solid structure?

I’ve not talking about bad intent. I’m not talking weak points by design, but rather by circumstance.

I’m talking about how even a tightly knit series of checks and balances combined with good quality staff might still leave a big stable at full stretch trying to cover all of the ground required to satisfy integrity demands ... as evidenced in the Moody case.

Of course some big stables can be better managed than some small stables. Stables don’t normally grow to any significant size without that growth being accompanied by superior expertise and complemented a high standard of professionalism.

That however does not derail the point that when a trainer has more than a couple of hundred horses officially under his care, sometimes at different locations, you have a greater margin of error in terms of what can go wrong under the integrity banner.

So I say again, just how big can a stable get before the stable procedures have more weak links, in terms of possible integrity issues, than solid structure?

No, I’m not suggesting you limit the size of a trainer’s team. You cannot. That would be restraint of trade.

I’m just wondering if this is a case where bigger is not always better!