BROWNIE'S BLOG: GODOLPHIN ON THE CHARGE AS THEY LAND THEIR SECOND STRADBROKE IN THREE YEARS

By Damian Browne | Wednesday, June 12, 2019

Brownie's Blog is the personal blog of the recently retired, multiple Group 1 winning jockey Damian Browne. Brownie’s Blog appears weekly and is exclusive to HRO

Another Stradbroke win for Godolphin. They have been flying all season.

When a new head trainer moves into an establishment … particularly one as big as Godolphin … they all bring their own structure and systems with them which probably wouldn’t be what the last trainer had in place, so it takes a while for the staff and the horses to get used to the new way of doing things.

The horses have probably all been trained differently … from the Snowden’s to O’Shea and now James Cummings so, it would take time for a stable to get up and firing.

One, for the trainer to get to know the horses and two, for the horses to get acclimitised to the trainer’s ways, so to speak.

James has done well. I believe he thinks about things a lot. He was like that even before Godolphin and obviously through working with Bart and then Anthony, it looks like that expertise has just carried on through the genes.

Things have certainly worked out well for him at Godolphin and he deserves a lot of credit for the results the Godolphin team is achieving.

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The Cummings family were able to celebrate two Group 1 wins on Saturday with Anthony Cummings also getting on the board courtesy of Prince Fawaz’s win in the J J Atkins.

Prince Fawaz has a large group of owners and they took the prize for the best, biggest and loudest immediate post-race celebration. That is what you like to see at the races … people enjoying their win.

It was terrific seeing them jump around like that … although I was glad I wasn’t standing too close to them.

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It was also great to see Port Macquarie trainer Jenny Graham win the Listed Hinkler Handicap with Victorem.

Jenny Graham is underestimated sometimes. Her success over the last eighteen months … well it’s probably longer … with The Championships in Sydney, with Victorem here in the summer and with Awesome Pluck has been a credit to her training expertise.

Victorem was one of the early favourites for the Stardbroke. It didn’t make the field but it was no surprise to see him win on Saturday … but the win itself, the way he went about it, was outstanding.

I, for one, had written him off at the 200m. I thought he couldn’t win from there but his acceleration was terrific.

She is a lovely lady too … Jenny Graham … and it was lovely to see her get a good win.

That’s what racing offers. From the global empire of Godolphin, to a large group of owners getting together to a smaller trainer training out of country New South Wales, they all have their chance at achieving success.

That’s the intrigue of the sport.

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I see no sooner had I retired and Racing Queensland put the riding fees up!

Seriously though, it’s great for all jockeys and it is good to see they are being recognised.

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The ‘war’ between Racing NSW and Racing Victoria entered new territory this week when the Chair of Racing Victoria called the CEO of Racing NSW ‘a silly little man making silly decisions.’

I think that was a silly remark to make.

People in those sorts of positions should know not to make comments like that.

Amanda Elliot has, reportedly, offered Peter V’landys an apology for her remark which V’landys has accepted.

But the overall standoff between Racing NSW and Racing Victoria still remains … one very much pushing the traditional line and the right to hold their ground while the other fanfares innovation and change and the right to improve their product where and how they see fit.

At the moment, it does seem that they are both battling for the betting dollar between themselves and they are each trying to attract the quality horses.

In one sense clearly it is good for racing to have healthy competition. If you have one racing precinct dominating all of the time it is very difficult for the other racing jurisdictions.

The bottom line though is that racing has to embrace both tradition and innovation.

The difficulty, as the NSW and Victoria rivalry has shown, clearly is mastering that juggling act.

You have to be very careful not to meddle with things that do work, have worked for a long period of time and are things that people relate to … AND … you have to allow space to be able to tweak, expand, improve, create new races and promotions … things like Peter V’landys has done with The Everest for example.

This is what racing needs to do to keep up and keep people interested otherwise they will move to other forms of gambling and be lost to racing.

It would be silly to allow that to happen.

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