WIN SOME, LOSE SOME ... THAT’S THE NAME OF THE GAME

By Graham Potter | Monday, March 6, 2023

Racing is not always a revolving doors game ... some trainers can give you examples of clients who have had horses with them for years ... but those revolving doors never seem to be too far away.

One of the latest examples of this is the removal of the filly Party For Two from the stable of trainer Damien Batters following the ownership group’s decision to move the daughter of Sidestep from the Sunshine Coast based trainer onto the big, powerful, city based Steve O’Dea and Matthew Hoysted training partnership ... on the basis of what they have termed ‘a business decision’.

Party For Two raced five times for Batters. A third place on debut was followed by successive victories (by a combined total of nine lengths) before a huge runner-up finish in the Group 2 Blue Diamond Fillies Prelude ... after which she rounded off her campaign with an unplaced run in the Group 1 Blue Diamond itself, albeit when only finishing 3.35 lengths behind the winner.

Nothing to turn your nose up there ... but, then again, performance has never been any guarantee against a trainer losing a horse.

For example, O’Dea and Hoysted themselves ... the beneficiaries in the Party For Two story ... came unstuck with the talented Spirit Of Boom filly, She’sgottheboom.

She’sgottheboom won her first three career starts for the O’Dea/Hoysted team ... including the $500 000 Two-Year-Old Jewel. They then took the filly down to Caulfield for a Group 3 assignment in the Quizette ... and they came back without her with that ownership group choosing to leave the horse down south with Peter Moody.

Although she never raced for Moody, when She’sgottheboom returned to Queensland, it didn’t return to its original stable ... but went instead to trainer Desleigh Forster, who in another trainer/owner twist, had only just split with long-time major client Michael Sherrin with whom she had shared some major successes.

And so it goes on.

There are many, many more stories like this.

Of course, it is harder, and therefore can be more devastating for a small trainer like Batters to lose his best horse than it is for the bigger trainer whose stable has enough ballast to be able to right the ship during a bit of stable turbulence, but the bottom line is that when owners decide ... for whatever reason ... to give their horses a change of scenery, they can move their horse whenever they like to whichever stable they want and the trainer, big or small, who loses the horse will have to live with that decision.

It doesn’t even have to be fair. There are those who would say it seldom is.

For the likes of Damien Batters, it would be hoped that his brief flirtation with the big time has given his stable enough exposure to him to receive enquires to train more horses moving forward. For those higher up in the training ranks that this happens to ... well, they’ll be alright.

There will be those who ask, where is the loyalty in racing these days?

They haven’t been paying attention.

Of course, there are many loyal owners out there, but it is not a prerequisite for ownership and neither is there any certainty that the best situation for the horse or any owner/trainer relationship will remain consistent enough to endure the passing of time and the curveball that will inevitably come out of left field.

Loyalty is often the casualty.

‘That’s racing’ ... is a two word description that so often provides a simple summing up of a multitude of scenarios that racing brings up ... such as owners choosing to move their horses from one stable to another.

It is a passive statement, usually devoid of details, in which a person just resigns themselves to the cards they have been dealt ... which allows them to move on.

Sometimes that is all you can do in a game that is a ‘no guarantees’ gamble in almost every aspect of its being.

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