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Originally Posted by Kasept
Jim, and Gioia too..
While I appreciate your zeal for the DWC and enjoyment of International racing, perpetuating the notion that Sh. Mo in particular is doing good things for racing is utterly ridiculous. He's single-handedly destroying the game by disturbing the sport's competitive balance and effectively trying to simply buy control of it. Invests in breeding? He's not investing, he's maniacally trying to buy ALL the breeding. And of course there will never be a decent 3yo that sees a handicap season as long as Darley continues in their current fashion.
He's also created the disgusting nouveau scenario of the instant purchase of any young horse, or even any decent looking older horse, which will completely ruin the game for fans. Thanks to Mo, you can look forward to a 'Rollerball' style corporate game shortly where Darley, Godolphin, IEAH and Team Valor basically have bought any decent horse. There will be a few holdouts that don't need the money, but most operations or owners will be compelled to sell.
There is in fact a rumor from credible sources that Darley approached IEAH/Pompa Friday night with a $30 million offer for Big Brown. IEAH has a huge war chest and would rather campaign forward at this point, but you can see what you're dealing with. And of course IEAH themselves threw $2MM at Pompa for 75% of Big Brown off the maiden win last summer...
It's not 'sporting', as Sh. Mo's shills love to claim, just as it wasn't sporting to retire Bernadini. And $12MM for a single race is of course just obscene and garish and typical of the way he operates believing that throwing money at everything assures some kind of 'class'. It's actually embarrassing. What pleasure he can take when whichever American-bred juvenile he bought smashes the career earnings record in his 7th career start with $11,000,000 accrued from the World Cup win on the heels of his wins in the previous year's UAE Derby and 3 stages of Mahktoum Challenges...
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Steve,
Id like to believe that last years insane spending by the Sheikh was an anomaly and that seeing his Darley stud so far behind main rivals Coolmore, wanted to rectify that and wanted to do it quickly, hence the purchases of Street Sense, Hard Spun, Authorised, Manduro, Admire Moon etc etc..
From the Guardian article below, he's spent roughly one billion pounds (>1Billion Dollars) on Bloodstock in the past year. I just cant for the life of me see that he can continue this aggressive tactic for more than another year.
Looking at it over here, The Sheikh basically owns the top 4 prospects for the 2000 Guineas - New Approach, Ravens Pass, Ibn Kaldoun and Faat Company. They are all splendid stallion prospects but all else things being equal, they are all successful, i cant see them all retiring to stud...
I was just looking back at a thread i started a while back on the top 10 Godolphin horses ever, it is interesting to note that by my estimate 8 of those wouldnt be there if they had retired at 3. In the late 90s early 00's they were great for racing their top older horses through into their 4th 5th a 6th years. But I suppose therein lies the problem. Very few breeders want slowly maturing types that only really became top class as a 4 or 5 year old.
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/horserac...269381,00.html