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Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin
I totally agree with you. It's amazing how people think they can tell other people how to invest and spend their money. How in the world can you tell a guy that he should risk millions of dollars by racing his horse an extra year?
Many of these people who do the criticizing would not even risk $100 of their own money on a horse. Yet they would not hesitate to bash an owner for retiring a horse. They expect an owner to fork out millions of dollars to insure a horse for an extra year and also take the risk of the horse dropping millions of dollars in value if the horse doesn't perfom as well the next year.
I would never criticize an owner for selling a horse or for retiring a horse. Why should a guy foresake millions of dollars just for the hell of it. I doubt these same people who crititicize these owners would even foresake a few hundred dollars for the entertainment of others. If these people ever make several million dollars, we will see if they are as sporting as they expect other millionaires to be.
I hope Pgardn gets lucky and somehow makes $20 million the next few years. If he does, we'll see if he spends a few million dollars on horses. If he doesn't, we can all criticize him and tell him if he was a true fan, he would be a sport and spend a few million dollars on horses like some of the other millionaires out there. If he does spend a few million dollars on horses and happens to get a great horse, we can all criticize him if he decides to retire the horse and syndicate him for $30 million. We can tell him that he should run the horse another couple of years.
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I think we all agree that it makes good short-term business sense for an owner to retire a top-notch horse as soon as possible. pgardn is not disputing that. He said:
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Originally Posted by pgardn
And for Christ sakes I am not telling anybody what to do with their horses. I am saying this sport is dying a slow death.
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We are saying a few things, but we are not saying it is a bad business decision. However, some owners would be willing to risk 5% of their investiment (insurance) for the pleasure and excitement of seeing their horse run another year. These owners probably think their horse is good enough that it won't disgrace itself enough to lose any breeding value by continuing to run.
Some owners seem to value running their horses as much as the money they are putting at risk. Paulson kept Azeri running even when half the fans thought she should be retired, and she did not disgrace herself. He let Cigar campaign for a 2nd BC Classic, even after he had "nothing else to prove". Lord Darby has kept Ouija Board in training far longer than expected for a mare of her accomplishment.
You might answer that none of these horses had/has the value of Bernardini. But the owners of these other horses also do not have the money of the sheiks, so relatively speaking, the risk/reward/bankroll relationship was probably on a par with the Bernardini decision.
--Dunbar