IEAH group

[SentToStud]

Originally Posted by Better Than Honour

they are bad for the game just like the arabs are bad for the game. they buy other people's horses after they start racing. this trend of top horses being taken away from trainers is disturbing. curlin, big brown, and all the ieah horses were all trained by somebody else originally. it too reminds me of the yankees just going around and buying up the best talent.

the major concern though with ieah is that they are trying to make the sport profitable and it isn't that easy. you wonder where they will cut corners and what they will be willing to do to turn a profit for their owners if they hit a tough patch, which they will.

Isn't that the point?

I really don't get how you can label the buyers of horses-in-training bad for the sport. It might be bad for fans who don't get to see the level of quality graded stakes fields there were 20 years ago but fans, for better or worse, have no legitimate constituency in the financing of the sport, other than takeout.

On takeout and even on the issue of meds regulation, where I do think fans/bettors have a legitimate stakeholder position, I have not seen any traction whatsoever on any efforts to effect change. I thought Jerry Brown was talking about doing interesting things 6-9 months ago but I haven't seen anything develop.

Maybe with the Louvre opens in Abu Dhabi, the horse hungry Sheikhs (not "the arabs") will find something else to obsess over. But the contraction of ownership of top tier horses is nothing new. Sangster paid $13 Million for a filly 20-25 years ago, which in 2007 dollars would dwarf what The Green Monkey brought. It will probably cycle away eventually from what it is now.

Frankly, there is a reason horses change hands when they are bought. Kathy O'Connell is a good trainer but she's no Todd Pletcher. Same for Helen Pitts-Assmussen and Reynolds-Dutrow. There's never a guarantee but who wouldn't want to take their shot with a trainer responsible for winning Eclipse Awards?