Ups and Downs Show Constant Class of Oxx Cont
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
FRIDAY, 6 JULY 2018 In the years since, however, Oxx has been dropped by both the UPS AND DOWNS SHOW Aga Khan, owner of Sinndar and his principal patron until 2013, and the Tsui family, who owned Sea The Stars but moved their CONSTANT CLASS OF OXX horses from Ireland in 2016. So far this season Oxx has been able to field 18 horses; just three of them winners. Nonetheless a conversation with this particular wise man remains an unchanging source of equilibrium in a changing world, without the faintest inflection of resentment or defensiveness. Instead there is such comforting familiarity to his bearing--benign, calm and modest--that you feel cheapened by your own sense of affront on his behalf. "People were very upset," he admits, quietly bemused. "More than I was, in a way. Of course I was upset, and it affected our business and our livelihood. But you know, I've been in this business all my life. I know what it's like. I'm kind of mentally prepared for anything, and was probably the person--well, I won't say least upset, but I wasn't as upset as a lot of people around me, and a lot of people well disposed to me.@ Cont. p2 IN TDN AMERICA TODAY SALES LANDSCAPE CHANGING AT KEENELAND John Oxx | racingfotos.com Officials at Keeneland have tweaked their upcoming September and November sales and have announced the reintroduction of the By Chris McGrath April 2YO sale for 2019, including a horses-of-racing-age section. According to Chinese proverb, "a single conversation with a Click or tap here to go straight to TDN America. wise man is better than 10 years of study." But that conversation is going to prove still more instructive if the wise man has himself just had a decade like that dividing John Oxx from the emergence of his greatest champion. It is a study that perhaps teaches us more about people than horses. Ten years ago next Friday, Oxx saddled a 2-year-old colt by Cape Cross (Ire) for his first start at The Curragh, just over the road from a stable that counted Derby and Arc winner Sinndar (Ire) (Grand Lodge) among a litany of international stars since Ridgewood Pearl (GB) (Indian Ridge {Ire}) had won the Breeders' Cup Mile in 1995: from stayers like Enzeli (Ire) (Kahyasi {Ire}) to sprinters like Namid (GB) (Indian Ridge {GB}). As it happens, Sea The Stars (Ire) finished only fourth that day. But he was never beaten again, proving himself one of the most accomplished Thoroughbreds of the modern era in racking up six Group 1 wins the following year. In the process, the horse's competitive ego appeared to expand into a limelight left vacant by his trainer's innate humility. TDN EUROPE/INTERNATIONAL • PAGE 2 OF 13 • THETDN.COM FRIDAY • 6 JULY 2018 Ups And Downs Show Constant Class Of Oxx cont. from p1 for good horse people, the sort of people who have come along to me now, when I'm not doing well, when I'm not in lights all I'm philosophical about it. That's the way life is. The business the time.@ should teach you that. It's part and parcel of it." "You really appreciate people like that, and you enjoy working But if this mildness runs absolutely with the grain of Oxx's for them. It's a pleasure to get up in the morning and work for character, nobody should confuse the people I'm working for at his resolute freedom from vanity the moment. I just need a few with too meek or submissive a more of them. I think there's an brand of fatalism. Here is a man opening for an ambitious young who understands the corrosive trainer like me, who doesn't nature of bitterness or blame; want 200 horses and can and who also grasps that the best hopefully offer people a better redress lies within. service; who has time to devote "I was just determined that we to their interests." were going to come back from The wry, deadpan delivery this," he says. "Build up the stable achieves an optimal balance again. I'm not saying I want big between an instinct for numbers. There is this tendency self-deprecation and a quiet among trainers today to want but no less authentic huge numbers of horses. You see self-respect. This, after all, is a it in America, you see it in jump John Oxx and Sea The Stars | Racing Post profession where experience racing, and you see it now in Flat racing [in Europe] too. I trained should count for rather more than often seems to be the case. a lot of horses in the past. But I have no ambition to train even 100 horses. I just want to train enough; to enjoy it; and to train Cont. p3 TDN EUROPE/INTERNATIONAL • PAGE 3 OF 13 • THETDN.COM FRIDAY • 6 JULY 2018 John Oxx cont. If you own the favourite for a Classic, and the horse comes up with a problem two days beforehand, would you rather your trainer was the latest fashionable young trainer, experiencing this particular issue for the first time--or John Oxx, trainer of 11 Classic winners, experiencing it for the 101st time? If it is not his nature to volunteer that point, it is one Oxx is prepared to acknowledge. "When I think back earlier in my career, even when I was winning loads of races, I made plenty of mistakes too," he admits. "All things being equal, if a trainer still Vice President, International Operations has the enthusiasm for it, and the health for it, he should get Gary King better every year. Other things can come in the way, knock a Twitter: @garykingTDN trainer off kilter; he hasn't the right facilities, perhaps, or the [email protected] right staff. But all things being equal, you will get better, there's + 1.732.320.0975 no doubt.@ International Editor "I always admire Ian Balding for doing so well with Mill Reef: Kelsey Riley he was actually very young. I only became a decent trainer in my Twitter: @kelseynrileyTDN forties. I started when I was 29, I'd qualified as a vet and thought [email protected] I knew everything. I imagined that my father didn't know half as much as me. But as you get older, you tend to find your father European Editor was more clever than you thought. In my forties, certain things Emma Berry started to drop [in place]. And then, when I had those really Twitter: @collingsberry good horses--I had Ridgewood Pearl when I was 45--well, you [email protected] really begin to learn things then. To see things you hadn't Associate International Editor before, and understand them. And then you see similarities.@ Heather Anderson "A few years before Sea The Stars, I had Azamour (Ire) (Night Twitter: @HLAndersonTDN Shift) who was very similar to him in constitution, mentally and physically. And that prepared me. They both ate more, under Marketing Manager pressure, than any other horses I've ever had. Horses will eat Alayna Cullen tons of feed when they're not under pressure, but when they're Twitter: @AlaynaCullen in hard work and racing, a lot of them go off a little bit. But [email protected] those two thrived on it. They could work to a different beat to Contributing Editor the rest. And so they just got better and better." Alan Carasso Aidan O'Brien having shared similar insights about the Twitter: @EquinealTDN vocational appetite of Galileo (Ire) (Sadler's Wells), you wonder about the half-brothers' dam Urban Sea (Miswaki). Perhaps all Cafe Racing those breeders seeking some holy grail should simply be Sean Cronin concentrating on sheer physiological capacity? Tom Frary "Everything is inherited," Oxx replies. "The longer you train [email protected] horses, the more you realise that. When you train for someone Irish Correspondent like the Aga Khan for 25 years, you see the same thing, even Daithi Harvey little things, coming down through families. Urban Sea must have been hardy and tough: Jean Lesbordes ran her Regular Columnists everywhere, in all sorts of races--and she kept coming back, and Andrew Caulfield then goes and wins the Arc at the end of it. And temperament is John Berry the most transmissible of all the traits. Talent gets diluted by Kevin Blake mares much more easily than temperament. Temperament just Tom Peacock seems to stick and stick. So good temperament and toughness, like these horses have, is a huge asset in a stallion." Cont. p4 TDN EUROPE/INTERNATIONAL • PAGE 4 OF 13 • THETDN.COM FRIDAY • 6 JULY 2018 John Oxx cont. With all due respect for Oxx's determination to look forward, it would be churlish to ignore the anniversary that has brought us to his door. And, with the legacy of Sea The Stars enriched at Royal Ascot by Stradivarius (GB) and Crystal Ocean (GB), we should celebrate anew the mastery and adventure with which Oxx first promoted his genetic wares. Having seen the unbeaten records of other champions defended with increasing nervousness, in fact, you wonder whether it actually helped that Sea The Stars did not win on debut? "Michael Kinane, particularly as he got older, was very gentle on horses having their first run," Oxx recalls. "He always said you have to leave them with a good taste in their mouth. When I was young and foolish, I used to have them pretty ready to win first time out, if they could.