That was assisted by Size’s concentration on unraced horses, a strategy that makes him the trainers’ championship favourite every year but doesn’t churn out Group One winners.

Kan retired at the end of 2002-03, Allan a year later and Hayes returned to Australia the year after that – in two years, the three established Group One players were gone and Moore was smart enough to make a conscious attempt to fill that vacuum. Back then, the king was Ivan Allan, who won 23 Group Ones in that period, David Hayes won eight, John Size won six in his few seasons and local legend Brian Kan Ping-chee won five. So, concentration will continue unless there is serious effort from someone to change the game, and they can at least take heart from Moore’s own story.īetween his Gold Cup win with Makarpura Star in March 1996, and his Classic Mile with Tiber in February 2004, Moore didn’t have a Group One winner. One table shows runners from each yard over the past three seasons, the other just this season and only three are playing, and the most likely scenario for the big spending owners in a Moore-less landscape would be to gravitate to yards which already have Group One presence. And that’s not even talking about 100-1 chances in Group races – Class One and, for many even Class Two, is beyond reach. What is worrying is how few yards even produce runners in the higher grades, let alone chances. The argument continues that in a post-Moore environment, those big-spending owners will disperse around the trainers and everybody will get a slice. If you look at the table of runners broken down by class since the start of the 2013-14 season, these two trainers have sent out more than half the Group One runners (for our purposes including the four-year-old features even though they are no longer Group Ones). The broad view amongst trainers who are infrequently represented in main races is that Moore’s budget is too strong, he has too many of the biggest-spending owners and there are none left for anyone else, although Cruz’s ownership list is pretty strong. Of course, there will be horses in those races, someone has to win, but will they be of the same quality? You have to ask where the top horses will come from a few years from now when Moore packs up back to Australia to retire. John Moore and Tony Cruz dominate as trainer diversity drains from Classic Mile That’s something we have discussed here during a four-year-old series when just a handful of trainers were represented, which promises to continue the top-end concentration as those will become some of our leading five and six-year-olds. But having no other stables represented is a concern as the last four or five seasons have trended relentlessly towards the reduced diversity of trainers in the Group races.

Cara bermain gallop racer 2006