IT’S been a tough year for Roger Varian, losing the horses of two major patrons in the shape of AMO Racing and Sheikh Mohammed Obaid Al Maktoum. Both owners have a reputation for moving their horses, with AMO’s Kia Joorabchian ruthless with trainers and jockeys who he feels aren’t delivering the goods, while the Sheikh moved his horses to Varian in the first instance after a shock split from Luca Cumani.
Andrew Balding and Simon and Ed Crisford are others who have fallen out of favour with Sheikh Mohammed Obaid in recent times, and the owner’s uncompromising attitude has much to do with that. “I am military,” he said in an interview some years ago. “If I give someone an order, he has to take my order. I am not going to listen to a trainer giving me an order.”
Unsurprisingly, most followers of the sport tend to sympathise with the trainer in such situations, with such fallings out tending to look like poor sportsmanship, and Roger Varian has had more than his share of sympathy given he appears to be a thorough professional, taking the blows to his stable and his reputation with extreme good grace and coming across as one of the sport’s good guys.
Comfortable
Varian is hardly underperforming as a trainer, either, sitting comfortably in the top 10 of the Trainers’ Championship with £2.6 million in prize money since the start of the season, but there is one aspect of his operation which may be costing him, and that is an extreme reluctance to utilise headgear other than a hood. Around one in seven of the runners from Varian’s Carlburg Stables sport a hood, but it’s extremely rare for him to fit one with a tongue tie, cheekpieces, blinkers or a visor, something I only really noticed when looking through his runners for the season.
To put that in context, Varian will have saddled almost 400 runners in 2024 by the end of this week, but none of those has been tried in a visor, and just one in blinkers. Tongue ties are now de rigeuer in the game, but only one horse in the Varian yard this year has been fitted with a tongue tie.
Headgear
That horse also wore cheekpieces once, one of only three horses in the yard to do so, and only one horse has ever worn the same headgear twice (again, excluding hoods), with none of those mentioned winning. Of the few horses who have been tried in blinkers and/or a visor over the last few seasons, almost all have tried the headgear once before it has been removed again, and this is very unusual in any modern stable.
Varian’s reluctance to use severe headgear or a tongue tie is not necessarily folly and, going back a few decades, there were plenty of trainers who eschewed the use of headgear as mere pandering, but it has become the norm for trainers to utilise different aids to bring out the best in their horses, according to need.
Using Hugo Palmer, a trainer who has much in common with Varian in terms of age and status, as a comparator, we can see a big difference of approach. Palmer doesn’t have quite the strength in depth according to median purchase price/rating, but has a similar size stable, and the overall number of winners is fairly similar, with 65 for Palmer against 57 for Varian.
Of Palmer’s winners, 34 came with no headgear, whereas Varian’s winners all went without. Palmer, however, has had 14 winners who have worn a tongue tie and nine in a visor, with strike rates higher for those cohorts than the “no-headgear”.
It’s possible that a trainer using headgear as a last resort will fluke a few winners, but as a rule of thumb, if a trainer is getting a better strike-rate with headgear than without, then he is using the aids judiciously.
I’ve no doubt that headgear gets overused by trainers trying “one little thing” in the hope of reforming a disappointing horse, but I’d also argue that never using headgear is going too far the other way. It’s certainly a sign of stubbornness in a trainer, and I wonder whether Roger Varian will be able to attract the new owners he needs while adopting this approach.
I’VE put up the occasional horse to follow here through the season, but occasionally a race is run which features such promising sorts that the contest itself is worth following, and I recall suggesting that the Pat Eddery Stakes last season was just such a race, and that has proven the case, throwing up a classic winner in Rosallion and two also-rans, who went on to be placed in classics in Dancing Gemini and Sunway.
The race I would recommend following this week is the Sir Michael Stoute – Farewell And Thank You Novice run at Sandown last Wednesday, in which Cosmic Year beat Rock d’Oro and Quai De Bethune.
The runner-up set a good standard for such an event and was sent off at odds-on having chased home Champagne Stakes winner Bay City Roller on debut, but he was absolutely run over by the well-bred winner here, and Cosmic Year scored by an impressive six and a half lengths to justify some pre-race hype.
By Kingman out of Criterium de Saint-Cloud and Musidora-winner Passage Of Time, Cosmic Year is beautifully bred, being a full-brother to smart and durable sort Tempus and a half-brother to York Stakes and Brigadier Gerard-winner Time Test among others. He’s from a family where temperament has a tendency to creep in, but he was impressive and will be carefully placed by Harry Charlton.
The runner-up again ran well, but knew his job on debut and barely improved here, so it remains to be seen how high he can go, but I thought the next two home both shaped as if likely to be much better for the experience. Quai De Bethune has an ordinary enough pedigree, but ran on well under tender handling, while Desert Heart is related to plenty of winners and very much looked the part in the paddock. I’ll be disappointed if that pair can’t win races, and both are in the notebook.