Seeing Fully Wet win the European Breeders Fund Maiden Stakes at Goodwood on Saturday was a genuine source of pleasure, and not just because I had thought her the pick of the paddock and taken the 8-1. My previous ‘best in paddock’ had finished last. The good news was that Fully Wet was the first winner in Britain for Barry Schwartz, the former CEO of Calvin Klein who is a leading owner-breeder in the US. The fact that he and fellow owner Andrew Rosen have chosen to have the £120,000 filly trained in Britain by John and Thady Gosden was a ray of hope amid the gloom and doom over British prize money. All the same, watching the elegantly tailored Thady welcome Fully Wet back into the winners’ enclosure, I could not help wondering what chance he has of emulating his father’s outstanding success over the years to come despite his pedigree.
Gosden père is among the leading figures who are warning that poor prize-money levels in Britain are ensuring that British racing is being reduced to a mere nursery for racing elsewhere in the world. He points out that owners are forced to sell their ‘family silver’ horses to eager purchasers in Australia and Hong Kong to help maintain their hobby. Already he has had American owners take their horses straight off to the United States to race for better purses there, others lining-up their near-Group horses to head Down Under. Fellow trainer Ralph Beckett, who is president of the National Trainers Federation, says: ‘We all train for owners who don’t want to sell, but to remain in the game they have to.’ Trainers themselves are surviving by trading, he says: ‘That’s going to work while we have the best pedigrees, but the landscape could look very different in 20 years.’
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