OPPOSITION TO BIG DERBY PRIZE

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30999, 3 March 1966, Page 4

OPPOSITION TO BIG DERBY PRIZE

An English writer questions the value of concentrating so much of the available prize money into a few prestige races.

Len Scott, writing in Ruff’s Guide to The Turf discusses what he thinks is an absurd “big-prize” situation in writing about Sea Bird’s English Derby victory last year.

Scott writes: “The significantly-named Sea Bird flew into Britain at the end of May. This predator swooped, gobbled up a £65,301 Derby titbit in two minutes 38.41 seconds and winged back to France. His brief foray meant that Mr Jean Ternynck would finish top man of the season in both the owners' and breeders’ lists. “This was the only race which Mr Ternynck won in England, but it was enough. A £65,000 Epsom Derby distorts the whole statistical aspect of the English racing season.”

Scott points out that had the Derbv stake been at even its 1963 figure of £35,338, Mr Ternynck would have scraped into only fifth place as an owner and been even lower down in the breeders’ roll of honour. But while advancing his argument for less concentration on few prestige races—“a general irrigation of the whole panorama would be better” —Scott agrees with nearly everyone else qualified to judge that Sea Bird was a great champion. A New Zealander who

counts himself fortunate to have seen Seabird in his English Derby victory was Mr D. W. J. Gould, chairman of Canterbury Jockey Club. On his return to New Zealand in July Mr Gould said Sea Bird was the best horse he had ever seen. “It is nice to be right once in a while, and the Arc de Triomphe proved it” Mr Gould said on studying overseas reports of the colt’s magnificent victory in the French race.

“Audax,” writing in “Horse and Hound,” said that Sea Bird’s Arc de Triomphe victory decided the championship of the racing world beyond all doubt or question. “No test of greatness was ever more comprehensive, no triumph ever more complete. With the Derby winners of France, Ireland, America and Russia trailing respectfully behind him like courtiers behind a king Sea Bird left no room for doubt,” Audax wrote. “Others—Ribot for instance —have had longer, more arduous careers, but no one who watched the Arc de Triomphe can even say, with any certainty, that they have seen a better three-year-old than this.”

The Washington D.C. International, run over a mile and a half at Laurel Park later last year, clearly settled Sea Bird as “Horse of the World.” But it happened “in absentia.” Diatome, winner of the Washington International, went under to Reliance in the

French Derby and the Grand Prix de Paris. Reliance, hitherto unbeaten, could not measure up to Sea Bird in the Prix de I’Arc de Triomphe.