Everybody hates a sore loser

Did anyone read the Mercury yesterday? Nobody likes a sore loser blaming everything possible for the failure of their horse. For Mike Azzie, it was the fact that "someone" persuaded him into galloping Vacherin at Scotsville in his prerace preparations. Then added to this, Scotsville is a track which some horses hate and stated that Harry's Charm in particular "hated" the track. Added to all the misery was the "fact" that apparently Villandry caused all the interfearance. How did he keep the race, Mr Azzie asks??

I understand someone being dissapointed, especially when they expected so much from their horse, but maybe, just maybe it was the horse that just wasn't good enough on the day.

And then the journalist, Mr. Thistleton. There were four Group 1 winners on the day and he choses to write a whole article on why the trainer of one of the favourites didn't win. How about concentrating on the positives and perhaps attracting a couple of new intersted parties to the game. Again I could understand a short reference to why a short priced faviourite didn't perform up to scratch, but a whole article is pushing it.

To Mr. Azzie, I hope Vacherin is as good as you think he is and that you can get him back to his best. The racing public love champions and they love competitions between champions. I hope Villandry, Vacherin and any other potential sprint champions have many battles over the coming years and that the best horse is crowned the champion. It will be great for racing. Just try and not be such a sore loser if the champion doesn't turn out to be your horse.

well done to dave thistleton for a superb article..we all know the results of the 4 sprint races at scotsville so why tell the public what they already know.instead he finds out what happened straight from the horses mouth what went wrong with the hot favourite and tells us something new..if other journos in this country got off their fat bums as mr thistleton does then maybe this would draw people back into racing..as for mike azzie he is a great character in the game and the game needs characters..

url to article if possible please Pirates............

Fair comment Pirates - but for someone who doesn't know a thing about racing and is therefor a potential marketing prospect, they wouln't exactly find reading about a trainers excuses for not winning, an appealing reason to come to the races. If on the other hand they see that there were 4 Group 1 races over the weekend along with details of the connections, they may be inclined to read on and discover that there is in fact a feature program currently on in KZN running until the beggining of August. This may end in a few more visitors to the course.

Quite honestly, if i were the winning connections i would feel pretty hard done by being forced to read about Mike Azzies sob stories. The newspaper in any case is not published for this purpose, thats why we buy race cards and watch Tellytrack.

Guys a good thread.

I went to hear Clyde Basel at the racingweb breakfast the other day, one of his main objectives is to get sponsors on board, they had carried out a survey and most of the big corporations gave the input that horseracing has a "bad image" so were not that keen on having their name branded with a racing image.

I felt this is a fair enough comment, most men in the street recon the trainer/owner/jock are fixing races.

So how do we change this image?

The question was put to Clyde "is it not bad for the image of racing to have details of the fines given to Mike Azzie and Robbie Sage in the press and on the Forums"

I felt his reply was excellent: "we cant sweep things under the table, they have to be exposed same as the Tour De France, Athletics, they are front page news when we have a drug related scandal, the press and the Forums love it" its sensational.

His job is to tighten security to make it difficult for anyone to break the rules, not an easy task and I wish him well.

The bottom line is I am sure we all want what's best for the "Sport of Kings" and a solution wont be easy, but from ABC we will continue to promote racing, the good the bad and the ugly.

good punting!

scotia

Mike Azzie is a great trainer and character but lets face it,it wouldn't be the first horse (or even the hundreth) he has overrated.
It does lead to him blaming the world when all his geese aren't swans, after all!

Scotia, was posting at same time.......I am absolutely delighted to hear about Clyde's approach to handling the "rules".
I do think that some rules will need to be updated in order to be policed properly but if the intention is there,the result will be positive.
Great news IMO.

Unfortunately Mr. Thistleton didn't tell us anything about what actually happened as Mr. Azzie blamed anything and everything except the fact that his horse wasn't good enough on the day.

Someone persuading him to gallop his horse at the track. Who gets paid training fees to train the horse and to set out it's preparations? Don't blame the people who persuaded you to take the horse for a gallop, take it on the chin cos Mr. Azzie is the only one to blame I'm afraid, if that truly was a detrimental factor.

Blaming the course? Every horse had to run on the same course and the race was down the straight..

As for Villandry causing his horse interferance.. Villandry won the race easing up and Vacherin's race was run at the 300m mark. If Villandry hadn't appeared in the race, I guarentee Vacherin would still not have won the race, giving the race he ran. I encourage Mr. Azzie to sit down and watch a rerun after his dissapointment has subsided and he has a more objective view. Perhaps he could do this before blaming everyone else for his horse not performing next time.

As I said previously, Mr. Thistleton's article didn't provide any pertinent insight into why Vacherin performed so below par on the day.

Amen Pro!!! Spot on!!!

I'm with Pro Racing on this one...listening to Felix the Cat being interviewed the other night, he put forward a solid reason for Villandry's defeat in the race before last however the difference is that it was made in passing without rancour and certainly there was nothing from the Marshall stable immediately after the race when Villandry got beaten.
Everyone now knows that Villandry is a top juvenile but I haven't heard too much from Vaughan in terms of beating the Villandry drum...
Having said what I have though Mike Azzie is great for the game..he's a character a lot like Manne Fortune and that's what racing needs. I mean...people are prepared to spend loads of booty on horses and then to entrust Azzie with their stock...
Hopefully Vacherin turns out to be a really top horse which would be good for the game because ultimately it's champion racehorses that draws the crowds in. He's better be damn good because if he's not he's not going to get close to Villandry!!!

100% do we really have to hear, in full print, why another over hyped Azzie horse failed.

Reading this post makes me think back to the July a few years ago, when Azzie saddled up Dynamite Mike for the race. Tellytrack were interviewing all the trainers with runners and Azzie told the that Dynamite Mike was a "champion". Next they interviewed Mike de Kock who commented, tongue in cheek, that he wished he had Azzie's string as every horse in his yard was a champion.