Singleton's Error

Unlike too many other money arenas these days – certainly unlike the Stockmarket trading floors, any poker games or pool-halls – horse racing still affords one the opportunity of being able to watch human psychology in a financial crucible.

The biggest news in Australia and anywhere 'horse racing-land,' right now is the seemingly quite acrimonious split between one of the world's greatest horse trainers, Gai Waterhouse, and one of the world's wealthiest advertising barons, John Singleton.

The genuinely great trainer Gai Waterhouse

I'm afraid not too many people will know that Singleton's reach is certainly as far as New York and Hollywood, since his public profile is largely limited to Sydney, Australia. But then, not too many people would also know that Gai Waterhouse was once an actress in London, who appeared next to Tom Baker's Dr. Who, among a few successful productions.

Max Presenell, who in my view is also one of the world's best racing journalists, gave a fairly detailed description of what transpired at Sydney's Randwick racecourse last Saturday, and it was such a sorry tale that I am embarrassed on behalf of anything to do with Aussie horse racing to recount it completely.

Max is too nice of a man to cast any one side into deep darkness but I am driven more by what the human psychology aspects are and so, I will certainly underscore Singleton's stilted vision in the matter.

He is of course, at present complaining either that his horse More Joyous was not allowed to run on its merits, or, alternatively, that the mare shouldn't have raced that day at all and that the trainer, Waterhourse wasn't being transparent at all times about the situation due to a 'conflict of interest.'

I don't know anything about what really happened, personally. Singleton is complaining that he punted $300,000 and would have placed $600,000 on his horse but for a rumour from 'good friends' advising him that Waterhouse's son Tom Waterhouse, one of Randwick's leading bookmakers, had told friends that the horse could not win.

Wags have already commented that Tom Waterhouse doesn't have any friends. And that may be true!

However, the mare is a rising 7-year old, who has already won almost 5 million dollars under the training of Gai Waterhouse and no one that I know of who is experienced in horse racing would have suggested this mare had any chance to win this day at all no matter what else was going on.

John Singleton also says that the poor public ought to have been told before the race that the horse was experiencing some sort of issue which might have affected her running up to her best.

I feel for John. He just blew $300,000 on a racing bet and clearly he needs his head examined for a lot of things. I'm sure Disability Services Australia or some children's hospital could have shown him a good time for half this kind of money.

However, for all of us who are just as focussed on the implications of understanding the value of mercantile money that John clearly has shown, albeit with him in an excessively exuberant way – let me set a certain matter on the table:

Investing too heavily in one side of an expected financial outcome, always affects the risk/return ratio. And therein lies the lesson which may be extrapolated to parts elsewhere. And I will say just this, but I will make it perfectly clear in an upcoming post – the gold market is under this same kind of mistaken weight of dumb money right now.



Euro horse Frankel

Just as an aside, foreign horses from the UK or Europe, are ridden in a different style to the way Australian jockeys ride. These horses are very hard ridden with an idea that they are extremely robust, and often also because the ground is heavy in Europe, they lift their front legs up too high and are pounded down heavily by their riders on the firmer turf over here still using the same 'up and down' post riding - with the ultimate consequence of many a horse going lame.

 

Calvin J. Bear