Tony McFadden was at Michael Owen's Manor House Stables on Monday morning and has shared what he learned.
All eyes on Mr McCann
Weight of winners will help Michael Owen and Hugo Palmer fulfil their desire for Manor House Stables to expand into a racing powerhouse, but if there's one horse with the potential to really get the operation's name in lights it is Mr McCann, the first horse owned by professional footballers Jordan Henderson, James Milner, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Andy Robertson and Adam Lallana.
The purchase, inspired by Mrs Milner's victory at the 2021 Cheltenham Festival, has proved to be money well spent as Mr McCann, a £65,000 purchase at the breeze-up sales last April, won three times as a juvenile and is being aimed at Chester's Dee Stakes, with a Derby bid potentially also on the horizon.
Owen said: "I can't believe it's not caught the imagination of everyone already. Don't get me wrong, the Liverpool lads are excited by it but I thought the wider press would be jumping all over it. Six professional footballers for the best team in the world, their first horse, bought for £60k and already he's won three and he's going to the Dee Stakes!"
It should be pointed out that Adam Lallana now plays for Brighton - so it's five players for [potentially] the best team in the world and one who plays for the best team in the world in the eyes of Expected Goals followers!
The Dee Stakes, run on the Thursday of Chester's May meeting, comes in the middle of a crunch week for Liverpool, who play away at Villarreal in the second leg of their Champions League semi-final on the Tuesday evening before taking on Tottenham in the Premier League on Saturday evening.
You'd imagine that busy schedule would rule the Liverpool lads out from watching Mr McCann run at Chester, but Owen will be rushing back from punditry duties in Spain to make the start of the May meeting on Wednesday, extremely thankful the Liverpool tie wasn't scheduled for 24 hours later.
He added: "I'm hotfooting it back from the Villarreal game. I've never watched a fixture list announcement so carefully in my life!"
Should horse weights be published?
The state-of-the-art facilities at Manor House include weighing scales that Palmer uses to help gauge whether his charges are fighting fit.
The trainer revealed that the horses are weighed every week, and also as they get on and off the box on their way to and from the races.
Palmer joked that if he saw a horse was 20 kilograms heavier than they had been three weeks earlier he might think twice about parting with his cash and backing the horse. That begs the obvious question: shouldn't punters have access to this information, like they do now after a horse has had wind surgery?
Palmer cited some practical concerns but agreed that sharing data benefits the sport.
He said: "I wouldn't have a particular objection to it.
"You'd struggle to persuade racecourses in Britain to spend the necessary thousands on a weighbridge - we can't even get enough stalls handlers to get the horses in the stalls on time.
"The RCA [Racecourse Association] would have to provide facilities to weigh the horses. There would be no point weighing them days in advance - they would have to be weighed on arrival at the racecourse.
"But the more information that can be given to the punter the more interesting and more gripping racing becomes. People are fascinated by data and the more data we can give to people the more engagement that's going to promote."
Racing weights are published in Hong Kong - a data-rich jurisdiction where racing is thriving - but Palmer points out the way horses are trained there makes taking such data easier.
He said: "I think it works in Hong Kong where they are all trained on the track and can have regular weights [taken]. I think it would be quite difficult to do in this country with horses trained up and down the country. Horses lose weight for travelling. I could send a horse to Chester and they could weigh 500kgs when they leave here and weigh 500kgs when they arrive.
"But if I send a horse to Paris they are going to be lighter when they get there. It's difficult but I'd have no objection [to publishing weights]".
A new challenge
Hugo Palmer has had three winners at Chester, a venue he rarely had runners while based in Newmarket (he has had only 31 runners there during his career).
Given the proximity of his new base to Chester, and how many of his trainers value a local winner, a lot of importance will be placed on improving that tally.
Owen said: "Because it's so popular everyone wants a winner [at Chester] and it's bloody hard. And that's how it should be - the racing is competitive.
"A lot of people love a trip to Chester and we want to cater for that need. Some people are perfectly happy with their horse running wherever the race suits, but we do have a high percentage of owners here who purely want success at Chester - and it's his job to deliver it!"
Chester, with its tight turns, could hardly be any more different than Palmer's previous local venues, with Newmarket's Rowley Mile and July Courses offering wide expanses and long straights.
On how his training methods might be tweaked to deal with this new challenge, Palmer said: "I'd focus a lot more on how the two-year-olds get out of the stalls. In the past I thought as long as they got out of the stalls they could learn on the job. But if we're going to make use of a good draw at Chester we need to get out."
Palmer, who is understandably still getting to know the strengths of the horses he has inherited, expects to be lighter on two-year-old runners at this year's May meeting than in future seasons.
He added: "There's a nice Showcasing colt that I like quite a lot that belongs to Michael, Sir Alex Ferguson, Ged Mason and Peter Done. I've been asking them for four and three-quarter of the five weeks I've been here to name him! If he gets named he could be a possible for one of the races at Chester. But I'm not quite sure if I'd be brave enough to take one to Chester first time, not this year."
Dressing down?
Sandown found itself the focus of a social media storm on Saturday after a tweet from Racing Post tipster Paul Kealy - detailing how two racegoers were denied access to the premier enclosure because they were wearing trainers - generated plenty of interaction, mostly critical of the racecourse's policy.
According to Chester’s website, trainers aren't permitted in Tattersalls, never mind the County Enclosure, but perhaps that strict dress code could be about to change.
Newly-arrived chief executive Louise Stewart previously held the same role at Alexandra Palace, a place where you're much more likely to see men dressed in morphsuits than lounge suits during the PDC World Darts Championship that are held each year in December.
Stewart said: "I don't think Chester has a particularly challenging dress code - people choose to dress up for Chester which is great to see. But I think it's one of those things that racing sometime is an anachronism when it comes to the general public and what is [seen as] acceptable in wear.
"I think racecourses do need to look at their dress codes and if we want the sport to be healthy in the future and to continue to encourage people into it, then headlines like that [after Sandown] are not going to help us at all. It leads to an elitist flavour and from what I've seen it's [a sport that is] extremely welcoming. I don't think dress codes necessary help."
