The Commonwealth Cup was never needed - and it's impacting on the breed

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In the grand scheme of things they are not that important and they won't matter one iota to most other people, but in my own narrow little world there are a couple of things that are guaranteed to always raise my hackles. The first is being a Reading fan and the other is when racing people describe one of their horses being a 'Commonwealth Cup' type.

I know the horse has bolted now but I absolutely hate the thinking behind that Ascot race for three-year-olds at the royal meeting and would love it to be scrapped with immediate effect. To start with, why was it ever needed? We saw this year that Bradsell, a three-year-old, was fast enough to beat the older horses in the King's Stand Stakes and going back to my youth one of the best generational stallions and sprinters of all time, Danehill, dropped back in trip to beat the older horses over six furlongs at Royal Ascot.

Much more importantly, though, I firmly believe the advent of a race for Group 1 three-year-old sprinters in June has had a drastic impact on the quality of horses being bred in this country, with the have-now brigade aiming moderately bred horses who end up becoming stallions at the Royal Ascot prize and ultimately weakening the gene pool of the thoroughbred.

It is absolutely no surprise to me whatsoever that we are talking about the current crop of two-year-olds being of generationally low quality. That could be a one-off, of course, but weren't last year's juveniles well below-average too? As far as I'm concerned, it is because we are breeding horses from much worse bloodlines than we've ever done before.

Shaquille (left) beats Little Big Bear and Swingalong in the 2023 Commonwealth CupCredit: Edward Whitaker

The main reason is not a single race, but because we live in a society that has a need for everything to happen straight away. However, making it seem normal to pack two-year-olds off to stud before they have achieved anything was always going to end in trouble, especially when the regally bred middle-distance horses become so unpopular that a good majority of them become jumps sires.

Surely everyone would agree that it can't be good for the breed that the brilliant Derby and Arc winner Golden Horn is now a jumps sire, despite a promising start as a Flat stallion, while there are hundreds of two-year-olds running by horses who wouldn't be fit to lace his boots. Of course, commercial factors come into play and I get that there is a diminishing market for slow-developing horses. That would be fine if we were breeding fast horses who were the envy of world, but it seems that we are breeding moderate sprinters while slowly dismantling the quality of the horses who stay middle-distances.

Most punters don't care about the quality of the horses they see on the track and most can't tell a good one from a moderate one but, bar a few obvious exceptions, I think the quality of the British-trained horses this season is at an all-time low and the Commonwealth Cup is my personal punching bag because it facilitates the thinking in that we are going down the right path when clearly we are not.

Pyledriver was a personal favourite

We all have horses who mean more to us than others and so it was with sadness and joy in equal measure that Pyledriver was retired on Tuesday.

Of course most of the reason he was a personal favourite was because he won me a few quid every season, but it was more than that because he was probably the most underrated horse of his generation and only really got the recognition he deserved when running clean away from an Arc winner in the 2022 King George.

Many seem to forget that he probably should have won a Sheema Classic in Dubai, was caught close home in a Hong Kong Vase plus won twice at Royal Ascot, a Coronation Cup at Epsom and a Voltigeur at York. If you backed Pyledriver every time he ran you would have been £112 in profit to a £1 stake, which tells you how underestimated he always was, but I always felt he was as good as any mile-and-a-half horse of his era and a credit to all involved.

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