Anyone else surprised by the Godolphin news?
 

Interesting... Best of luck to Rick.. He's a good guy. :)

Not really. Their American operation has been a joke for the last few years and thankfully this should bring a lot of the disappearing act they put their best horses through to an end. Horses that were foolishly sent over there and lost a great deal of time could have been much better had they just been left with their original trainer and kept in the US.

The only surprise is it took this long for them to realize Suroor is a drooling idiot, on a good day.

Next will be Harty, in another 5-6 years.

I thought you were going to tell us that Godolphin has retained the services of RHT1985 as a consultant.

Suroor only showed up for the big race days. Rick was the guy in charge of the horses all along. The odd thing was that the "elite" string was in fact being trained day in and day out by a guy who never had his name in the paper as the trainer while the "2nd string" were trained by K Mc and Albertrani etc.

Best of luck to Rick who I always found to be a pleasant and gracious person.

Honestly, this isn't really the case. bin Suroor wasn't the trainer.

Yeah, it seemed possible his horses were trained by proxy.

Still, after hearing the man speak, I stand by my assertion that Suroor is a fool.

As are most of the Godolphin team members.

I am curious how Mettee got his job. My recollection of him training was that he was kind of like a mini Brian Mayberry.

So, who really was the trainer for Suroor in the USA? Was it Mettee?

Regardless, in the end, it matters little. Godolphin has performed so many botch jobs on their American based horses, they really should scrap it and start over.

Wasn't Invasor a Godolphin horse?

Curious how Mclaughin was able to keep him as trainer looking back on it.

Even for Sheik Mo (where $ is almost no object), maybe this is as much a cost cutting/effective move as anything else. He has fully able American-based trainers, so why send bin Suroor over to train just a few?

Shiek Mo should also get rid of Suroor and Simon Crisford.

Invasor was owned by Shadwell... the brother of Sheikh Mohammed.

That's what people are trying to say, they weren't just sending bin Suroor over to train a few. Mettee (or someone else, who knows really) was doing the training here and Bin Suroor might show up for a big race and put the saddle on.

I assume that Rick and Henry were the main trainers during the summer when Godolphin was in NY.

I still can't figure out why Sheik Mo spends a fortune buying up dirt horses for stallion prospects, then installs a Tapeta surface.

I think it shows a real lack of common sense on his part.
An all weather surface in the desert...:confused:

Common sense is hardly part of their program.

Shortage of sand?

They probably assumed every track would eventually go synthetic. Damn Santa Anita gotta "monkey wrench" that idea...

There is nothing common about common sense.

I use the term uncommon sense.

The plan to make every horse a miler has fizzled out I guess.

bin Suroor lives in Newmarket. He would fly in with a fancy new suit when one ran in a big race in the US, but to my knowledge Rick was the guy handling the Godolphin runners in NY. Suroor usually wasn't on the ground in the US for his passport to cool off.