Amo Racing have made quite the splash in the sales ring this week in spending £22million at the Tattersalls Book One Auction in Newmarket in an admirable effort to challenge Coolmore and Ballydoyle as the kingmakers in the sport.
Kia Joorabchian’s ambition and intent is evident for all to see. Supported by wealthy Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis, Amo Racing are eager to make the next step in the racing world.
Partnerships with Al Shaqab have been formed and the targeted purchasing of highly sought after fillies offers them the opportunity to kick-start a solid breeding programme.
The chequebook will need opened yet again further down the line but football agent Joorabchian will need to add patience and stability to make his spending spree worthwhile in the long run.
The head of Amo Racing has been a polarizing figure since his arriving to the racing world.
Joorabchian made a splash in the sales ring and has ambitions of challenging the status quo
Big money has been spent on individual horses with varying degrees of success. And even the high-profile winners have come with some baggage. King Of Steel has been the flag-bearer.
He was a huge outsider when second in the Derby to Auguste Rodin last year. Trained, at the time, by Roger Varian, the three-year-old colt won at Royal Ascot but, more significantly, won the Champion Stakes at the same venue last October.
That Group One victory on Champions Day provided Joorabchian with a potential top-quality middle distance sire to go to war with alongside the Group One placed and more speedy Persian Force who currently stands in stud for £6,700.
King Of Steel, who is sure to be worth a lot more, suffered a career-ending injury ahead of his four-year-old campaign and Joorabchian was quick to move him out of the Varian yard.
It is, of course, the owners prerogative to send his horses to whichever trainer they want to. But this high-profile decision did not generally go down well with the racing public.
Joorabchian is a tough taskmaster and it won’t be the last savage call he will make. It’s understandable why King Of Steel was taken away from Varian after that incident. The horse was simply too valuable to be lost for breeding and his stallion career looks destined to begin in 2025. If King Of Steel had perished then Amo Racing may not have splashed the cash as drastically as they did this week.
Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis is supporting the push from Amo Racing
Arc winning Trainer Ralph Beckett will pick up a lot of Amo Racing’s purchases this week
Joorabchian has chopped and changed with trainers and jockeys with regularity. The decision to ditch Rossa Ryan as No 1 jockey a couple of years ago was a knee-jerk to reaction to a couple of poor rides in a season where an incredibly talented young man was learning his trade at the highest level – just like Joorabchian was in the ownership game.
Ryan rode the Arc winner Bluestocking for Juddmonte Farms last weekend and is No 1 at the Ralph Beckett yard, a training operation that is firmly on the rise.
The funny thing is Ryan will probably be back in the saddle for Amo as many of the big purchases in the ring this week will go to Beckett, who has worked wonders with Bluestocking this season and is rightfully receiving better quality of horses to operate with.
The other major trainer to benefit from Amo’s splurge is Sir Mark Prescott, who will train the full sister of his Arc winner Alpinista. Amo spent north of £4m for that yearling alone.
Beckett and Prescott are two men renowned for their patient training methods and improving horses with age. They are a complete contrast to Joorabchian’s style as he demands results as quickly as possible. It will be interesting to see how the dynamic works.
It will take something extraordinary to challenge Godolphin and Coolmore. These are well-established operations built over decades of planning with a clutch of top-class sires and fillies readily at their disposal.
They also have global reach and main bases. Aidan O’Brien is the main man for Coolmore, just as Charlie Appleby is for Godolphin. The same goes for jockeys. Ryan Moore No 1 for Team Coolmore and William Buick for Team Godolphin.
Perhaps this is the week where Amo Racing begin to execute a semblance of a plan. Joorabchian spoke well about his ambitions to challenge the established order and even showed some humility when acknowledging that he might fail in doing so. He’s after the right stock and placing those horses with the right trainers who can get the best out of them.
The big challenge now for Joorabchian is to have the discipline to stick with the programme he’s laid out and resist the temptation to rip it all apart when something goes wrong. A chaotic approach in this game is an unsuccessful one.
Amo have had 17 different horses win in 2024 and 10 of them have been trained by different trainers. That is simply a ridiculous spread and smacks of an operation with all the gear and no idea.
Sir Mark Prescott is renowned for his patient approach and may clash with Joorabchian
Rossa Ryan won the Arc with Bluestocking this month… years after losing the top job at Amo
For too long, Amo Racing has been a far too volatile operation to genuinely succeed – but this could be the week the penny has dropped for Joorabchian. Now he must resist the urge to throw a hand grenade into his best-laid plan. If he does then that £22m will go up in smoke fairly quickly.
PERFORMANCE OF THE WEEK…
Plenty of candidates from Future Champions weekend at Newmarket. Desert Flower was wildly impressive in the Fillies’ Mile and is just about the right favourite for next year’s 1,000 Guineas ahead of Lake Victoria, while the late absence of The Lion In Winter took the shine off the Dewhurst Stakes. Bluestocking was good in the Arc but it must be noted that it wasn’t a strong renewal. The honour instead goes to RAMATUELLE who was mightily impressive in the Foret.
The French may have been outpointed on Arc weekend by the British and Irish battalion but Christopher Head’s three-year-old filly produced a wicked turn of foot to slam some useful rivals by three lengths. She’s an exciting and versatile horse going forward that will stay in training next year. She will also take in the Breeders’ Cup in Del Mar next month.
SELECTION OF THE DAY…
This is a perilous couple of weeks for punters as the Flat season concludes and the jumps season gets underway. It’s difficult to get a true gauge on what horses will be fit for the start of the jumps and determining which horses have had enough at the end a long Flat season.
With race form hard to assess at this time of the year, it might be wise to place more emphasis on trainer targets at the start of the jumps or, even better, just take a back seat for a few weeks to get your eye in as there’s plenty of decent stuff still happening on the Flat.
So it’s off to Goodwood for the Inkerman London Handicap (4.45) over a mile where DASHING DARCEY (9-2, bet365) is taken to like the soft ground for Roger Varian. Midfield in the Britannia Stakes on fast ground, he ran well off a three-month break at Salisbury on softer conditions and a lack of race fitness just cost him near the end where he finished second. He can make amends today off a workable mark of 92.
