English based trainer Jamie Osborne doesn't think like everyone else does. Which explains why he paid €160,000 at the 2024 Arqana May Breeze-Up sale for a horse that was bred to be a dirt horse and looked like a dirt horse. The horse turned out to be Heart of Honor (GB) (Honor A.P.) who is among the eight horses that will contest Saturday's GI Belmont Stakes. Could Heart of Honor, with his breeding have become a top turf horse in Europe. The answer is “probably not.”
But racing this horse in Europe was never Osborne's intention. On this week's Thoroughbred Daily News Writers' Room Podcast, presented by Keeneland, Osborne came across as a man who has a plan. He was this week's Gainesway Guest of the Week.
Osborne likes to run in Dubai, but only in dirt races. He said the competition is too tough in the grass races, but says the quality of the horses racing on the dirt there is modest. They can be beaten and for good purses.
“The motivation for buying him was that we were taking squads of horses to the Middle East for the winter and just banging our heads up against Charlie Appleby,” Osborne said. “So 60% of the racing in Meydan in the winter in Dubai is dirt racing. Godolphin is so strong out there, they're really tough to beat. Now we have had success there, but a good example this year on the turf, I think we had seven seconds to Charlie [Appleby]. So it can be a little bit frustrating. So we thought, why don't we try something different and see if training a dirt horse is possible. So we bought a handful. I can only do this with the backing of my owners, Jim and Claire Bryce, who very much enjoy being in Dubai for the winter. So Heart of Honor was bought, not with the American Triple Crown in mind, he was bought to entertain them in Dubai during the winter racing on the dirt. And thankfully he did.”
Heart of Honor's best performance in Dubai came in the G2 UAE Derby, where he finished second, beaten a nose. Now that he had an established dirt stakes horse, Osborne needed a place to run him with the Dubai racing nearing an end. So he picked the American Triple Crown. Heart of Honor was fifth in the GI Preakness Stakes and will try again Saturday in the Belmont.
The jockey will again be Osborne's 23-year-old daughter Saffie.
“It is good. It's a whole different dimension to what I'm doing. Imagine if she was just an ordinary rider and I'd have to sack her for the good of my business,” Osborne said. “It wouldn't go down very well, would it? But no, thankfully she can ride. She doesn't lack strength, this child, she's like a little weightlifter. It's quite extraordinary. She won the genetic lottery really, because she's got three elder brothers that, believe it or not, are six-foot-four, six-foot-three, and six-foot-two. She's just five-foot-two. She is very strong and I do enjoy working with her. It has its moments. But it's different. If you take away the fact that she's my daughter, she does a great job for us. And I'm not saying that every winner doesn't give her enormous pleasure, but I think she gets extra pleasure from one of ours. She knows how hard I've had to struggle through the last 20 years.”
Jamie Osborne began his career in racing as a steeplechase rider, and was among the best in the business. In 1999, he decided to go in a different direction and retired. The decision was then made to being a flat trainer.
“I switched over to flat racing because I don't like the English winters,” he said. “The worst thing about being a jump jockey is it happens in the winter and England is a horrible place in the winter. The days are very short and it's always raining and cold.
There were lots of reasons at the time. I didn't really want to be a trainer at all until retirement was really looming and I had to face reality that the first career was over or about to be over. I had all sorts of ideas when I was riding about what I would do and wouldn't do. Then I just felt I wasn't kind of ready to leave the sport. I'd done nothing else all my life. I'd been in it since I left school at 17. And I thought, 'Well, maybe it's a bit silly trying to go and earn a living elsewhere when the only thing I know is this sport.'”
In our “Fastest Horse of the Week,” segment, which is sponsored by WinStar, we went over the many reasons there are to breed to WinStar stallion Constitution. The fastest horse of the week was Nysos (Nyquist), who ran a 108 Beyer when winning the GIII Triple Bend Stakes at Santa Anita.
Elsewhere on the podcast, which is also sponsored by the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders' Association, West Point Thoroughbreds, 1/ST Racing and 1/ST TV, the team of Randy Moss, Zoe Cadman and Bill Finley went over the Belmont Stakes, horse by horse. Finley liked Sovereignty (Into Mischief), Moss thought the race came down to Sovereignty and Baeza (McKinzie) and Cadman thought the same way. The team also previewed the many Grade I stakes that will be offered on Friday and Saturday at Saratoga.
To watch the Writers' Room, click here. To view the show as a podcast, click here.
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