Action from the Breeders Cup 2015© Photo Healy Racing
American Pharoah was described as the horse to save US racing but now that he's packed off to stud he will be increasingly seen as a mere sticking plaster - albeit a wonderfully evocative plaster - to an industry which appears resolutely unwilling to save itself. The Water, Hay & Oats Alliance is crying WHOA when it comes to medication: most everyone else in America seems determined to kick on regardless.
Maybe it is coincidence that the two European trained winners at Breeders Cup 2015 were both given Lasix while other star performers allowed to run drug-free appeared to run below par. After all a pair of American trained winners on Saturday night ran drug-free too and it didn't seem to do them any harm.
But long after American Pharoah is settled in to his new career, the depressing message from this Breeders Cup won't be forgotten. No one can know for certain if last weekend really was coincidence. But after some took the notable step of running their star performers drug-free, who's going to take the same chance again anytime soon?
Anyway the Breeders Cup is an American show and most of the locals have long since made their minds up that the drug finances stack up in their favour, ignoring how ethically they don't add up at all.
Back home very different kinds of sums are being totted on the back of the €65 million Curragh redevelopment which was launched with plenty hoopla last week and curiously little mention of how the cost had been estimated at €10 million lower not so long ago.
It has since been reported that the vital seven heavyweight investors who are central to the project have coughed up €25 million to date with other private investors confidently anticipated to contribute as well. The end result is the seven investors wind up with a third of the new Curragh management company, HRI have a third, and the Turf Club are left with the remaining third.
Not surprisingly much smaller figures were quickly being bandied around in relation to the make-up of the new Curragh company, the balance of power among the Magnificent Seven, and where loyalties might lie should things ever got hot and heavy around the boardroom table. It doesn't seem to be a difficult tot.
In a cast of seven, which already has three Coolmore partners, it's probably not hard to predict where JP McManus's sympathies might be inclined to tip towards. And in an 11-strong board, excluding the independent chairman, there don't appear to be any major surprises lurking in terms of potential solo merchants.
In fact the one sure-thing everyone seems to agree on is that Turf Club influence from now on is likely to be marginal which, when you consider almost two centuries of control by the integrity body at Irish racing's HQ, makes this a historical deal.
In a broader context, another noteworthy aspect to the whole Curragh deal is the government's insistence on a stake in the new company in return for funding.
There are quite a few examples of government money being provided for major developments of sporting facilities in Ireland. For instance the Curragh investment is probably no more than the €30 million the cabinet signed off on in relation to the revamp of Cork GAA's Pairc Ui Chaoimh project. The state didn't insist on a stake in that.
Of course the argument will be that racing and bloodstock as a whole is at least as much industry as sport and the Minister for Agriculture has pointed out how important it is for public money to be used as efficiently and transparently as possible in relation to the Curragh development. No one can argue with that principle. But other sports are still likely to take note.
At the Curragh launch, the government's contribution to the Horse & Greyhound Fund was summed up as the "seed grain" for a billion Euro industry which brings jobs and prestige to this country in return.
Most of that seed gets flung at prizemoney but the optics of that can be a hard sell sometimes in the context of small fields and heavy odds-on favourites such as Don Cossack's JNWine Champion Chase solo at Down Royal.
The kneejerk reaction is to condemn it as a lucrative benefit for a tiny elite and confirmation that prizemoney is largely irrelevant to those flush enough to own a horse in the first place.
It's not as if such a reaction is totally without foundation. But the reality is only that tiny elite have the vast majority of the suitable contenders anyway and they can hardly be expected not to arrange things for their own ultimate benefit. And anything entered which winds up hopelessly out of its depth is likely to be condemned for merely getting in the way.
That doesn't mean that widespread unease at the idea of the first Grade 1 of the jumps season becoming the first of a series of top-flight races turned into little more than lucrative workouts for heavy odds-on favourites isn't justifiable. It is a serious problem. Coming up with a serious solution though is a real toughie.
And finally, the Minister for Agriculture has said he will consider "sensible" amendments to his Horse Racing Ireland bill due before the Dail this week but is not going to respond to threats of legal action which the Turf Club made earlier this year.
Of course one person's sensible is another's unfair but a Turf Club submission has been prepared and it will be interesting to see if the legislation gets changed.
However this has been brewing for quite some time, and previous submissions have clearly not worked. The Minister's response to the legal threat was also noticeably robust. What can be changed now? And if nothing is changed how more marginal does that make the Turf Club?
