Owners Insight – Oscara Dara…..

OSCARA DARA (2-0-8-10-2 | (20+) | 22 | 0.38 | -0.45) – Trained by Nicky Henderson – Winner & runner-up in his 2 starts to date

I imagine not everyone will be familiar with the above horse but hopefully over the coming weeks and months we will all learn a lot more about the gelding as well as the people behind the potentially very exciting 6yo.

Today let me introduce you all to the major shareholder behind the BG Racing Partnership – Mr Phil Boyle. Phil has kindly agreed to write a series of articles for the NTF web-site detailing his involvement in the partnership and of course keeping us updated on the horse himself OSCARA DARA.

Over to you Phil…….

Hello fellow NTFers

I recently contacted Ben about Master of the Hall (one of the NTF trend horses) as I am familiar with the horse having seen him work at Nicky Henderson’s whilst watching my own horse OSCARA DARA.

Ben asked whether I would be prepared to write an article to talk about Oscara Dara in the hope that some of you might be interested on a look at racing from an ownership perspective.

Oscara Dara is owned by the BG Racing Partnership which I set up in February 2009.  I sold shares in Oscara Dara in multiples of 5% and having decided that I could afford to keep no more than 15%, I ended up with 50% after Oscara Dara was injured while I was putting the partnership together, meaning that I could not persuade anyone else to buy in!

We bought him as a 4yo to run almost immediately and he managed to stick his leg over the stable door and caused muscle damage, missing all of his 4yo/5yo season as a result.  We finally got him on the track just after Christmas last year when desperate to get a run into him we went to the bumpers meet at Southwell on the sand.  He won easily there (much to our surprise as we thought the sand would be too deep as it was riding really slow).  We then went to Ascot for a decent bumper where we split Nicky Henderson’s Mono Man and Phillip Hobb’s Persian Snow (who was favourite for the Cheltenham bumper at the time).  At that point we were due to go to Aintree for the bumper on Grand National day when Oscara Dara picked up another leg injury! 

Up to that point he had been trained by Alan Fleming who trained Starluck out of the Rough Quest stables very close to where I live in Beare Green in Surrey.  Alan left there at the end of last season and after failing to find a yard, he has moved back to Ireland until he can find something suitable.  We had Oscara’s leg treated in Ireland using a new technique which has got him back cantering in 6 months rather than the usual 12 months off.

We approached one local trainer (Suzie Smith), one mid range trainer (Neil Mulholland) and one top man (Nicky Henderson) to find a home for the horse.  Nicky was back in touch like a shot as he says that they think Mono Man is a very good horse and they were very keen to have Oscara Dara.  The BG Racing partners were attracted to the idea of having a horse at a top stable and whilst I would have also have been very happy to go with either of the other two trainers, I tend not to vote my shares unless I need to though to keep everyone involved.

After a scan of his leg in October, Oscara Dara is now cantering with a view to building up his work and then re-scanning his leg.  If everything goes well (a big ask) then we are hoping he will run at the end of January in a Novice Hurdle.

Racehorse ownership is definitely a labour of love.  I have been into racing long enough to know that we are very lucky to own a horse with as much potential as Oscara Dara.  It is fair to say that we have no idea how good he will turn out to be, but unlike most other horses that have run a couple of time, we can still dream that he might be absolutely top class.  That said, it is all potential, having “only” won a bumper at Southwell, we are yet to see much return on our outlay however much Oscara Dara might now be worth “on paper”!

Nicky is very happy with the progress that Oscara Dara has made and is hopefully that we will have fun with him in the future.  He still thinks a lot of Mono Man who probably would have won a decent novice hurdle first time up except for making a mess of the last flight and Oscara was very close behind Mono Man at Ascot last year so the sky is still the limit.

If you have enjoyed this article and would like to hear more about the Oscara Dara back story, how I got involved in ownership and how owning horses actually works, then please let Ben know.  If this is of interest, then other articles will follow!

Many thanks to Phil for the first in what I hope will be an interesting and insightful journey throughout the career of Oscara Dara.

Phil writes his own blog for BG Racing – http://bgracing.wordpress.com/

NTF FREE Xmas gift & Xmas Quiz

I am currently working on a couple of FREE Xmas gifts for all subscribers to the web-site as well as putting the final touches to the 2nd NTF Xmas quiz.

To stay tuned to the updates simply pop your name in the subscription box at the top right of the Blog. You can still download plenty of free guides when you sign-up and of course you will also be able to get the special Xmas gift……

Ben (NTF)