The Galileopoly - what's the problem?

Two runners this week: Das Kapital at Nottingham tomorrow (Wednesday) and Roy at Brighton on Friday.  Hard to know what to expect from either.  Das Kapital was disappointing last season but he showed the odd glimpse of promise, particularly when he finished fourth at Pontefract in the autumn, and he was still a tall, weak horse who looked very likely to improve when he got a bit older.  Let's hope that that does indeed happen.  One couldn't fancy him tomorrow on his form of 2018, but I hope that he can improve on that, starting tomorrow perhaps.  I'm hoping that it's been raining there this afternoon.  It's been raining on the TV at Southwell and that's not far from Nottingham, so that's encouraging.

I would be less vague about Roy's prospects, but for the fact that he hasn't quite seemed at his best yet this year.  I think that he ought to come good at some point in the summer, and that his failure to cut much ice so far in 2019 is not because of his advancing years, because obviously if that was the case, it wouldn't really be reversible.  (He's nine now).  I have been and remain very happy with him at home, and I think that his slightly uninspiring runs so far this year have their roots in nothing more sinister than that he began the season unfeasibly high in the handicap and then found himself in a very curiously (and from our point of view very unsatisfactorily) run race last time.

Epsom was terrific.  I've read too much since then that we should be worrying that we're not far from having a 'Ballydoyle first, the rest nowhere' situation - even a BHA pronouncement on the subject - but that's nothing to be concerned about.  The situation won't last forever, and even if it did that wouldn't be a problem.  The three dominant stallions of the modern era - Sadler's Wells, Danehill and Galileo - all stood (or, in Galileo's case, stand) at Coolmore.  At present, Galileo is in a league of his own.  Racing has become a numbers' game.  Two operations operate on a bigger scale than anyone else: Coolmore/Ballydoyle and Darley/Godolphin.

Coolmore have always had plenty of sons and grandsons of these horses.  It has enjoyed particular success with horses by Galileo out of a Danehill mare.  So have other people, most notably Juddmonte with Frankel, a superior horse to any ever raced by the Coolmore team.  But Coolmore have had so many horses bred on this cross or variations of it, dozens and dozens and dozens rather than just the odd one - while Darley spent a lengthy period eschewing the progeny Coolmore stallions, which led it having a dearth of sons and daughters of Galileo and a dearth of Danehill mares.

Darley has managed to overcome its previous inexplicable aversion to the progeny of Coolmore stallions, but the damage has been done and will take years to undo.  The result is that, while others such as Juddmonte and the Aga Khan are going to come up with Derby horses some years and so is Godolphin, Coolmore is going to come up with significantly more than anyone else.  But this won't last forever, and we don't need to worry about it.  We have more than enough things that we genuinely do need to worry about without worrying about things that are not a problem, for us in particular or for racing in general.