GONE WILDE

Rolf Johnson fears the effects of a thoroughbred market bubble’

- Rolf Johnson

Who hasn't heard, used even, Oscar Wilde's dig, voiced by Lord Darlington in 'Lady Windermere's Fan', at cynics?

Darlington accuses Wilde's 'cynical' effete character (the author himself?) Cecil Graham of "knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing." Graham is allowed the rejoinder: "And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn't know the market price of any single thing." There's no record of Oscar Wilde attending Tattersalls Book One yearling sales. Nor was he the first, or the last, to pick on the Greek Cynics whose philosophy was to need little and want even less - exact opposite of the sales mentality. Oh yes, the Cynics had some bad habits; personal cleanliness wasn't top of their list of priorities, but doesn't everybody let themselves down occasionally? Serving his time in Reading Gaol, Oscar wrote his second most famous line: "Each man kills the thing he loves".

Again, he was talking about himself (he never stopped talking about himself). But the same sentiment applies to many of those who profess to love racing yet can't help themselves causing it harm. As for the market - prices and value at the recent sales we'll come to that.

Wait though: the mounds of money spent on young thoroughbreds confirmed to a wider public that racing is not for them: it's out of their reach again when, for a few years, syndicates looked as though they spelled salvation. The mega-rich have imposed their notions of 'value'; just how do you value a two million guineas lot against one for three million - and more? Such people, for whom value isn't a concept, don't have bank balances they have banks, economies even! Next time you enter a public convenience make sure the urinal isn't upside down because, if it is, it may be a copy (the original is locked away) of Marcel Duchamp's conceptual (also known as absurd) artwork.