John Shirreffs

[Calzone Lord]

Nice to see him win a MSW race with a 2nd-time starter that paid $95.40 at Del Mar.

Mike Smith needed that one for his ROI.

Shirreffs only has 86 starts all year.

For a guy who has trained a Kentucky Derby winner, trained the winner of the BC Classic and BC Distaff in the same year, and is a positive ROI guy for his entire training career... you'd think people would want to give him horses.

He's never had more than 182 starts a year in his entire training career. By comparison, Pletcher has had at least 1,000 starts seven years in a row, and everyone complains about how he never starts his horses.

Does Shirreffs actually prefer to have a small stable? Is this be design? Even among the horses he gets ... it's mostly homebreds and medium priced auction buys. Zenyatta cost all of $60,000 as a yearling.

It makes no sense why this great trainer is content with this -- and not trying to increase his stock greatly in terms of both quality and volume.

There are good horses to buy in Europe, good horses to buy in South America, good horses to buy at yearling sales, good horses to buy at 2yo sales, there are other trainers who have good horses that you could try to take away.