Back to the TAB Eureka and Dixon said he felt a mix of pride and deflation with second spot.
“It looked like our race to win, but you can’t expect any more from him,” he said.
“You wonder if I’d done anything differently, would it have changed the result, but I’m not to know that some horses would run below their best.
“It’s deflating when you do all the work and go so well but get beaten.
“And I’m mindful of how many times he has to do all the work in these big races.
“I’d love the chance to drive him with a sit as you would see how fast he can be, too. But he’s been having to make all the running lately because if he doesn’t, nothing else will.”
Really?
Is Grant Dixon for real?
What it seems that he is saying is that if he knew that Catch A Wave was going to go like a busted arse he might have pressed on for the front, but how could he know?
Well that’s an easy question to answer.
By putting on a bit of pressure a lap out and having a look, instead of parking in the death outside Leap To Fame’s main danger and banking on the fact that he was better than him, that’s how.
But of course Dixon didn’t, and instead made K.W. AM and Kay Seymour’s horse sit parked in the breeze for almost a mile confident in the fact he would win.
That’s just moronic, and his weak excuses for his failure to drive a smart tactical race, and his arrogance in thinking and saying it, merely reinforce what I have been saying forever about Grant Dixon being a truly great trainer, but a merely competent driver who is simply not up to these sort of big races.
What Dixon’s comments do is illustrate the great weakness in the whole harness racing sport.
In any other pursuit in the world an elite coach is just that.
A coach.
They don’t play.
Waller, Moody, Maher, Waterhouse, Gollan and co don’t ride horses, they train them.
They employ professional jockeys to ride them, because that’s what great hoops do.
It’s bit like employing an electrician to fix your power, or engaging a lawyer when you go to court.
It doesn’t matter how much you think you know about these things, they know more.
That’s the reason that they are pros.
Yet in harness racing this inane belief persists that a top notch trainer is automatically a top notch driver too, which is complete and utter crap.
Off the top of your head name the top 8 drivers in Australia right now.
No, I will do it for you.
Luke McCarthy, Cam Hart, Anthony Butt, Gary Hall Jr, James Herbertson, Cracker Jack, Happy Jack (Callaghan) and Mark Pitt.
Of them all, only Luke and Cracker train and consistently drive their own horses, but in McCarthy’s case he usually hands the reins over to Happy Jack when he can, and he drives a heap of winners freelance, just like Nathan Jack does.
It is simple common sense isn’t it?
The best horses need the best trainers, and the best trainers need the best drivers so they can keep their eye on the prize and their focus on what they do best, which is training.
Not Grant Dixon though.
He thinks he can do it all.
As we saw on Saturday night he is wrong.
Think about it.
When would he have time to study voluminous numbers of replays and do deep in-depth form?
Never.
So how can he match the blokes and bird who do?
He can’t, can he?
That’s why he drives like he did in the Eureka, and before that in ID19 in Auckland.
Because he’s an old fashioned fool.
Sure trainer/drivers will continue to win plenty of big races, because they have the best horses and insist on retaining the drives.
But if they devolved responsibility to the pro experts they’d be sure to win a whole lot more.
https://www.harness.org.au/media-room/news-article/?news_id=62289