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Ginger
I’d suggest Gee Dee Nen was there to pick up 2 grand for hunting round at the rear.
Mission accomplished for all 3 horses and not a hair turned – though God help any jockey who had said so beforehand.Which is on a par with the first prize in three of the other races on the same card.
Also, if you think Ruby
wasn’t trying
, you cannot read races and ought to make your way directly to the Betfair forum. Don’t pass go.
Really all depends what anyone means by not "trying". In my opinion Ruby was "trying", but not "trying hard enough".
I suppose (it being 1833’s first run of the season we have to excuse Walsh not doing his very best to win. ie When riding a horse capable of front running and proven at 3 miles in a 2m4f race around a flat track – up against effectively just one horse who has top class form at 2 miles, who’s yet to show the same form over further… You might expect the jockey to make it as severe a test of stamina possible. Walsh did not.
But that aside, my main complaint is…
When racing against a horse without as much stamina as his mount, it was possible Somersby might come back to Ruby on the run-in. Walsh made only the slightest of efforts to get back at Somersby once Elsworth took it up.Was Ruby trying?
Yes, in that he did not drop his hands and can NOT be thought of as "not trying".
But was he trying his hardest to win?
I’d say no.
Was there insufficient effort?
Questionable.
So was this more a schooling excercise than anything else?
A question very difficult to answer in the negative in my opinion.Value Is EverythingGinger
I’d suggest Gee Dee Nen was there to pick up 2 grand for hunting round at the rear.
Mission accomplished for all 3 horses and not a hair turned – though God help any jockey who had said so beforehand.Agreed Reet, that too. But it was in my opinion also GDN’s best chance of "winning".
Value Is EverythingKempton
The outsider was, I believe, there for the prize money and I wouldn’t blame connections.
Nor do I believe it was a schooling session. Somersby had not won for almost 2 years and more than one believes he is a quirky type. He drifted from his opening price before closing slightly again near the off.
There were more major bets noted by the SP returners in the ring for the runner-up than for the winner. The smell in the ring for a schooling session is usually pretty reliable.
Ruby gave his horse a positive ride, pushing hard off the final bend to try and open a gap. Once Somersby asserted, there was little point in Ruby picking up his whip. His mount would not have won for 18 strokes never mind 8.
For me Ruby rode a perfectly reasonable race on a horse with a big season ahead of him. Why take too much out of him by giving him a hard ride in a Beginners chase?
It was no different to watching a Cecil or Stoute horse first time out at the beginning of a new season – put in a position to win the race but not ridden too vigorously if it looks like the chance of winning has gone.
Somersby may have tired slightly on the run in but never looked in any danger.
"this perfect mix of poetry and destruction, this glory of rhythm, power and majesty: the undisputed champion of the world!!!"
Steeplechasing
A simple question , what is your agenda? , abolish whips (padded cushion) or abolish jump racing entirely ??
Id love to know
cheers
Ricky
- Total Posts 17716
I wonder how many times Glassonbury hit Shammick Boy? More than 8 I feel …
I wasn’t counting: more watching in horror at the falls of
Menorah
and
Sam Winner
.
But, eight stripes or nine, aren’t we missing the meat of the matter?
Although whip bans will proliferate on the flat (
Graham Gibbons
done for 5 days "frequency" at Redcar today, thus far, plus a careless riding ban for
P J McDonald
) that was not the main problem raised by
Ruby Walsh
et. al. which the stroke count is likely to cause the jump jockeys.
Steeplechasing
is barking
up the wrong tree, but has distracted us from the main issue over jumps.The consequences we should be looking out for will be in those cases where jockeys have to use up a large portion of their "meagre nine" too early in a long race to keep their mounts in contention. This might well result in fewer horses getting home, either through pull-ups or refusals (c.f. the horrific incident at Fontwell last week), and fewer horses getting into contention at all.
We’d expect
fewer
frequency bans over jumps than on the flat (NH jockeys are going slower and have a little more space to think about such matters, plus they’ve devised this new "
reins-slap
" whip stroke) but more side-effects from these zany new rules –
i.e. fewer finishers, some nasty incidents at fences, and an increased median distance covering (say) the first six home.
That’s where
Pompete
should be focussing his statistical attention, and not on whether there are more close finishes or not. Why on earth should the new whip rule make any difference to that?
(PS I see we’ve had another of these strange, new-fangled "out of contention" whip bans at Exeter today, for an amateur)
I wonder how many times Glassonbury hit Shammick Boy? More than 8 I feel …
I wasn’t counting: more watching in horror at the falls of
Menorah
and
Sam Winner
.
But, eight stripes or nine, aren’t we missing the meat of the matter?
The consequences we should be looking out for will be in those cases where jockeys have to use up a large portion of their "meagre nine" too early in a long race to keep their mounts in contention.
You hit my point of irony right on the head with this Pinza. Did Glassonbury really expect to be in contention approaching the last? He used up six down the shoulder that I counted just to stay with the pace earlier on.
What’s the guy meant to do when he sees he can actually win it? Not bother? Settle for second?
Not really fair for those that back the ‘outsider of three’ is it?Steeplechasing
A simple question , what is your agenda? , abolish whips (padded cushion) or abolish jump racing entirely ??
Id love to know
cheers
Ricky
I’m neither pro-whip nor anti-whip. I think it is essential the RSPCA do not withdraw their support from racing; the sport, as we know it, could not survive without them, in my opinion.
I’m pro-obeying-the-rules on the whip issue. My agenda is to try and keep the RSPCA’s co-operation with racing, and, to a lesser extent, World Horse Welfare’s co-operation.
I hope that clarifies my position.
Steeple , thanks and fair enough
The Rspca can and will go to hell , racing does not need their permission or consent on how they run things
I realise you see it differently , but I do not
Politically correct Britain has reached a new nadir , when people actually have to consider the views of an animal charity
cheers
Ricky
Pinza, you appear to have accepted that NH jockeys have devised a ‘workaround’ with their ‘rein slap’ approach.
Why wouldn’t they then either use this tactic more in a long race, or, indeed, devise another ‘workaround’ like not going quite so fast early on, to conserve energy?
The
fact
is that another day has passed with no breaches of the over-the-eight rule in NH racing. That was the point of this thread.
Your inferences that the new rules are leading to breaches in other ways have
no obvious basis in fact
. You refer again today to the likelihood of Pipe’s jock done for not riding out for 6th being linked to his fear of going over the eight. The replay coverage of that race shows so little of the horse in question that it is impossible to draw any conclusions about the number of times it was hit. Perhaps you have another source of evidence?
Flat jocks seem to be having more problems with the frequency rule:
1 either they are going to break it in certain races, come what may:
2 they continue having problems with the counting part:
3 their instinct is still dominating their actions.G Gibbons’s ride today (I counted 8 strokes) as good as it was from a jockeyship viewpoint, broke the rules. It was the last stroke which got the horse to the front. He won by a head from the 2nd favourite whose supporters and connections have a right to feel aggrieved.
But returning to the thrust of this thread, one of the strongest objections to the new frequency rule was that it was unsustainable in NH racing; jockeys would simply have to have more strokes to get a horse through a jumps race, there would be multiple breaches, many wouldn’t finish, or the lack of competitiveness would be a major drawback for race-fans/punters.
None of this has yet come to pass. Yes, these are very early days, perhaps some of those fears will be realised. But on recent evidence, it seems that there was a very substantial over-reaction, centred on Ruby’s Aintree ban.
It will be interesting to see what Thursday brings as I saw an article today mentioning that there might still be some form of protest by jockeys at Towcester. If no protest is staged, I hope things settle down and everyone gets on with it.
If a protest does materialise, I believe jockeys will be hard pressed to present a convincing case when they have been riding within the rules for a week or more, with no apparent ill-effects on themselves or the sport.
It seems there are a lot of people who believe every whip stroke helps the horse go faster. But There are cases where over-use (or even one stroke) leads to horses becoming unbalanced or wandering around.
Dream Ahead moved violently when sparely hit with the whip and lost ground. It almost cost him both Sprint Cup and Foret.
I watched the Melbourne Cup last night. It seemed to me Red Cadeaux quickened well and got to the front before wandering left handed under a strong right handed drive. Momentum breifly lost which allowed Dunaden to get to the front. Red Cadeaux’s jockey Rodd did well to pull the whip through before his mount rallied close home to almost get back up.
Red Cadeaux’s jockey was done for hitting his mount seven times in the closing stages (fined just £650). So the question is:
Did whip "abuse" cost Red Cadeaux the Melbourne Cup?
Value Is EverythingSteeple , thanks and fair enough
The Rspca can and will go to hell , racing does not need their permission or consent on how they run things
I realise you see it differently , but I do not
Politically correct Britain has reached a new nadir , when people actually have to consider the views of an animal charity
cheers
Ricky
I respect your view, as I do the views of others who share your opinion.
I agree with you about the crazy situation with political correctness, and I might even extend that to embrace the fact that it is maddening that the RSPCA has such influence.
But in my opinion the reality is that they do have a support base among the British public which is light years beyond the support base racing has from that same audience.
In my view, a withdrawal by the RSPCA would imply that racing is cruel. That same PC we detest would then affect potential sponsors and broadcasters and, vitally, leave us with no one to ‘put up’ to argue our welfare case against the extreme ‘Animal Rights’ people.
Ask yourself one question: if the RSPCA withdraw from racing, what chance have we of getting one of the strictest observers of political correctness, the BBC, to cover The National? They’d pull out. Could SKY/Murdoch afford further bad PR by stepping in? Would Ch4 risk it along with the chance of a backlash from advertisers harried by Social Media campaigners?
No big sponsors, no terrestrial TV coverage, the enormous task of marketing a ‘cruel’ sport to newcomers . . . racing as we know it would not survive.
- Total Posts 17716
The
fact
is that another day has passed with no breaches of the over-the-eight rule in NH racing. That was the point of this thread.
As it’s your thread, I suppose (like Humpty Dumpty yet again) you can make it mean whatever you want it to mean.
I have tried to reason with you as to the fatuity of judging the well-being of NH Racing under the new whip rules by your simplistic rule of frequency-bans. I have evoked
Ruby Walsh
and Sean Boyce’s disturbing interview with
Andrew Glassonbury
to help explain in what ways your rule of thumb is superficial and inadequate.
Your response seems to be that they should keep using the ugly
"rein-slap"
workaround and ride slower.
Now I have pressing business with a hot hand of pork, so I am sure you will understand if I spare you (and the long-suffering Forum members) another round of nit-picking.
I will however ask you a little question. You have identified
Graham Gibbons
‘s whip-ban ride today as
"good … from a jockeyship viewpoint"
. Putting aside the
"rules-are-rules"
argument for one moment, do you think it fitting that this "
good
" ride should result in a five day ban and loss of income for same?
(PS TWO whip bans today thus far, one at Exeter and the Redcar ban for Gibbons)
I will however ask you a little question. You have identified Graham Gibbons’s whip-ban ride today as "good … from a jockeyship viewpoint". Putting aside the "rules-are-rules" argument for one moment, do you think it fitting that this "good" ride should result in a five day ban and loss of income for same?
Putting rules aside allows me to answer from a personal ‘non-campaigning’ viewpoint.
I don’t think GG’s ride merited a ban of any kind. I thought it was a very good ride – he had to switch his whip four times to galvanise the horse and get it running straight. I thought he kept a cool head and hit the horse no more often than he had to to try and win. And I doubt he’d have won had he not hit the horse that final time. if I owned horses, I’d happily book him to ride.
I am totally against cruelty but something about the whip rules bothers me.
Everyone who works in racing will know about horses that "Take the
P" and need reminders to show their best efforts.
So it could mean that horses that should have won if given an extra slap or two will be beaten by less able but more willing
horses. Will this not mess with the breeding program if lesser horses keep winning. Does this make sense? Please correct me if I
am wrong.Keith Lewis
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