Among hundreds of other words, Nicky says this –
“We’ve got to bear this cross of responsibility. We owe that to racing and to everybody. It’s not me that’s wanting anything out of it.”
Another bollock-load of nonsense. If he believed this, the horse would be withdrawn from Cheltenham.
Instead he prattles on about things hingeing on next week’s schooling, the genius that is Yogi Breisner, the confidence in Nico … the full bucket of cognitive dissonance dredged up to try and make himself disregard what he has said a hundred times and what everyone who knows a thing about horse racing quickly discovers – the gallops, the schooling ground, the homework have the sum total of bugger all to do with what a horse will do on a racecourse. They found that out before his last run when he was ‘electric’, ‘jumping superbly’ etc at home, yet they roll back round with the same guff.
If nothing else, connections have filled the public goodwill pot by running at Southwell. Will they risk this, their whole career reputations, and arguably the future of NH racing on one false step from a horse who has made so many? I have racked all sides of my brain on an objective front trying to understand their supposed dilemma over something that should not even be under debate.