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One last guess from me!! I don’t think I am going to read all yeats’s poems so how about
ROSE GYPSY French Guineas winners 2001 I think!!
If that isn’t right then I give up!!
Not that one either, raymo.
I don’t want to give this one away because my last two questions have lasted about 5 minutes.
Against my better judgement, the horse won an Irish Classic.
(If I was trying to answer this I’d certainly be using internet resources by now.)
I should have had a go as well because I got one right, I was just biding my time and someone just asked another.
How is this thread working now? Is it just a free for all?^ You posted an answer but after more than 3 days the questioner hadn’t come in to accept or deny it. I jumped in with:
Doubtless Charles will be along soon to elaborate upon his question and the responses to it. In the meantime…(another question).
Probably a bit precipitous on my part but you never know if or when people are going to come back and respond. That’s why you missed out, but you did ask a question instead of me a week or so later.
How is this thread working now? Is it just a free for all?
It’s working better than it did between July 2014 and December 2015.
Mr Yeat’s poem The Cat and the Moon is worth sharing
The cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For, wander and wail as he would,
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet,
What better than call a dance?
Maybe the moon may learn,
Tired of that courtly fashion,
A new dance turn.
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.
Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,
From crescent to round they range?
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes.a.
Well done, apalachee.
Black Minnaloushe crept through the grass to win the Irish 2,000 Guineas and the St James’s Palace Stakes in 2001.
Over to you for the next question.
Thanks Seasider.
Black Minnaloushe was not the highest profile Ballydoyle classic winner and definitely not top cat of his generation there at the time having serious competition from his stablemates, one in particular. He was a decent colt nonetheless and he had his last race in Europe in the Juddmonte at York where he was 4th behind brilliant winner Sakhee, Grandera and Medicean. Black Minnaloushe finished his career at Belmont Park in the Breeders Cup classic where he finished 10th. Sakhee missed out on getting the cream there going down by a whisker to the also wonderful Tiznow. Black Minnaloushe’s better known stablemate was a well beaten sixth.
On to the next question and in a similar vein – who was the Group 1 winning Diomed Stakes also-ran who reportedly almost had a connection with Van Gogh but who definitely did have an unusual Ballydoyle connection?
This is a question for those of us old enough to have been racing fans in the 1970s. The Ballydoyle connection was in the form of probably the ultimate bad-boy to have come out of that stable.
I’m guessing the bad boy was that ferocious beast Marinsky.
I can’t make the connection between him and Van Gogh, though (unless the horse bit his own ear off). Perchance the link lies with the Christian name i.e. the Vincents Van Gogh and O’Brien.
I’m also unsure about Marinsky’s G1. He was first past the post in the 1977 July Cup only to be disqualified for some minor bumping. The Newmarket stewards were possibly influenced by the horse’s previous form in the area of interference, aware as they must have been that Marinsky had tried to eat Relkino in the Diomed Stakes a month earlier. Later in 1977 Marinsky died of a twisted gut, so maybe we should reappraise his misdemeanours with a little more sympathy.
Of course, I could be completely wrong.
No – you’re close enough. You’ve got all of the pieces there with just a bit of rearranging required.
Marinsky was indeed the Ballydoyle rogue and you have mentioned the name I was looking for – Relkino. Rounding Tattenham Corner in the 1977 Diomed Marinsky well and truly connected with Relkino by trying to take a few chunks out of the innocent son of Relko. I seem to remember that Relkino’s ear was the main focus of Marinsky’s attention at one point and Relkino apparently was lucky to come away with his listening apparatus intact.
Relkino went on to greater things by winning the then Benson & Hedges Gold Cup at long odds, while things just got worse for poor Marinsky. As you say he was disqualified when first past the post in the July Cup and he was ultimately banned from racing when the stewards couldn’t take any more of his antics, before his untimely death which I had forgotten about. Marinsky was easily my favourite horse of 1977!!
Back to you then Seasider.
Methinks I got the situation a little mixed up there, apalachee. Good memories though. I love these quirky horses and sometimes wonder if there are good physical reasons why they behave as they do.
My own favourite from the early 1970s is Knockroe, a top class animal who didn’t always put the effort in but was devastating when he put his best foot forward. Knockroe died young as well, reportedly from a brain tumour, which would explain a lot.
I’ll leave this open for someone else to pose a question should they wish to do so. Absent that, I’ll put up another one tomorrow.
In the early 1960s an unfashionable stallion had a remarkable “double” of winners.
Can anyone name the stallion, his racehorse son who won a major steeplechase and what the “double” was?Is it Quorum?
Red Rum won over 5 furlongs and the Grand National so won over the shortest and longest race distances covered in the UK.
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