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Seeing that one enigmatic individual has his own dedicated thread, I thought that the Willie Mullins-trained grey also deserved one.
In the Goshen thread, TTC described Steven Packham’s hurdler as “the mother of all cliff horses”; well, I feel exactly the same about Asterion Forlonge.
If you take their jumping debuts out of the equation (Asterion ran once in France, so we’ll take his first start for the Irish champion trainer as the theoretical day when a viewer caught the Asterion bug), and stick to Goshen’s hurdle races, anyone who backed their hero blind would have been down a mere £3.01 on Asterion (mainly due to his brilliant Chanelle Pharma Novice Hurdle romp two years ago, at the rewarding SP of 4-1) compared to being down by £4.93 following Goshen blind. Both figures assume one pound stakes and SP returns, for fairness.
David “DJ” Jennings, Deputy Ireland editor at the Racing Post and presenter of their online programme Upping The Ante (where he’s tasked with playing the Matt Chapman role next to Gavin Lynch’s straight man) wrote a paean to Asterion in The Post on Friday; for those of you who missed it, here’s the link:
I nailed my colours to the bandwagon much earlier than that; indeed, even before Asterion had made his Irish début, as a friend who knows the owners (I’ve never met them) tipped me off about their recent French acquisition in the autumn of 2018.
In fact, if you take a quick look at the 2019 Ballymore Hurdle thread on this forum, you’ll find what I believe to be the first mention of Asterion here, made by yours truly. I also tipped him up eighteen months in advance for the 2021 King George (was about to finish second, at worst, when he overjumped the last and crumpled on landing) and, thinking that yesterday was finally going to be his day, I even subbed him into VTC’s Ten To Follow competition.
I won’t go through all of Asterion’s races, or we’ll be here all day, so we’ll jump (hopefully more accurately than our hero) straight to yesterday: tanking along, having been held up in mid-div, Asterion winged the third last and looked all set to pounce… then he walks through the next and is immediately on the back foot, trapped wide around that long, sweeping bend into the Leopardstown straight. It was vintage AF; just as he was about to strike, there was the cataclysmic jumping error.
As Willie himself said after the race “Some day he’ll get it right.” And when he does, nobody will be laughing more than me.
He will get there.
Was it all his fault in the John Durkan or the king George?
I would definitely try something different although I’m not sure what.
On head to heads Janidil is something like 4-2 up now. I couldn’t have him for the king George because of the tumble in the JD but he was bang there.
It really is just a matter of time before everything falls into place but I think he’d need to be a decent price to tempt me to back him and he has not been for sometime.
I don’t think he is a maverick or a thinker.
I do feel a change of camps would bring about the necessary improvement.
Willie Mullins has too many great horses and targets to spend loads of time sorting out this particular horse, which is a pity as if he moved his rating would tumble and he’d be a world beater again. And another trainer could get to the bottom of him.He would never have the burden of any of my money, no matter what price. Always likely to put in a poor jump and has plotted a wayward course more than once. Very surprised he started favourite yesterday.
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