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Case of the jockey on the second not wanting to win the race and upset the stable star’s reputation – he may have just done enough not to get a ban but that was the simplest case of not riding to obtain the best position on a horse you will ever see.
Conveniently let him through on the inside turning for home, used his whip once and horse veered left put his whip down for hands and heels riding expecting the favourite to draw away, when he didn’t he realised he had to do a bit more riding so used his whip again to which the horse again veered to his left whilst closing on the leader – didn’t switch his whip to his left hand and went back to cursory hand and heels riding whilst still closing – with a proper ride he would have won by at least a length maybe two.
Not impressed.
I can see the argument but it’s far from a clear cut case.
I backed the second horse and I’m not jumping up and down in outrage. I thought the winner was always just doing enough.
Thought US Army Ranger with something in hand. Plus if Moore pulled him out he would of won by further. If you go to the rail at Chester horses dont tend to run on for some reason…strange but its a fact. Anyway I thought fav was always doing enough.
It was funny actually at one point down the back straight, Seamus took a look through his legs
At the time I thought “he’s having a look around to see where the favourite is”
But you can’t have it both ways. If Port Douglas had got up and won plenty would be crowing about “Oh Dodgy Coolmore, they’ve had it off again, they knew”
So they can’t win either way.
My point would be that if Port Douglas was trained by another trainer for a different owner he would have made a much bigger effort than using the whip twice in the last 2f and in my opinion he would have won the race – will USAR turn out to be the better horse long term…..yes but on the day the best horse didn’t win the race.
If you were to ask most jockeys that if they were in with a big chance of winning a race in the last 2f and they picked up their whip and their horse veered away from it what would you do, the vast majority would automatically say switch your whip and continue riding hard – he chose not to do that not once but twice and I don’t think he would have given a non O’Brien horse the same ride.
In my opinion he did just enough not to be caught out by the stewards under the current rules for not obtaining the best position but he was also helped massively by the fact that the horse did veer under pressure and that made the stewards job of not doing anything about it much easier.
The fact that both pundits on C4 and RUK struggled or were unwilling to give any explanation other than stressing the hanging incident being sufficient for why he didn’t try harder tells me all you need to know about upsetting the applecart (for instance, not one of them actualy posed the question as to why he didn’t switch his whip into his left hand instead of riding hands and heels).
It was clearly team tactics but what they were not expecting was for USAR to fluff his lines by not quickening clear of his so called ”inferior’ stablemate. It maybe that the Derby is just coming up too quickly for USAR to really show on the track what he has supposedly being showing at home.
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