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I think O’Brien got it spot on, though I would say that, wouldn’t I ?
Dylan Thomas is a hold up horse who requires a strong pace, whereas Scorpion’s stamina and relentless galloping style is clearly his forte.
With the ground having changed and now favouring Dylan Thomas, it made perfect sense for O’Brien to utilise Scorpion’s attributes, thereby ensuring a true run race. The object probably being that If Dylan Thomas was the horse they thought he was (as it turned out he was) then his finishing speed off a strong pace would surely win the day. If he wasn’t, then who better then Scorpion to expose any flaws and stamina limitations.
So, was Scorpion used as a pacemaker for Dylan Thomas. I would say, yes – and no!
Gambling Only Pays When You're Winning
As a Coronation Cup and St Leger winner, I suspect Coolmore still have intentions of retiring Scorpion to their NH sires division when he retires. On this basis, I’d be surprised if they were looking to tarnish his reputation by running the horse as a pacemaker.
That’s my interpretation anyway.
Himself,I agree totally with your last post. I don’t see the problem with big yards, who have the ammunition, tryin to cover the different angles in a race. I certainly wouldn’t consider it cheating or skullduggery.
Rather than getting so exercised over defeats of the respective trainers’ other runner, all of which can be explained away to varying degrees, aren’t our energies perhaps better spent considering whether the coupling of stablemates in the betting, as per France, is the way to go from hereon?
Jeremy
(graysonscolumn)Aren’t you really suggesting that, rather than deal with this cheating, we accomodate it in the betting?
Um, nope. And four pages into this thread, I don’t think we’re any nearer consensus that what we saw on Saturday definitely constituted cheating – personally I smelled no rats whatsoever here.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Interesting to see the rider of Trinity College in today’s Sussex Stakes. Of course the horse was running very much on his own merits so does anyone know why the jockey was constantly looking around to see how far behind the rest of the field were.
Totally agree with you. Spent more time looking back than forward. How long before jockeys have mikes on and can talk to each other so they do not have too look round!
Dont know what to make of all this. We seem to have quasi pacemakers now and its now even stretching to two running in tandem, which begs the question of whether theres more to this than simply making pace? Especially at Goodwood where things can get a bit tight. Allthat looking around was a bit unseemly frankly and gave the impression of being more concerned with position than pace
Also it probably confuses the opposition more knowing that the lead runner(s) (shall we call him that?) is not necessarily a no hoper
Im not entirely 100% convinced about the Scorpion issue (even though i had a small bet on him…) but can understand a lot of the anger flying around
I think they set the race up nicely for the best horse on the day to win. Maybe every race should have a couple
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Interesting to see the rider of Trinity College in today’s Sussex Stakes. Of course the horse was running very much on his own merits so does anyone know why the jockey was constantly looking around to see how far behind the rest of the field were.
dj
Apparently he’d lost something; which was confirmed when Ramonti sailed by him on the way to victory.
Great ride Frankie, and some sort of payback for the Eclipse debacle.
May the Coolmore mafia have many more such reverses when they again attempt to engineer results rather than run, and win, on merit.
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