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Absolutely right, though you can’t blame them for the weather. What makes things worse is that the Lads never seem to be satisfied when winning a big one like the Derby. It’s just like another day at the office for them. I’m quite sure that Christmas Day wasn’t the one meant to win.
I have to turn the mute on when Aidan starts mentioning all those names of the people involved with the winner and responsible for all the horses at Ballydoyle…..
Ruby, Number 1 lesson of punting, and I always tell newcomers, don’t throw your ticket away until they have announced “Weighed In”.
Aside from all else I commented after the Dante that I didn’t think Item would handle the track, too much daylight about him ,and I’m surprised the stable didn’t target France or Ireland with this one.
Don’t think Christmas Day will prove to be one of the best Derby winners…
Ruby, Number 1 lesson of punting, and I always tell newcomers, don’t throw your ticket away until they have announced “Weighed In”.
Spot on, rob. But on Derby day, you have plenty of newcomers who aren’t that familiar with such rules. Apart form that the horse wasn’t involved in the finish, the Enquiry affecting him seemed rather unlikely.
Maybe the sport needs to inform newcomers better, it might have a better chance of keeping them interested.
I have my doubts about them being successful at recruiting new fans over the last two days. But yes, they have to be informed better. It’s not an easy game to understand.
Let’s see were the winner and the placed horses go next. BC surely must be a definite runner at The Curragh.
A strange Derby- jumps weather, won by a slogger, trained by the genius, owned by the lads , ridden by a jock who most UK punters won’t know (Beggy, McNamara now Whelan), with the incredulous R4 stewards enquiry to follow.
From the point of view of the sport, my personal view is a Haggas/Marquand winner owned by a relative newcomer would have been much better but you can’t fault Ballydoyle. They are brilliant at what they do.
It is interesting how they can keep winning the race with moderate animals – Ruler of The World, Wings of Eagles, Serpentine, Lambourn and now this horse. I would be amazed if he is capable of winning a King George, a Juddmonte or an Arc on decent ground. If the Brits want to reclaim their Derby then buy horses bred to do it, and race them – the Gosdens had 2 potential candidates yet decide to wait till Ascot, whilst Ballydoyle had seven final entries, running four . You don’t buy a ticket , you can’t win the raffle.Couldn’t agree more BHL. Timeform has given the winner a rating of 123p. I think the ‘p’ stands for something like open to improvement?
The experts will know a bit more about that. But he is just a very mediocre winner and how bad is this for Godolphin with no horses in both Epsom Classics?You are correct, Ruby.
p (lower case) denotes capable of better
P (capital) means capable of a lot better“Well done those that were on. What a terrible name for a Derby winner.”
The second festive Derby winner, after Santa Claus.
“What’s the point of being interested in the Derby anymore? It used to be magical.”
“Let’s be brutally honest the Derby has been an also ran for years now , Royal Ascot left it in wake years ago.”
Agree with both comments. The same Irish based connections winning the race for the fourth year in a row (and the seventh time in the last decade) is simply not very exciting.
The Derby has been blown out of the water by Royal Ascot. A strong international brand and a much more interesting meeting at a far better track.
“What makes things worse is that the Lads never seem to be satisfied when winning a big one like the Derby. It’s just like another day at the office for them.”
That is the main problem. More often than not they stand around in the winners enclosure and look like they are at a funeral.
O’Brien is never less than polite with the media but he makes librarians look charismatic.
Coolmore are obviously good at what they do. But this was another year when they didn’t really have a star and just threw a few darts at the board and hoped they hit the bullseye.
Whelan joins McNamara and Beggy as a Ballydoyle work rider who has ridden a Derby winner.
I don’t mean to rain on the parade of anyone who backed the winner but if you didn’t, it is difficult to feel inspired by today’s race.
I do feel sorry for Epsom, however. They really needed it to go well this year and the weather didn’t play ball. The race and the occasion could do with a lucky break.
It was just very unfortunate that the weather played such a massive part in the outcome of this race, as I think given good ground we are talking about a totally difference result and a much more positive outlook on the meeting itself as a whole.
Lets also not forget that today’s ground was in some part also dictated by all the artificial watering that was done to the course, to get it ready not only for the meeting itself but also for Breakfast with the Stars event so the water table would have been higher than it naturally would have been before all the rain fell on the course. Had they left it alone there is a good chance that even with all the rain today that the ground would have been a lot less testing than it ended up being.
At the end of the season I am not sure that Christmas Day’s rating will be much higher than the 123p he has been given as I wouldn’t see him cutting much ice say in a King George (on decent ground of course) and whilst a soft ground Arc would favour him, as previous posters have said they will also be other horses (higher rated) that will also be just as suited by it too.
I believe he might end up as another Lambourn.
So a horse puts its leg down a hole through no fault of its own and it’s tough.
One lifts it up in the stalls and its a nr
I doubt the public care about the lack of charisma of “the lads”. Problem is the horses. Last great Derby winner was Sea The Stars. There have always been odd substandard winners but now it’s the norm and I’m afraid the worst are from Coolmore. Christmas Day has a season to prove me wrong but I suspect he’ll be included in the worst list. This isn’t Coolmore’s fault. They target the race. Others don’t. Some say nobody is interested in mile and a half races now but the Arc still attracts international superstars. Why aren’t Japanese owners (for example) keen to win the Derby?
On their live broadcast ITV had an overhead shot of Benvenuto Cellini in the stalls. He was buffeting but clearly had all feet on the ground at that stage. It was less than 12 seconds before the start.
If the horse has created its own misfortune in that short time surely it should be deemed an unlucky turn of events and written off as such. Precedent or not it should have been ignored. Neither should they have taken Moore’s supposed race plan into account.Bad luck for Epsom to have to contend with rotten weather when making a fist of reinvigorating the day.
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