Detroit City

[johnjdonoghue]

Not sure DJ who on the forum has mentioned "Championship Pace"….. perhaps it may have been myself. The difference in the Grade 1 races at Cheltenham is that more often than not the horses go at a good gallop and the winner is pretty much always the best horse in the race IMO. The Gold Cup this year was very much a slow pace, however I think the best horse on the day won.

My view on DC has always been that he needs further, the horse does no travel well enough over 2m, this was so evident during the Triumph hurdle last year.

JohnJ.<br>

[Grimes]

Interesting to read Mordin’s statement that the race was actually a slowly run Champion Hurdle. Barely faster than the Supreme Novices, etc.

Could he, I wonder, have been nobbled, as someone might have been suggesting above?

[Galejade]

The champion hurdle was very slowly run with sublimity being rated by Topspeed only 5lbs better than Ebaziyan the Novice winner of the first race. Detroit City would theoretically been beaten 11lengths in the novice.  It is difficult to believe that is his true form.

[dave 22]

It almost certainly wasnt his true form<br>As i have said before, sublimity looked good because the other horses were coming back to him

[empty wallet]

Fav  runs below previous form and would not have won any of it’s hurdle races this season running like it did imo

2nd and 3rd favs cut each others throats early on (though i can’t be certain because i don’t have any sectional time analysis to go on) and kicked too early for home, ,  so again imo

4th fav bursts a blood vessel

5th fav and one time well fancied for CH  honors (who was always touted to be better on quicker ground,  who  also beat both burst blood vessel horse and winner)   falls when going well

<br>So, i ask myself   the question

Did the winner really improve and did  Afsoun also  improve too or  by what i have seen and know from previous results does the "form" seem  suspect?

<br>I think looking at the above, the latter and i could be wrong, only time will tell if my suspicion is correct

My take on the CH, however

<br>

(Edited by empty wallet at 6:38 pm on Mar. 23, 2007)

[davidjohnson]

Haven’t seen many suggesting this for Detroit City’s run but is there a chance that temperament got the better of him? It’s possible that he’s had enough hard races and didn’t fancy going to the well again.

[Anonymous]

I think a lot of people can’t accept the form at face value because it just doesn’t fit their perception of how the race should have turned out.:biggrin: <br>Sublimity surprised me as much as many others, but I see no obvious reason to question the merit of his win, a race doesn’t have to be run in record time for the form to stand up.<br>Detroit City I have already covered in some detail, but looking at the other principals both Brave Inca and Hardy Eustace have been absolute models of consistency this season, and both ran within 4/5lbs of their previous best ever mark(RPR) in circumstances they were well proven in, so it would be difficult to say that a horse that beat them so convincingly was in any way fortunate, or lacking in class.<br>Afsoun improved 3lb on his Haydock run, which was run "on ground that would not have suited him", and maintained the progression he had shown throughout the past 2 seasons, so no great surprise with his running, and Kawanigo, though beaten 18.5l, ran to the identical mark he ran to in the race last year, and ran within 5lbs of that mark in the County Hurdle, even though that run only came 3 days later, so once again, no problem.<br>But maybe that’s just me, looking where I went wrong rather than blaming the horses.;) <br>

[Galejade]

Reet Hard,

This thread just emphasises the different way we all view races .

Kawanigo has an OR of 140 and was 4th in the County hurdle of this mark. Rating the Champion hurdle through him gives Sublimity 159, Brave Inca 156, Afsoud 156 ( ch Afsoud’s OR of 158) and detroit City 140 ( cf his OR of 165)

Rating through Brave Inca and Hardy Eustace as you imply lifts Kawagino to 152 and afsoud to 168. I would not like to own Kawagino with this handicap mark!

I expect the Official Handicapper to raise him to 143 returning Afsoud to his historic high of 159.

I therefore interprete the race to be typical of a slowly run race ( which it was despite initial claims to the contrary)in which all form has to be treated with great caution including that of Sublimity(improved 21 to 33 lbs) despite him looking all class

[Author]

Posts