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After Gladiatorus ran like an absolute drain today (adding to similar flops over recent years), can anyone take Dubai racing seriously anymore?
This horse looked and ran like a totally different horse to the one that put in a "super"-equine performance in the desert.
You can understand why Coolmore avoid the Carnival meeting like the plague – the whole thing is a charade and no right minded trainer or owner would want their bloodstock devalued by running it in these races.
Presvis is possibly
the
single best example of a horse who shouldn’t have run in Dubai.
How would you bet Presvis v Gladiatorus in a 9f match outside of Dubai?
Clue – Gladiatorus would be a massive outsider.
The trip to Dubai proved an expensive mistake by connections of Paco Boy.
I see that Hannon doesn’t want that one to go to the Breeders Cup either.
Hope the owners listenDoesn’t seem to have done Vodka any harm.
No harm going over there if you have the right horse but the form should be taken in the context of Carnival form – and only really used for that purpose.
Where else can a 95 rated horse run for £75,000?
It’s also interesting to look at the pre Dubai form of horses like Eastern Anthem & Gladiatorus etc. EA is very well bred but was fairly well exposed in England. Gladiatorus was clearly a horse of potential in Italy, but got beat by Scintillo on his last start there. Both of them found massive imrovement as soon as they arrived in Dubai, & seem to have regressed soon after they left. I don’t think you can blame their return to Godolphin for this drop in form.
I think I understand your point TDK. Think it’s quite healthy to consider all possibilities in these circumstances. I have to say I was considering all possibilities with J-C Rouget as well.
Godolphin are generally in terrible form at the moment – I wonder if they have some underlying problem like a virus in the stable or something.
They are just firing far too many blanks at the moment – they couldn’t even win a Classs 5 maiden at Salisbury on Sunday.
I just think some stable’s horses don’t like the Royal Ascot air for some reason. Godolphin would be one, another would be Braveheart’s. It’s beginning to look like a repeat of last year where Johnston’s stable are in the rudest health away from the Royal meeting but are stopping as though shot on the big stage. A truly curious phenomenon.
Presvis is possibly
the
single best example of a horse who shouldn’t have run in Dubai.
How would you bet Presvis v Gladiatorus in a 9f match outside of Dubai?
Clue – Gladiatorus would be a massive outsider.
If that’s the case then Dubai form must be far more trustworthy than some of the racing under rules we have here.
Even a pre/post-Dubai Gladiotorus would be a sub 1.05 price to beat Presvis on what he showed before he got his handicap mark.
In Britain it seems that a 120 horse is allowed to put in a 70 performance and absolutely no questions will
ever
be asked.
Coolmore connections did have runners in Dubai this year, it’s just that they were trained in South Africa, not Ireland. No doubt there are several reasons for that, not the least, in my view ,is that they would have to send a large number of horses from Ireland to employ their team tactics
Dubai racing attracts many of the best horses, unlike in the UK which is basically dependant on Arab owners and to an extent Coolmore for good top class horses. There are owners in the UK who would jump at the chance to be invited to run their horses in Dubai, helped by the subsidies on offer for running there.
As for Godolphin in the UK, it’s interesting I think that horses trained outside the Godolphin set up run well and those within Godolphin don’t. This might suggest that there is something seriously wrong with their management/training set up. Which would further suggest that Godolphin’s UK fortunes could only be revived by a comprehensive clear out of the current management. From what little experience I have of talking to Arab owners this might be very unlikely to happen as Arabs are very loyal to people they believe have served them well in the past. Change, in terms of people, doesn’t come easy to them.
richard
- Total Posts 17716
…and where else can a 110 horse run to 130?
TDK
You’re obviously reading too many Dick Francis’s if you think there’s a drug available than can turn a listed horse into a world-beater. The world would beat a path to the trainer’s door, and it certainly wouldn’t be wasted on horses.
I think success in Dubai and how it translates is the least of Godolphin’s worries far behind sorting out who is responsible for the end of season acquisition year after year of a crop of flops that leaves me feeling sorry for this once great racing giant ?
Horses who look like reasonable prospects when they appear for their original owners and trainers get purchased by Godolphin for what I imagine is ‘they must have seen them coming’ money and you can’t help feeling after they then flop in the vast majority of cases that they would have done better if they had stayed in training where they were.
I know there have been outstanding successes ( Daylami and Ramonti etc) but I would love to see the balance sheet or even the list of purchases and prices for the last 10-15 years to which we can add Kite Wood and Orizaba for starters this year.Nobody has more respect for what the Maktoum’s have contributed to racing but I find myself supporting Godolphin in the way I would an underdog these days.
By now I would have thought bloodlines as strong as the Aga Khan and Khaled Abdulla operations would have been established as the source of continued success rather than what seems like the failed annual scattergun offers that can’t be refused for apparent prospects that go on to establish what seems to me to now be a consistent pattern of failure overall.
…and where else can a 110 horse run to 130?
TDK
You’re obviously reading too many Dick Francis’s if you think there’s a drug available than can turn a listed horse into a world-beater. The world would beat a path to the trainer’s door, and it certainly wouldn’t be wasted on horses.
? Are you sure ?
Let’s forget horse racing for a moment. The worlds of Athletics and cycling have been riddled with good but relatively unremarkable athletes who have become "world beaters" when they have taken steroids.
… and perish the thought that this wonderful sport would ever become anything like those.
The punters task would become impossible – you wouldn’t just be playing with the variables of form, but of when various substances had been administered. You might even have the ridiculous situation of a horse that should be odds-on on form drifting wilding in a Group 1 and finishing tailed off.
That really would be a sad day for the sport.
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