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In all honesty with three of the last four Derbies being won by Coolmore I don’t think they have a rival. They certainly don’t have a rival to Galileo.
Yes but to answer your points Andy – 1) he had never been asked to race like that before – he had always been able to stride out over a shorter distance rather than be restrained. 2) that means there IS no other explanation other than the obvious – he didn’t like going so slowly. 3)the bookmkers stood to lose a lot more when he won the Guineas. He wasn’t even ENTERED in the Derby til late on so the losses, whilst probably substantial, were unlikely to have been so big in the grand scheme of things and not enough to warrant some Dick Francis style plot.
Reading Jim Bolger and Simon Crisford today they seem to think that he was set alight soon after leaving the stalls. Again I might argue that if he had been racing over shorter he would have been able to gallop that out of his system. Yesterday he was set alight but then asked to settle into a slow pace. This was totally alien to him.
Whichever way you look at it he was asked to race in a way he hadn’t before and could not deal with it. Let’s hope it has not caused permanent damage.
"this perfect mix of poetry and destruction, this glory of rhythm, power and majesty: the undisputed champion of the world!!!"
Dawn Approach ran a similar race to Tudor Minstrel in 1947, the highest rated miler prior to Frankel, he didn’t stay. He had fast blood in the very bottom section of his pedigree though he had more stayers than Dawn Approach in his genes. He pulled & didn’t settle, went back to a mile & was a successful racehorse & stallion.
I don’t think Dawn Approach was got at. Just ran as if it was a sprint; wonder how he’d do over 6 furlongs.I think the winner looked good enough, especially for one with so little racecourse experience. I though Hughes ride on Mars was strange, he dropped him right out the back rather than finding a spot mid division, so got him hampered by traffic on the run in. Definitely could have finished closer with a better ride, doubtful he could have won.
I don’t know whether I am simply attached to the horse, but I feel like with the right ride Mars could pick something up over 10f this season. He’s always been an afterthought and not given great rides in either races this season. I’d like to see him up with the pace a little more to give him a chance to quicken. His very impressive juvenile win came from the front of the pack, not sure why he is being ridden like a closer this season.
Tudor Minstrel, whose sire and damsire were both Derby winners, ran much better in his Derby than Dawn Approach did in his – even though he finished fourth.
He also went on to to attempt 10 furlongs ( Eclipse ) but finished second in that race. He stuck to mile races thereafter.As for Dawn Approach: it was obvious that Kevin Manning eased him down once it became quite apparent that his horse didn’t stay.
Great 2,000 Guineas winners do win the Derby – great specialist milers do not !
There is a huge difference…
and something that Sir Henry Cecil took full cognizance of with the mighty Frankel.
Gambling Only Pays When You're Winning
An interesting (for me) aside – that expression they used yesterday with DA – "set alight" was exactly the same one they used when Frankel ran in the Dewhurst. The difference is Frankel was running over 7f and got away with it but even HE was tiring in the last 200 yards. DA had no chance over that longer trip.
"this perfect mix of poetry and destruction, this glory of rhythm, power and majesty: the undisputed champion of the world!!!"
Think I’d rather side with the French Derby winner than the English one, Intello looks very decent, seems to have more ability than Ruler Of The World imo.
You could be right. I just offered an alternative explanation why he was jumping and dancing instead of racing. I was led to believe that he was a VERY LOW Key horse not inclined to that behavior. I have seen him many times come out of the gate and settle immediately. In most of his races he is waited with, unlike Frankel, rather than urged to the front before the final furlong.
I’ve always said Frankel would’ve stayed well enough to win the Derby. He was a 140 horse that would’ve had to run to about 119 / 120 to win it, that is twenty pounds in hand. Dawn Approach is approx. 126 horse – there is the difference.
However you can’t knock Sir Henry’s handling of the great horse.
The idea of Dawn Approach being "got at" is absolutely absurd, with respect.
For a start Frankel wasn’t rated at 140 when the Derby was run, you can’t pick out a horse’s best rating and take it back in time to predict what would have happened.
Quite rightly, after the pace he set, Frankel got tired in the 2000 Guineas and his margin was half what it was at one stage of the race. Going on to The St James’ Palace at Royal Ascot Frankel met a horse in Zoffany who was rated some 15 lbs his inferior. I think it is universally accepted that his jockey made too much use of him that day and he was all out to hold on from Zoffany at the finish. If you look at Zoffany’s career he never won beyond 7F and that was perhaps just as well for Frankel that day. Remember, there was almost an obsession with Frankel at that stage, that his best weapon was his huge stride, and it was best to make use of that asset by letting him get on with it.
If we pull back from that day, a couple of weeks, to the Derby and imagine a Frankel who has not yet learned to settle as well as he eventually did, trying to be held to a sedate enough pace to get the extra half mile, I think it would not be hard to envisage a scenario where horse and jockey disagree about what speed they should be travelling. If he even only uses up half the energy he wasted at Ascot, it is still going to be hard to see out 4 furlongs further than he had to do in the St James’ Palace. Rather than having to fend off a 7f horse in Zoffany, he would have had Pour Moi finishing like a rat up a drainpipe to contend with.
If I had a Tardis, I’d go back in time with you and I’ll lay Frankel for the Derby.
ps No, you can’t take that 140 rating into the Tardis
Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.
I’ve just had a detailed look through my photographs from yesterday and I’ve noticed Dawn Approach was pulling in the parade.
http://www.ors-racing.co.uk/Images/Festivals/Epsom/2013/DawnApproach.jpg
http://www.ors-racing.co.uk/Images/Festivals/Epsom/2013/DawnApproach2.jpg
Here is a pic I took of the finish
http://www.ors-racing.co.uk/Images/Festivals/Epsom/2013/Epsom130601DerbyRulerOfTheWorldSmall.jpg
Just watched The Derby. Back in the days when I first started punting, many would have said Dawn Approach was ‘got at’, on the visual evidence alone.
Bar the rag, he’s the most experienced horse in the field alongside BOM, and only once does ‘took keen hold’ figure in his form before yesterday (a year ago, at Ascot).
I’ve seen no reports about him getting buzzed up beforehand – a very odd run indeed.
Listening to an interview with Jim Bolger before the race on 5Live he said one thing that wouldn’t beat him was his temperament as he was ‘bombproof’.
I also got the impression he’d convinced himself the horse would stay, in the same way when you listen to the new album from your favourite band and convince yourself it’s great when deep down you know it sucks.
Dubai Millennium was another who pulled hard at the beginning of the 1999 Derby (trying 12 furlongs for the only time in his career) and failed under similar circumstances to Dawn Approach.
If I had a Tardis, I’d go back in time with you and I’ll lay Frankel for the Derby.
I did lay Frankel for Epsom Steve, immediately after he passed the post at Newmarket.
Dawn Approach settled very well at a mile and had "a" chance of staying 1m4f on breeding. Dam Hymn Of The Dawn dissappointed on the racecourse so has to be judged on breeding: whih suggests she should’ve stayed 7f (probably a mile). So breeding allied to (up to that point) seemingly relaxed temperament suggested he had a reasonable shot at "staying" 1m4f. So connections were (imo) right to try it. However, being "relaxed" racing at mile pace and relaxing at SLOWER than a fair 1m4f pace – are two different things. It was not that Dawn Approach failed to "stay" in the El Gran Senor manner. It was not that he loomed up with a furlong to go and got "outstayed". In the end had little to do with CC/CT/TT’s. Fact is despite taking the preliminaries far better than some of his stamina laiden rivals – when the gates flew open Dawn Approach just could not go SLOW enough in the race to enable him to "stay". Unable to settle meant he had nothing left after just six furlongs.Did the Guineas winner not "stay" 6f?
At the start of any Derby a horse (whoever it is) can not usually afford to be slowly away and lose ground at the start. Manning came out the stalls expecting a true 1m4f pace but found it soon reduced to more like 1m6f speed. It’s asking a lot of any horse to go from the strongly run Guineas mile to 1m6f pace in only its next race.
Although Frankel is by Galileo, unlike Hymn Of The Dawn the dam (Kind) was best as a sprinter. Frankel put up sprinting fractions after 5 and 6 furlongs of the Guineas and in contrast to Dawn Approach did not exactly look "tractable" at a mile (at that stage of development) – LET ALONE half as far again. Yet some people STILL think Frankel should’ve gone to the Derby!
Value Is EverythingSince the day he was born there was NO indication that Dawn Approach was anything like Frankel.In fact Bolger said he was the exact opposite to his sire New Approach who had to be led around the ring with two handlers.He was universally described as laid back and totally non fussy.In fact people have reported that he looked half asleep in the parade ring when they saw him there.We seem to have forgotten that.Comparing him to Frankel in this regard ignores the facts.They were completely opposite.
Steeplechaser I made the same observation on another thread about the Derby and was treated like an old fool. I guess we must be from the same generation. My first race meeting was at Baldoyle where Bunny Cox rode Teapot 11 for Vincent in preparation for winning at Liverpool. Must have been 47’or thereabouts. I believe the owner’s name was Joe (mincemeat)Griffin or something like that. Memory rapidly fading!
I must admit that I thought along the same lines as you, Andy.
Very strange that the horse should behave in a way that he never has before.
When we saw shots of him in the pre-parade ring he looked half-asleep.
I see that on the other section that Paul Ostermeyer has posted photos of him pulling during the parade which destroys the idea that I had that perhaps he had bee bitten or stung sometime soon after the gates opened.
He started pulling immediately I don’t think it had much to do with the slow pace then.
The slow pace made Manning’s job more difficult obviously but I think the race may have been lost at the start, whatever may have happened.
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