Great horses – a hinderance?

[aphardy]

Watching fantastic horses is one of my personal attractions to this great sport of ours. In the past few years we’ve seen some phenomenal specimens dominating divisions of the sport – Istabraq, Frankel, Sprinter Sacre, Best Mate (I’ll probably be scolded for even mentioning him), Quevega etc.

However, do they actually make those divisions incredibly boring?

Looking back at Cheltenham last week, two races that are supposed to be the pinnacle of jumps racing, 2m races over fences were basically schooling rounds (and in SImonsig’s case not an impressive schooling round) for the two horses at the head of the market.

Small fields, with many of the field having been whacked previously by the favourite or others miles out of their depth – does this make for good viewing? Would you rather marvel at a superstar like Big Bucks saunter home barely breaking sweat, or watch a more competitive but less classy race, such as those fighting out the world hurdle this year in a reasonably competitive field?

Is it possible to simply sit back and watch a phenomenal individual performance or are you already looking ahead to the next 20 runner handicap?

Personally I’m on the fantastic individual, but the Arkle this year was so disappointing on interest that I was actually more looking forward to the X Country! And when that happens, then you know you’re in trouble

[Danny]

I think any great horse needs a great rival or some sort of challenge to keep things interesting.

You think of Arkle & Millhouse, Denman & Kauto and so on, even Big Bucks he might not have raced another ‘Superstar’ but look at his World Hurdle wins he beat good horses in closeish races.

With the likes of Frankel the challenge was could he step up in trip and again he faced decent horses such as St Nich & Circes Des A.

[Author]

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