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Ian,
I must have missed the thread you put up an hour after the Lockinge – the one sub-titled:
"Would the last Hawk Wing fan to collect please punch out my lights."
(smug insincere smiley face…)
cormack15
Nijinsky won 4 classics.<br>Hawk Wing won none.
No, I’m not having a laugh, I mean every word.
O’Brien usually gets more than his fair share of plaudits, so it strikes me as bizarre that one of the world’s most powerful stables with their superb veterinary access / facilites could have made such a training gaffe with a top class animal.
Horse was diagnosed to be lame by the COURSE VET, not the Ballydoyle vet but the course vet. How anyone who have a clue about horses would expect a horse to run his race in a Group1 race run at a real strong gallop is baffling. Horse was injured simple as that, call his other runs what you may, but on Tuesday in the Queen Anne Hawk Wing ran with an injury.
The best performers, from Ballydoyle IMO are not galileo, HW ROG etc, but the PR machine
Dungheap, can you please explain why you and other people on this forum take every opportunity to absolutely slam Ballydoyle at EVERY given opportunity? I am at a total loss as to where this dislike comes from.
Possibly if Ballydoyle was relocated to Newmarket and run by Sir Royston Barlingford III,  it would be the best training establishment in the world. Please enlighten me, because I am at a total loss with this continuous bating of Ballydoyle.<br>
Aidan – not sure I fully grasp what you’re saying here or whether you’re agreeing with or contradicting my last post. It is late!
JohnJ<br>I said I did not like the Ballydoyle PR machine, not ballydoyle.<br>It is they who cause the hype and feed it. PR means PUBLIC RELATIONS. I would still dislike it if it were in timbuktoo. <br>Because it just hypes horses, so that they will stay in the minds of people wanting a sire for their mare. It is a financial operation cut and dried, the Sires are more important than the present runners. The training operation is a feeder for the stud. If HW had have done the business last year, do you think he would have run in the lockinge I doubt it he would now be a stud stallion.
The only ?INJURY? Hawk Wing had was.
HIS JOCKEY>>>>M.J.KINANE.
DISCRACEFULL JUDGEMENT.
If Hawk Wing was Lame yesterday as the vet states.<br>Then he was in the same class as Dubai Destination.<br>Another lame horse that came back from injury to win a classic.
Coolmore Stud are not depending on stud fees to keep their operation going,as the name suggests.
I will stand by my statement about Kinane miss judgeing the race,and loseing by his discracefull error.
I have seen the same from other TOP jockeys in the past.I am not saying that Kinane purposely did what he did.But he is a professional jockey,and he should have known how to get the best run from Hawk Wing.<br>Hawk Wing DID NOT lose of his own accord,in my opinion.We will see how true to form he runs his next race,and I presume at much better odds than 8/13.
If anyone taped the race,watch the replay.
The End,Enough said.
Apologies. I must correct my own error regarding Nijinsky’s career. He won eleven from thirteen, and not nine from eleven as I had stated earlier. Must stop doing things in haste!
I hope this may be my final post on the Hawk Wing thread which is becoming strained and repetitive, and that’s just my posts!<br>Ian has said what many of us feel. HW is a handy Group 1 horse, it is the rash assertion that he is to be considered the equal of great names from the past that has provoked such a backlash. Several people have become so irrational as to declare him the greatest horse in the history of racing, and it is these assertions that are under such fierce attack, not the horse.<br>I wonder if my pledge to cease posting on this issue is equally unwise!
Even lester piggot has stated that Nijinsky was only a good horse in a poor year and rates Sir Ivor (who???) ahead of him. He had a nice name, travelled well on teh bridle and went into the horse racing fraternity’s consciousness as a superstar.
Coolmore do this. I actually dont think that it is coomore as such, it is more teh lazy jounalism, if you could call it that, of the RP, and the other tabloids, with their full page speads claiming each horse to be the superstar that we have been waiting for. Christening giants causeway teh iron horse. Its not coolmore doing this. What the do is try to make most horses win at a mile for stud purposes, even if it doesnt suit the horse. Its their business, they can do what they want.
Dung, I didnt take 4/6 in teh QA, because what Ian has properly stated that it was assumed that the lockinge was his typical performance. There was no guarnatee that he would repeat it. However, I disagree with ian on one point, I always said that that one performance was a performcance of a great horse. Proper champions need to produce it time and time again, but that again shouldnt take away from teh newbury run. I agree I dont think that WOW or Moon Ballad ran thier best races in Last eyars derby, but it is an exceptional horse that ran so close in last years derby – behind an above average winner – to show teh speed he did at Newbury.
Everyone has dismissed Tillerman’s form at newbury where he couldnt go the pace. Even now people are saying that he needs a strong pace to show his best. Not HW strong though. Needs cover is about as useful as an excuse as HW’s lameness.
Sorry Ian, your point about teh draw in the guineas is quite ridiculous. That had he been the superstar he would have got up. If teh jockey had set him alight 100yards earlier, he would have won going away. Horses can be intellegent but they still rely on teh jockey to know where teh winning post is.
For a horse that many now accept, like O’Brien that had a lot of niggely problems last year, and for one that has labelled bottler thrown at him, he won the eclipse, a poor one, in workmanlike fashion, he battled bravely in defeat to Grandera in teh champion. For a horse that always threatened to be better as a 4yo. He hasnt done that bad.
So much for my promise to keep out of this!<br>I have several books where Lester contradicts himself, and one in which he claims Sir Ivor the best, but there are more than a few from him that hail Nijinsky the best. I have never seen any article where, as you claim, LP makes such a surprisingly unfavourable remark, and I would be keen to see the publication in question. It really would be odd if Lester trotted up in the fastest post-war Derby, and then thought it nothing unusual.
Sir Ivor (who???) was also a fabulous performer, and has a career record to prove it.
Ive no doubts that nijinsky was a super horse, and i dont need education on sir ivors career. (Apologies if i misfelt a patronising tone in your post dave) Its not my fault if tongue in cheek doesnt get noticed. However, I have also heard MVOB expressing a similar view. Nijinsky has sired and is the grand sire of many group 1 winners, and whichever of teh two is best
The point I’m trying to get across is that wherever teh public esteem a horse to be brilliant, there are more than likely some faction, who without assessing teh horse on its merits, will unquestioningly hold some grudge against the horse, and delight in its downfall. I’m sure had such forums existed in bygone days, there would have been a certain set of i-told-you-so merchats when dancing brave won the KG by a length, lost the derby, and lost the BC, when nashwan lost in france, when shergar lost the leger, when nijinsky lost the arc, when dayjur lost in BC, when mill reef lost the guineas, when el gran senor lost the derby, arazi lost in knetucky they would be out in force.
The fact remains that HW is officially the best miler in 20 years. not my opinion, the handicappers. To get this figure he in fact had to act conservatively on the lockinge run. HW is never going to be as consistent as a shergar, a nashwan, a dancing brave, but then again, neither did they win group 1s at three different ages.
Take teh horse at his merits and make up your own mind. I dont think that it should be colored by the press it recieves good or bad.
William Winalot –
Your comments on Kinane messing up the ride on HW intrigue me.
I really can’t understand what your point is, but maybe you need to clarify it. How should Kinane have ridden Hawk Wing? From what I gather your opinion could be that Kinane should have kept him upfront and/or clear of Dubai Destination or not stick on the outside.
But personally I think it’s rubbish talk blaming Kinane. There is no solid evidence Hawk Wing needs to go from the front. He did in the Lockinge but the absence of a pacemaker helped and Kinane was tactical in making it his own gallop and that can only help a horse. Hawk Wing has won from behind in the past, and as there were pacemakers in the Queen Anne he didn’t need to be upfront – they would have simply cut each others throats.
Kinane went round the outside next to Dubai Destination. Perhaps a disadvantage but HW was under pressure before DD and he found absolutely nothing. Had he not been lame/had he given his true running he would have bounded alongside DD and scrapped it out.
It made no difference what Kinane did. The horse wouldn’t have won whether he’d have stayed out the back or made the running, simple as that. It seems ludicrous that you blame Kinane.
i agree meshaheer. Kinane’s ride had absolutely nothing to do with HW underperforming.
and Ian I dont bear any grudge against Jamie Spencer. He knew after the race that he had mistimed his effort. Dancing brave, for all his greatness, didnt win the derby after all did he. Horses rely on jockeys to judge pace, and where to put them in the race, they dont know where teh winning post is, and run over distances that where they are not all allowed to bolt and go as fast as they can for as along as they can. It aint dog racing.
The official handicapper only puts on paper using the most trusted metods availbale to him what we all do in our heads and some attempt to put to paper. His is historically the best guide to guaging the merits of horses that have never run against each other, and resolves many arguements, an extreme example would be that Quixall Crosset was never beaten by arkle so Arkle still had something to prove. As you say, the handiccaper is only one mans opinion. However, it is his metier, and its his opinion, not mine, not yours upon which can rest millions of pounds.
I thought that teh lockinge form was suspect, but the figures backed it up in spades.
I agree re dancing Brave.
It wasnt just WOW in the Lockinge. How about saying that Tillerman ran the same race in the Lockinge and QA. Also Domedriver, Olden Times, and ReelBuddy all ran between 14 and 20lbs below form. It may have happened in the lockinge but history tells us that the occurances of all horses bar one running between a stone and a stone and a half below form are extremely rare if not unique.
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