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Apologies if this has been covered in the press and I have missed it.
I thought that Doyle was retained by Alsagar.
He has a runner at Windsor on Monday , she is at the meeting , and isn’t on it (no ride in the race).
He has another runner at Kempton on Tuesday that she isn’t riding.
She is on 2 of his runners at York , but then appears to have been replaced by Oisin Murphy on one at York on Friday , when she is at the meeting.
Trouble in the camp ?.Hollie Doyle loses retainer to owner Imad Al Sagar and is replaced by champion jockey Oisin Murphy
Vf x
Things seem to happen very fast nowadays:
Have to be honest, I don’t think it will be a massive loss to her as outside of Nashwa a couple of years ago, the owner hasn’t really had any top class high profile horses for her to ride.
I’m surprised that a) Murphy has accepted the retainer, given that the owner doesn’t have any top horses, and b) that Murphy was even offered the retainer in the first place. He’s just one failed breath test away from more time off.
Come on, that’s not even high profile material. Eight different horses in 2025, 24 rides so far and five winners for Hollie. By the way, she has ridden over 800 winners since 2020!!!!!!! and only 38 for this owner.
Are you kidding me? It’s not even worth a mention. Just move on.For an owner such as him , unless he is expanding , I would say that he is better off using the best available.
That said , he may be extending his stock , if Teddy Grimthorpe is on the team , as we all know from Juddmonte..
Unfortunately , (and I know people won’t like this) Hollie is an average jockey.
The earlier calls in the press for her to be given major stable jockey roles were simply PC correctness, thereby raising the media profile of racing , and not based on her abilitySorry but you don’t manage to ride 100+ winners for the last 6 straight years by being an average jockey – now I am not saying she is anywhere on the same level as the very top jockeys out there like Moore, Murphy, Buick etc but like a lot of the next tier jockeys you can name, if given the right ammunition she is more than capable of getting the job done.
As I have said, he simply doesn’t have the top level horses and getting Murphy as your stable jockey doesn’t change that fact and it seems an odd move regardless of that in any case – I very much doubt he will have many issues with a clash of riding commitments going forward.
I agree with you to a certain extent.
However , I would still maintain that she is nowhere near as good as her earlier hype , and that was my previous point.
I accept that all jockeys make mistakes , but hers seem to be coming more often . Have a look at the 7.40 and 8.10 at Wolverhampton tonight.
She regularly misses the break , seems to find trouble in getting out of pockets , and also seems to get “carted” i.e. can’t seem to settle a horse.
Each to their own , I suppose.Yeah, I can agree that hype was a tad overdone but then that is really a media thing which a jockey has no control over and can fairly or unfairly be judged on.
One could argue that her seemingly regularly missing the break could be more down to the riding instructions being given to her? Settling free going horses is an art that not many jockeys are able to master (seen all the best jockeys get carted at one time or another) and lets face it if a horse really wants to cart a jockey, the jockey will always end up being a passenger.
Also jockeys can go through periods where things seem to consistently go wrong with a split decision they make ending up being the wrong decision in just the same way as periods where every decision seems to be the right one where gaps open up as if by magic etc.
The very best jockeys are measured by how much of those type of things they can eliminate from their riding and that is something that Hollie clearly still needs to work on in order to bridge that gap to the next level……but then there are a number of other jockeys that are in that same position.
Appreciate that she is not high on your own jockey’s list, personally, she wouldn’t be in my first few choices of jockeys I would go for but I probably have her a little higher up on my own list.
I think that you and I are both largely in agreement LD73 , perhaps it was my clumsy use of the wording that was initially used.
I think that Imad Alsagar and his team have made a mistake. In my view they blamed Hollie Doyle for getting beat on Zgharta at Goodwood and the ‘a change of strategy’ was to ensure they had a winner at the York Festival at York.
I know from many years experience that jockeys often get blamed when the problem is the horse. So it proved with Zhgarta that despite being favourite and being ridden by Ousin Murphy it still got best.
Engaging Murphy would have been great if he was first in line to ride their horses, but he has other retainers who have first choice. Their will be times when he cannot ride their horses.
As already mentioned the sample we’re talking about is just too small, too insignificant. 38 winners from 800 she’s ridden in the past five years is just under 2.5%. That’s not going to hurt her.
Apart from that you can always question the owner’s ambitions.
Just think of Nashwa who was reverted back to a mile for the Falmouth Stakes which she won by five lengths only to run again over 10f on her next three outings. The way they campaigned such a talented horse was beyond belief. Who really cares about their “stable” jockey? I think Hollie isn’t too much bothered either.I would respectfully suggest Value31 , that Zgharta is not a particularly good example to illustrate your point (in my view).
Hollie gave that a particularly poor ride at Goodwood , repeatedly being stopped in the closing stages. I know that can happen to the best of jockeys too.
Despite being a beaten favourite at York , I think that the horse ran right up to it’s best under Murphy.My view is that if the horse is good enough, Holly Doyle will win the race. She has just won the feature race at Goodwood today. I woudn’t agree that she rode a poor race on Zgharta; rather she was unlucky in not getting a clear run in the Goodwood race
Of course I agree that Oisin Murphy is a superb jockey and if he was the first retainer to Imad Alsagar, then a great deal. But when it comes to the key Group 1 races it is possible that Oisin will not be able to ride for him. In addition, all the top riders seem to have retainers for the best trainers. Imad Asagar might find it difficult to find a better jockey in these races.
At Wolverhampton today Oisin Murphy was riding one of Imad Alsagar’s horses which appeared to get blocked in and was well beaten. It could have looked as if it were a terrible ride, but the reality was the horse would not quicken when asked to. The point I am continually making is the jockeys are often blamed when the horse is simply not good enough.
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