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Jim talks a lot of crap. The reason New Approach was running at the Curragh was because Jim had never won an Irish Two Thousand Guineas he said. It was about Jim not the horse.Well does this mean the next good horse he has will have the same agenda?Now he is claiming he might not go for the Irish Derby if the going is firm. Remember St.Jovite?My horse won’t run in the Irish Derby unless Christy Roach is allowed by the stewards to ride despite his suspension. He really does get tiresome. I hoped he had matured by now.The races will go on regardless of Jim and his whining.His treatment of the American owner over St. Jovite ended the American interest in Irish racing for years. Now it is the Arabs turn to learn about our Jim.
The times were markedly slower than 12 months ago – none of them was even near to Racing Post standard time – and the wind, I am told, was not all that strong. I doubt it was anything like "a road" out there.
There was a strong wind at The Curragh today….whats more when the ground gets very firm times begin to drop because horses do not let themselves down on it. All the jockeys (not just Jim Bolger) reported the ground to be very fast with the ground being described as "like a road" by more than one jockey.
Sorry mate, can’t have that. Some don’t act on the ground, so don’t run to form / run as fast. But those who do act on firm go faster. To say times are slower is not true, times get faster. You only have to look at record times to see that.
New Approach (being the pace setter) probably could not act on it, which meant the pace was slower than if the front runner had acted on it. With pace slowish, the over all time was slowish. Times depend on the pace of the race as well as ground conditions.
Which way was the wind blowing, was it in to their faces? Behind them or…
Wind direction / speed plays its part too.Mark
Value Is Everything9/4 with Boylesports for Henry
I think thats a cracking price
Hiya mate hope you had plenty on……..I got a bit of 9/4 but they would lay it all………miserable bastids
More than my very modest usual
and same went for the lovely Fleeting spirit
so a good day
But that was some price wasnt it?
How is Aidan’s father? I remember Equidia talking to him after the Arc last year and he mentioned that his father was in hospital, and today’s ATR coverage he also spoke of him still in hospital. I hope the supersire is doing OK!
You have to consider all options for Henrythenavigator. Being by Kingmambo you cannot discount the Derbies. The same cross as El Condor Pasa is also very interesting.
Whilst New Approach indicated he wants further by being scrubbed up a couple of furlongs out, Henry was kept quiet for a good while before Murtagh let him loose. I reckon you can make no immediate assumptions about his staying ability right now. If what we saw today is simply his natural way of progression in a race then I would keep to the mile. But the Newmarket classic would say otherwise.
I would back New Approach on a good surface for the Irish Derby right now. It looks like the Irish Derby is shaping up very strongly again.
I think it’s entirely plausible that truly firm ground could lead to slower times, Ginge, and to suggest otherwise is incredibly naive (one would suspect that torrential rain would have a similar effect, though on dirt tracks it actually improves times).
I still don’t think that the pace was anywhere near strong enough for New Approach, something which can only lie at the feet of Kevin Manning, but the winner was fully deserving of his victory – and it could be argued that a quicker gallop would have suited him just as well.
The pedigree of Henrythenavigator doesn’t interest me as regard Epsom, but his style of racing does. He was an impressive winner over seven furlongs on his debut at two, and travelled supremely well yesterday before settling the race inside the final furlong. If he can be switched off (and he does look fairly uncomplicated) and eased down the hill, then I think it’s possible that he’ll have the class to see him home in the Derby. As has been said he’ll lose nothing value-wise if it all goes boobs to the ceiling, being a dual Guineas winner, so why not give it a go – if nothing else I’ll applaud O’Brien for having the stones to try (god knows many of his Irish fellows could do with growing some).
But 4/1 is hardly a fair price…
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For my money the presence of Stubbs Art in 3rd highlights what a poor race the English 2,000 was rather than confirms yesterday’s race as a good one.
Beaten further by the winner, and no closer to a New Approach who was reported not to act on the ground, the horse has yet to show anything approaching proper gp1 form in my view, and will probably take the normal Elsworth route of running everywhere and winning nothing.
Good to see a high class race run on ground almost as God intended it though.whats more when the ground gets very firm times begin to drop because horses do not let themselves down on it.
This particular piece of received wisdom gets trotted out every time something like this happens. If you correlate times with ground descriptions over 10s of thousands of races then times will indeed cease to get much quicker on extremely firm going and may even get slower. But that is on ground that might fairly be described as bordering on "hard" and the difference is fractional. It would in no way account for the kind of difference in times being discussed here.
The wind is far more plausible. My man at the course maintained that it was not so strong – though it was into their faces – as to slow the times down to the degree needed to justify its being described as "firm" going: it would need to have been a gale. But he could be wrong.
The times were 2.63 sec slower for the first (12f) than 12 months ago on officially "good to firm" going; 2.50 sec slower for the second (5f); 2.39 sec for the third (6f); 3.53 sec slower for the fourth (8f); 2.03 sec slower for the fifth (8f); 0.99 sec slower for the sixth (8f); and 3.42 sec slower for the last (10f) according to the Racing Post website (which calculates the ground as being "good" on times yesterday, fwiw).
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Of course it could be that unacceptable anathema to all clockers, in that all the races were genuinely slowly run.
Simply from eyesight it was obvious, after less than 2 furlongs, than there was no sort of pace in the Guineas, and in what turned out to be one of the quicker races of the day on the clock.
It depends on what one trusts; a stopwatch, or that which the eyes, ears, evidence from those that rode in the race, and how the horses performed in it make patently obvious otherwise.It depends on what one trusts; a stopwatch, or that which the eyes, ears, evidence from those that rode in the race, and how the horses performed in it make patently obvious otherwise.
I would not trust the eyes and ears of those who rode in the race exclusively. Jockeys frequently make incorrect and/or contradictory statements about the state of the ground and the pace of a race. But that’s because judging such things accurately every time on horseback is impossible.
None of the races, with the possible exception of the Marble Hill, was run at what I would regard – with my eyes – as a good pace, but the times are consistent with them all being run at a crawl and/or into a gale-force wind if the ground was indeed "like a road". Where is the evidence of that? "How the horses performed" includes not one front-runner holding on and most of the winners coming from some way off the pace.
In terms of looking for an explanation the "every horse was running at little more than a canter early on" does not seem adequate on its own either.
I still don’t think that the pace was anywhere near strong enough for New Approach, something which can only lie at the feet of Kevin Manning, but the winner was fully deserving of his victory – and it could be argued that a quicker gallop would have suited him just as well.
Kevin Manning said he wanted to go faster but he knew after a furlong the horse was not letting himself down on the ground so he couldn’t.
I’ve just checked the wind at Baldonnel aerdrome yesterday which is 20 miles east of the Curragh, so not too far away. The wind at 3.30pm was from the North East (040 degrees) at 21mph, the straight at the Curragh bears 050 degrees, so I think its fair to say the headwind had a significant impact on race times given the run in at the Curragh is just over 3 furlongs.
Thanks, cav.
In the words of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, it seems “I was misinformed”.
Sorry Pru, I’ve checked again on Google Earth and there’s no way the straight
looks 050 degrees. I redid the calculation and its actually 106 degreesThat would make the headwind component 9mph and the crosswind around 20 mph so your man in Kildare sounds about right.
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