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Another horrible mistake at a water jump, this time Editeur du Gite at Cheltenham. The horse stopped fairly quickly and I hope he is OK. If so, he was lucky to avoid a serious injury.
What is the point of Cheltenham’s water jump? It is out in the country, so the idea it provides some sort of spectacle for the crowd is clearly nonsense.
Water jumps are absent from Ireland and we should get rid of them here, once and for all.
Fully agree with you, CAS. Jockey asked him to jump two more fences and only after he hit another one he decided to pull him up. It could have been quite nasty and if it’s not a jump in front of the stands I don’t see the point having it at all. The water jump at Newbury (in front of the stands) has been less problematic, if I’m right.
It reminded me of the time Midnight Shadow was killed at Doncaster.
To my mind, it makes a mockery of not running horses on genuinely good ground because of welfare, when we still have these unnecessary potential death traps on so many courses.
Would anyone miss the water jump at Cheltenham? Or anywhere else for that matter? Maybe keep the one on the National course but get rid of the rest.
“Jockey asked him to jump two more fences and only after he hit another one he decided to pull him up”.
That was poor. After the mistake he made, he really should have pulled up. We have seen horses injure themselves after those sort of mistakes plenty of times before.
Agreed CAS.
imo The horse’s rear end wasn’t moving right after that mistake and the jockey continued jumping.Value Is EverythingPersonally, I think courses should only have water jumps if they are directly in front of the stands (like at Newbury/Aintree etc) as they are at least a spectacle seeing horses jumping it at speed, but having them anywhere else on the course is pointless waste of time.
I can’t recall if horses at the aforementioned courses are making the same kind of mistake that Editeur did but I have seen more than a few at Cheltenham (Azertyuiop in the 2005 QM Champion Chase being the most notable one). If you are going to keep the water jumps (especially at Cheltenham) then I think changes need to be made – maybe shortening the actual length of water part of the fence is an obvious option.
CAS – spot on re welfare issue in comparison to the utter nonsense of good ground being a welfare issue.
I think the main concern is whether a water jump has a “lip” that a horse can catch its hind legs on. I’d have thought that a lip of pretty much any size will cause juddering mistakes that are likely to cause injury.
If water jumps must remain, surely a way can be found so that they have a much more gradual slope on exit as is the case with water jumps in a human steeplechase.
Il Est Francais pulled up today. It looked like he made a mistake at the big water jump, lost the lead and then never travelled.
Wasn’t a bad mistake (he sailed over it on the first curcuit off a nice long stride) but he landed in a bit of a heap off a shorter stride and was quickly overtaken after it so maybe he might have tweaked something and the jockey was being cautious.
Its a very good job that we don’t have that kind of water jump over here as its a true monster and I wouldn’t want to try going over it with a first time novice, if you don’t meet it on a full stride, you will struggle to clear it like IEF did second time around today.
Personally, I never felt that he wants that kind of trip (3m3f) anyway and with the speed he showed at Kempton (on much better ground) I think he could even come back in trip no problem but that is now two bad performances in his last 3 runs so there are starting to be questions to be answered and I would be shocked if he came over for Kempton off the back of that.
I don’t think he’ll come over for the King George nor for the Festival. Too many questions to ask right now plus what might have bothered him today.
He likes it faster and there are plenty of suitable targets in France from February onwards when they return to Auteuil.Agree that water jumps are unnecessary and anachronistic, and a hazard mainly because horses get no opportunity to jump them other than on the racecourse. Which makes it all the stranger that the BHA have approved one for the new Windsor jumps course, sited just off the bottom bend and out of sight to spectators. They ruled out a return to the old figure-of-eight course on safety grounds, but a water jump seems fine.
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