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I think 3 wide and up with the pace is stupid tactics no matter what anyone says.
Being up with the pace…fair enough sit in behind 3l off Nacarat….but what they did was sit 3 wide 1l off the lead. Poor tactics and the horse didn’t deserve such shoddy treatment.
Sounds like "Ruby is God, let’s get AP", to me!
The prominent runners were doing well today. Nacarat, Long Run, Kauto Star; the leading three finished in 3 of the first four places. Long Run himself is not usually ridden that way, yet he won.
When Nacarat, Long Run, Riverside Theatre, The Nightingale and Forpaddytheplasterer were all far from certain to stay a truly run 3 miles on that ground; why should AP hold up Kauto Star and allow a slow pace to be set? It was to his advantage to make sure it was a test at the trip.Binocular was ridden prominently today, not his usual tactics either. First (and second) ridden prominently. So be consistent mate, I guess that was another poor ride by AP.
Value Is Everything- Total Posts 17716
I think Paul Nichols is full of shIte.
One minute Kauto is good as ever the next he’s saying they changed the tactics because he has lost some of his speed.
IMO he horse ran today and he knew he wasn’t right.
Why else would you change tactics that have won you 4 King George’s? You would have to be stark raving bonkers.
Kauto Star has run once since he fell when beaten in the Gold Cup
He ran In Ireland as we know winning by 4 lengths which is one of his best performance yet on his return outing.
So when did PN all of a sudden discover Kauto had lost his speed.
I said he should retire Kauto but now I think about it I’d rather PN retired his mouth and told us nothing rather than feed us a lot of tripe.
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As far as I can tell, McCoy did absolutely nothing wrong; Kauto Star just didn’t appreciate having him on his back. And he reacted exactly the same way when Sam Thomas rode him at Haydock in November 2008.
If he hadn’t unshipped Thomas that day he could well have a loss to Snoopy Loopy – yes, the 157-rated Snoopy Loopy – to his name. And what did he do 4 months later? My memory’s hazy, but I think it went along the lines of ‘trounced Denman in the Gold Cup’.
Or something to that effect.
McCoy, for all that he has achieved, isn’t stylish or delicate enough to ‘use’ a horse like Kauto Star effectively. Throw in Nicholls’s abismal form – perhaps he knew he wasn’t quite right – and there’s every reason to suspect that the horse is a good deal better, even at this stage of his career, than we saw today.
Calls for his retirement are a severe over-reaction to an as yet non-existent issue.
Don’t understand the critiscism of AP. Just as I’ve never been Kauto Stars greatest fan I’ve never been a fan of AP either, but I can’t see what he did wrong, and it’s good to see him riding such good horses these days. I rather wish it could have been a fairytale ending for them both. However, hearing that people in the crowd were shouting for Barry Geraghty to be riding Long Run and not Sam makes me pleased that the lad and his horse came good today. I still wish, though, that Ruby had been riding Kauto Star; he would have been able to answer a lot of questions. I just keep thinking back to when Dessie won his last race, and everyone was eulogising about the way he had won; Elsie just stroked his chin and quietly said ‘he found it hard today’. Kauto will not get away with making one of those mistakes where he paddles through a fence again. But I’m not a jockey or a trainer, because if I was every horse would probably spend it’s life in it’s stable. Perhaps my sport of choice should be tiddly winks….
Calls for his retirement are a severe over-reaction to an as yet non-existent issue.
Kauto star
has either won the King George or the Gold Cup every year since 06,this past 12 months he"s won neither! You dont need to be clever to see his best days are behind him.Connections have nothing left to achieve with him so retire him now and give him a long and healthy one at that! The horse was a legend and i never backed him once,
to continue will prove disastrous as he clearly showed today he has had enough! If he runs again,Greed is the only reason and connections shouldn"t need to!By the time the vast majority of horses reach Kauto Star’s age they are normally on the downgrade.
I wouldn’t write him off totally on today’s effort. Jockey perhaps didn’t suit as well as Walsh or Fehily, tactics were a bit eyebrow raising, ground perhaps not totally suitable and trainer out of form at the minute. The other factor is that it’s probably easier to keep a younger horse ‘on the go’ for a couple of weeks (following the original postponement).
All things considered though you’d have to worry that, following the Gold Cup and today, the star is firmly on the wane and the years have caught up with him but here’s hoping he might have one last hurrah where everything drops right.
I am a massive fan of the horse…but today wasnt as bad as all made out.
Considering long run ran a time which was 4 sconds faster than kautos run last year(and that was suppose to be the most impresive king george winner for a generation),and the fact that mcoy had got the horse buzzed up from the getgo instead of dropping him in behind Nacarat he decided to virtualy front run somthing the horse has never done he ran a time that was by all accounts as good as any of his previous King georges.He made several errors due to poor jockeyship uprooted the second last which any other horse would of fell.
If he hadnt had run thru the second last he would at worse come second,now for a horse that is so called past it i think its laughable.12-1 for the gold cup,yes please e/w bet of the century.
Considering long run ran a time which was 4 sconds slower than kautos run last year
Long Run was 4 seconds
faster
today than Kauto was last year. That’s about 16-20 lengths. Coincidentally he beat Kauto by 19 lengths today. Of course, comparisons might be affected by conditions so it’s hard to be precise but both races were run on good to soft.
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Please don’t start quoting times.
All the times were slower last year so obviously the grond was totally different and whereas Kauto won in a common canter by a distance long Run was racing all the way up the straight.
AP was never at ease during the entire race and despite the commentator telling us how well he was going at the 10th fence AP was aalready changing hands and prodding at him to keep up. Last season he was hack cantering all over the top of the same horse Nacarat.
Lee McCkensie in his exctitment can’t be expected to notice everything but his "We have a new Champion" Made me spew.
Good horse good performance but not apatch on kauto Star at his best which he clearly wasn’t today.
The one ray of hope is that the Kauto Stra that truned up today was the same Kauto Star that turned up the day Denman won the Gold Cup.
Obviouly being fresh isn’t the answer PN thought it was.
It’s not deteroiation either IMO.He may never be the same again but depsite me saying earlier he should be retired he made fools of alot of people on here who wrote him off before and he might just do the same again.
If he had travelled well for the first two miles and then come under pressure I would be more prepared to write him off than I am now after taking a closer look at the race.
AP was niggling away a long way out – look at the first circuit – long run was going v easily then.
Im not a Kauto fan but i wouldnt write him off yet. Cheltenham is a while away yet – time for him to come back in form. If its good ground you dont know which other horses go there in good form … 2 months rest is a long time.
His jumping is bad when he gets tired and he got tired today – that is my concern going to chelt.
I thought is was a poor standard – and he must have been well below his best today.
Cheltenham is a totally different story – what happens if IC doesnt get there
he came back in one piece – could easily have been worse – in his best form he would have cruised past all of those
Fist,
You seem to forget that Long Run is a six year old, the same age as Kauto was when he won his first King George. I don’t think that Long Run is best suited by Cheltenham, but today he looked like a horse very much suited by Kempton. We may yet see Long Run get better as he gets older and if he were to continue to progress in the same vein as Kauto, there is no reason he shouldn’t be a standing dish at Kempton providing he stays sound.
JohnJ
Remember that the trainer said Nacarat was never right last year, and he’s a much better horse this season [wish I’d known that before Wetherby] so we can’t just compare Kauto’s performance against him last year to this one. Refreshing my memory by looking at Kautos race record, he has ran some bafflingly bad
races at times. Will be interesting to see what we hear from connections over the next few days.
Firstly, congratulations to Long Run and connections on a great win today. In addition I say well done to those on the forum who picked and backed Long Run.
As for my beloved Kauto Star, I’m gutted
. He didn’t travel well, he didn’t jump well – he just wasn’t himself. I genuinely believe age has finally caught up with him. I’d love to see him have another crack at the Gold Cup but at the same time I wouldn’t like to see anything bad happen to him. He’s had a great career – the greatest since Arkle. Maybe it is time to call it a day.The last time an 11yo won a Gold Cup was in 1962. Only seven horses older than 10 have won the race in its long history.
Kauto Star owes connections nothing and has little to prove to anyone. The horse should be given an honourable retirement.
I don’t think it was age, as much as Formula One "miles on the clock", Bosranic.
He wasn’t a horse to " keep a little back for himself", when he was sent to war, was he? How could he possibly keep burning off all his rivals at that level. We call them machines, but of course, they’re flesh and blood.
An interesting thing I believe I noticed, was that sometimes – maybe it only happens with sprinters – but the fastest speed figure in his normal grade that a good, old, handicap sprinter returned, was right towards the end of his career; after which, he rapidly descended the divisions.
Though the time was ordinary, maybe, Kauto’s previous performance, in the Grade I at Dromore, had a touch of that about it. Then again, maybe his performance in the the KG was as good, if not better. But he’ll surely not improve. Indeed, deserves to be retired.
Right, knocking retirement for Kauto on the head!
As some sapient, unemotional forumites have said – the Gold Cup is a very different test and a third in a King George hardly means he should not take his chance?!
He was never travelling but he has not always cruised through his races – his King George’s have been imperious but some other victories have made him work very hard.
I don’t think the jockey or the tactics made a jot of difference.
I do believe he has lost some speed and the Gold Cup will provide him with the perfect finale to his illustrious career.
3m 2f round Chelters and who can honestly say he won’t be in the first 3?
At 12/1 (mentioned by Julesky) he is surely a cracking E/W bet – he is proven over that course and distance, Long Run is not.
This amazing animal deserves the chance like any proud heavyweight boxer, to give it a go one more time and show them who’s boss.
As for Long Run, it’s like Boransic said – it would be pretty boring if the same horses won all the time.
He does jump a bit stickily but he has a motor, though I’m not convinced Chelters is what he wants.
3m soft ground on a flat track seemed to suit him perfectly. He did sprint away nicely at the end having been up with a fair pace…but nothing breakneck.
Kinda makes the Gold Cup more intriguing. The 3 big races at the festival are going to be most enjoyable and answer a fair few questions and see some tears shed…now who’s emotional
Zip
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