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A brilliant racehorse.
I think they should’ve gave him a shot at the Arc. Stick a couple of pacemakers in and make it a gruelling test. I think he’d have gone very close but even if not good enough, wouldn’t have lost anything in defeat.
For me it would have to be a real attritional Arc and then Coolmore would have to sacrifice some high class horses (in order to get into the race) to set a strong enough gallop for it to have any chance of working – he doesn’t have a lot of natural speed so those kind of tactics could see him struggle to hold a position early in the race.
In any case, from what Aidan has said on the subject, he seems very reluctant to subject him to that kind of race that would be very well outside of his comfort zone, especially considering what the horse has had to come back from.
The staying division looks extremely weak with the usual suspects turning up for the same races year in year out and there doesn’t seem to be anything just short of top class at 12-14F that potentially could step up into the division – Los Angeles for me would have been a great candidate to make said jump but I doubt they see him as that type of horse, even though he screams relentless galloper crying out for a longer trip to me.
I do believe that what they really want as an end goal for Kyprios is to try and emulate Yeats in winning 4 Ascot Gold Cups and that would be a much easier task if you didn’t have to worry about a threat coming from your own yard – which is probably where his biggest danger would likely be.
Given how sick the horse was I’m sure they will take it year at a time. He’s some horse to win six staying races in a row. Without his serious injury he would probably be 14 in a row. His biggest rival most certainly will be from ballydoyle with the like of illinois and Highbury if he goes up in trip. Love these staying horses. John cherry one of my fav horses.
The staying division is weak because anything just below top class that may improve are sold . The two big middle distance races in OZ this weekend were stacked with ex European horses , each year more and more . I’ve seen fields past few months for decent money with imports from Europe filling whole field.
Five of first six home in Bart Cummings Stakes ex European , horses that have run in classics , winner horse previousy owned by King Charles , in the Metrop winner ex UK horse lightly raced sent out by owner . These type horses would have bolstered Cup fields in past .Nah. He’s the best since Ardross, but wouldn’t have beaten those greats of the seventies and early eighties.
And that’s without going back to the likes of Alycidon.
Has to be the best imho now. To recover from what he has is just amazing. Today’s performance just awesome. I’m sure kyprios would have hone close in an arc given the chance. Huge fan of across but kyprios would have outbatyled him. Goat.
So you don’t think Sagaro, Buckskin, Le Moss, Ardross, etc, would be capable of beating Sweet William 2 1/4 lengths?
To come back from a near-fatal illness is remarkable, but it appears some of you are letting emotion cloud your judgment.
He’s beating him so much easier than the 2 1/4 lengths suggest though. It looked like a routine piece of work to him.
With Glad on this – Kyprios is a great horse (tough as nails) but the likes of Ardross, Le Moss (back to back Stayers Triple Crown winner) & Sagaro (Triple Gold Cup winner) would have put those rivals to the sword just as (if not) much easier.
After his titanic battles with Le Moss in the Ascot Gold Cup, Goodwood Cup (when it was still a 2m5f race) and the Doncaster Cups where in over 7 miles of combined racing the horses were seperated in total by about a length (3/4L and two necks being the winning distances) Ardross then moved to Henry Cecil as a 5 yr old and simply put got even better!
In 1981 alone he won the Yorkshire Cup (14F), Ascot Gold Cup (20F), Goodwood Cup (21F), Geoffrey Freer Stakes (13F – beating Cut Above who went on to win the St Leger) and Prix Royal Oak (15.5F) whilst also finishing 5th in the Arc (12F) despite being drawn 24 of 24 runners!
The following year in 1982 he won Jockey Club Stakes (12F), Yorkshire Cup (14F), Henry II Stakes (16F), Ascot Gold Cup (20F), Geoffrey Freer Stakes (13F) before just failing by an agonising head in winning the Arc (12F) in his final race.
1982 saw him crowned as:
British Horse of the Year
Timeform Horse of the Year
Timeform Best Stayer (Also won it in 1981)
Gilbey Racing Champion Racehorse of the Year
Gilbey Racing Champion Racehorse of Europe
Gilbey Racing Champion Stayer (Also won it in 1981)He finished his career with a Timeform rating of 134.
As a huge fan of stayers and the likes of buckskin and ardross it’s blinkered to suggest kyprios just might not be the best. He’s is a remarkable racehorse and bar his injury could be looking at a remarkable racehorse. All about opinions but right now just appreciate him.
Absolutely a great horse but not quite comparable with Ardross, Le Moss, Sagaro etc in my view. And I think that if AO’B had thought he could have won a soft ground Arc he’d have been in it, given Coolmore’s focus on stallion-making and readiness to run their horses against each other.
As far as stayers are concerned, one of the great might-have-beens is Twilight Alley. A massive heavy-topped horse (and a half brother to Crepello) who broke down when going well as favourite in the 1963 King George after trotting up in the Gold Cup on only his third start, I think.
Winning more races makes a horse more tough and genuine than other horses. Great attributes to have – they can win more races than others. But it does not necessarily make them better – in the way of being capable of a better form rating.
Kyprios might be the best ever stayer, but his form just hasn’t shown it. ie Maybe he idles and doesn’t show just how much he is better than his race rivals?… But you could say the same about many other horses.
However… Surely if wanting to consider who was the best racehorse we must judge them by what they’ve actually shown on the track?… So sorry – excellent though it was / is – Kyprios didn’t show anywhere near the form of Ardross.
Let’s just celebrate Kyprios as an outstanding racehorse / stayer.
Value Is EverythingI think when you excel at the top level in your sport (no matter the sport) then the next thing (and you could say its simply human nature to do this) is to try and compare that individual back to others in the past that stood head and shoulders above their contemporaries as well.
Be it racing (Frankel/Brigadier Gerard/Sea Bird/Secretariat) and (Arkle/Flyingbolt), Football (Pele/Maradonna/Messi/Ronaldo etc), Basketball (MJ/Magic/Bird/Lebron), Boxing (Ali/Tyson), Athletics (Owens/Lewis/Bolt etc), Tennis (Borg/McEnroe/Federer/Nadal/Djokovic etc), Golf (Nicklaus/Palmer/Player/Woods etc) we all do it and tend to lose sight of actually celebrating the achievement in the here and now.
Some have a recency bias with a view that surely something ages ago couldn’t possible compare to now what with all the new advances in training/medicine/travel/nutrition that the stars of today have over those back then whilst others view things more through the rose tinted glasses that those stars of the past had far more adversity/handicaps to overcome to get to the top and thus given those same advantages as those of today, their greatness would be elevated even more.
Today’s result (to me anyway) almost had an air of inevitability about it especially from the moment The Euphrates was sacrificed as Kyprios’s pacemaker and the others just let them get on with it – he is far and away the best stayer around and off the back of a clear run and a season of regular racing (compared to last year and the reverse result with Trawlerman) and on ground that put the emphasis squarely on stamina it would have taken him having a off day (which he has never had to date) for him to lose.
Yes he is a very good stayer and quite frankly given another clear run in the off season, you couldn’t see him not doing a rinse and repeat in all the same races again next season.
Game of opinions but the way I see it the division is awful currently. If Kyprios retired it would be like the sprint division with them all taking turns to beat each other. I’m not sure Kyprios is even better than other recent greats like Strad, Big Orange, Order Of St George who did place in an Arc by the way. The division was much stronger then and Kyprios has picked up Strads twilight years and Trueshan going a bit wrong and then respectfully horses like Trawlerman and Sweet William wont live long in the memory.
If it weren’t for his terrible illness last season, he’d probably be on something like a 19 run winning streak. His consistency is outrageous. Never runs a bad race which is even more remarkable nowadays when the breed appears to be more fragile.
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