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Facing a huge dilemma when it comes to providing the right ground.
It’s an outdoor sport and trying to manipulate the ground so much that the description “good” doesn’t appear is clearly insane. What is next? Artificial rain or even snow, because we are in mid-winter right now?
This is a quote from Gordon Elliott:
“It’s fine for some horses, but we are trying to make this a winter festival and for a lot of horses it isn’t soft enough,” he said.
“These are winter horses. I haven’t got Road To Respect here and the reason for that is because he got injured here at Christmas. They had plenty of warning, I suppose.
I don’t think that this is how the game should be played. As long as there is no word like “firm” in the description, you’ve got to take what nature gives you. Is there a proper ground for Spring, Summer or Autumn? No, I don’t think so.
If you don’t run your horses now, you won’t run them at Cheltenham either. That’s were the going might end up a lot faster than at Leopardstown today.
Is there still time for Cheltenham to put a roof over the entire course to ensure no more moisture gets into the ground ?
At least then we won’t need to get involved with that damn GB v Ireland competition as none of the beggars will bother travelling over.
Trainers bleating about the ground is ridiculous. Some horses need this ground. Why should they be discriminated against?
If the ground was heavy, you can guarantee some of the same trainers would be withdrawing horses and saying they did not want to give them too hard a race before Cheltenham.
Will any of the non-runners at this meeting get pulled out at Cheltenham if the ground is good? Somehow I doubt it!
Picking up on ground issues, the going description at Musselburgh was changed to soft after the first race despite no more rain having fallen. Derek Fox said it was as soft as he has known it there.
If this was so obvious, why could the Clerk of the Course not call it as soft before racing started? Punters need accurate information and it has not helpful to say the least when Clerks give an inaccurate going description.
Some Clerks always like to leave it to the jockeys, simply because they rarely have a clue about the real going. After the 1st race they start interviewing the jockeys how the ground rode. After figuring out an average for the description they change it to that.
In this controversy, it would be fine to take everything a trainer says with a pinch of salt. They are always seeking an angle to further their own agenda (fair enough, they have a living to make), whereas a Clerk of the Course does not have an axe to grind and is likely to just be doing the best he/she can do to create a level playing field for everyone.
It is interesting that the IHRB are as “up to date” and “on the ball” as the BHA is in such circumstances. In the IHRB’s latest dowloadable version of the Rules Of Racing, their section on Watering Of Racecourses is brief, plainly written, to the point, and hilarious. It says: ”Deleted”.
Leopardstown Sunday 2 Feb 2020
Official Going: YieldingRace times difference from Standard
Race 1: 18 furlongs hurdle: SLOW by 18.00 seconds
Race 2: 16 furlongs hurdle: SLOW by 15.00 seconds
Race 3: 16 furlongs hurdle: SLOW by 14.10 seconds
Race 4: 18 furlongs hurdle: SLOW by 42.20 seconds
Race 5: 21 furlongs chase : SLOW by 34.40 seconds
Race 6: 24 furlongs chase : SLOW by 44.60 seconds
Race 7: 21 furlongs chase : SLOW by 38.60 seconds
Race 8: 16 furlongs flat : SLOW by 28.30 secondsStunned by some of the trainer comments about the state of the ground at Leopardstown – my understanding (correct me if I am wrong) is that yielding is generally considered the equivalent to our good to soft description.
If a trainer has an issue with running their horse on that kind of ground then quite frankly I question whether the horse should be in training in the first place as for me there is no excuse for not running a horse on good to soft. Too often we hear trainers bemoan the fact that one of their horses needs better ground than the softer ground that they have just run on and yet when they get it they still moan and withdraw a horse due to the so called ‘quick ground’
To be fair I still have an issue with Cheltenham (assuming the weather doesn’t intervene) ensuring the Festival starts on good to soft as to me good ground should always be the preferred goal – the old fall back comment of it being done mainly as a welfare issue rings rather hollow when you get other NH meetings racing on quicker ground and summer jumping invariably doing the same.
I fully support the notion that no NH meeting should be run with the word firm in the going description but all horses should be capable of running on good safe jumping ground without trainers taking veiled shots at a cotc for not watering enough to ensure the word soft appears in the description.
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