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Although Nicholls is not in “good form”, I don’t think it is as bad as current win strike rate implies. Over the last couple of days – Samategal and Adrien Du Pont ran well today, Sire Collonges ran a blinder in the x country, Wonderful Charm and Mon Parrain as well as could be expected to be placed.
…And Politologue was travelling well (probably have been placed) before jinking and unseating on the flat.
Timeform’s “*” is stretching it considerably!
imo They need to brush up their ideas when it comes to their trainers in form ratings. Often not putting up a trainer in form until too late (eg Kerry Lee) and not taking them off the list until too late – like here.Value Is EverythingTen years ago Nicholls had the pick of the French breds. He had Andy Stewart waving a big chequebook, Gobshite Findlay was on a roll and the Barbers were bringing nice sorts through from Ireland. The winners were flowing.
In the last few years it’s been clear that first Henderson and now Mullins have cornered the French market and PFN doesn’t have a big owner splashing the cash. Andy Stewart has bought next to nothing since his son got injured.
I wonder what happened with Highflyer? IMHO that’s a big factor.
Dolphin, here the version I heard which is almost from the horses mouth. Anthony Bromley bought for Nicholls, Minton mainly Henderson. Simon Munir asked Bromley to buy for him and Nichols didn’t like it, Bromley is a free agent and he can buy for whom he likes, but Nicholls felt he should get the horses offered to him first, hence the departure of Bromley. It is not gospel, but pretty much what happened. Nicholls now uses Tom Malone.
I think all his handicappers , well most of them, are handicapped to the hilt. If you remember Venetia had winner after winner not long ago because she had an appalling run before that because of some virus or some such hence pretty much everything was well handicapped.
Maybe thats why Nicholls is struggling for big Saturday winner or maybe he doesn’t have the horses coming through like before.
Interesting to see that 2 of his 3 runners today at Catterick ran poorly and the it was reported by the Stewards that they both scoped badly.
Maybe someone more knowledgeable can explain what that means.
Does he have a bug in his yard, hence his relatively poor recent form?Scoping takes a sample of the mucus from the fluid in the lung and airway tract, they then test this, they can almost wash the lung and pull back the fluid for testing. Nicholls would have requested these scopes after the poor runs, you need to scope quickly to get the samples. You see much more scoping in flat runners, some trainers won’t run if they don’t get a clear scope before a race. Scoping badly can mean blood in the scope (most probable here), but it takes time to grow the fluid drawn, so a bug would not be diagnosed at this stage. Blood in a scope can mean a ‘bleeder’ or a bad infection either way not good news for Nicholls.
First two novice hurdles today at either meeting two winners…both absolutely bolted up…worth looking at PN runners at weekend?
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