Please Enlighten Me

[bucketnut]

Although a passionate follower of our sport since the glory days of the likes of Sea Pigeon and the Brigadier, I’ve only just joined the forum and with it the chance to clear up a few aspects of racing which have puzzled me over the years.

1. Horses which need a fast run race.
Trainers/Jockeys saying they hope there’s pace on for their charge amazes me. The only way to ensure there’s the pace you want is to make the running yourself. Now if the animal has to come from off the pace fair enough but otherwise be in the van.

2. Jockeys fighting sprinters who wont settle.
How many times do you see jockeys pulling the heads of sprinters who want to go faster. If a hold up horse is pulling that badly he aint going to win anyway so he might as well be given his head and if he doesn’t last home over 5 or 6 furlongs at least all his energy will have gone to speed rather than fighting his pilot. And it gives food for thought to the conspiricey theorists- me.

3. Trainers who say they dont know if their charges will stay a mile.
Gallop the horse up seven furlongs or a mile. If it is going better at the end than the beginning…..it stays.

Now I accept my reasoning is simplistic and quite possibly naive but have I at least got the basics right.

Stewart

[Bulwark]

Some horses cant go to the front because they have to be held off to be switched off in between horses. If they go to the front then they will pull at the bit and throw their chance away.

You can always run a pace setter, however many smaller stables have so many different owners that you couldnt really ask one owner to put their horse out to set the race up for another owner, Aiden O’brien can run pacesetter for such horses because most of his horses are in the same ownership and that is probably the one you would most see doing this.

With regards the horses pulling in sprints if you just let the horse run himself into the ground, then he is never going to learn anything, if you fight him then you would hope that sooner or later he’ll get the message, admittedly they should really be schooled at home but sprinters are largely very highly through how they are bred, and the excitement of a race may just get on top of them.

[dubai_millennium]

I agree with your 1st point. Nothing annoys me more than trainers/jockeys complaining that there horse got beat because there wasn’t any pace. Send the horse to the front, make the pace yourself and try and make all. Yes it does make you a sitting duck but if you can’t win when the pace is slow then it must be worth trying.

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