Poor Briar Hill

[thehorsesmouth]

1st January: All Honours
2nd January: Emiest Rose (DUNDALK)
4th January: Lethal Weapon
9th January: Chief Suspect (DUNDALK)
10th January: Dazzlers Day
17th January: Tiny Toffee
17th January: Social Riser
24th January: Scolboa Rock
25th January: Sitcom
31st January: Laurel Park
8th February: Le Vent D’Antan

That is eleven horses we are 100% certain about in just five weeks.
But let’s not forget that the Irish race only about 5-6 times a week. This isn’t a normal number if you really care about the sport and if you really love and respect animals.
We are not talking about point-to-point deaths or horses killed on the gallops or horses that are put down at a later stage due to injuries suffered on the racecourse.

Six weeks is an extremely small sample size, especially give there is only racing five-six times a week as you say.

EDIT: Apologies GT, I see you have already made this point.

[moehat]

It was his eye socket that Briar Hill fractured, which sounds awful. Surprised that his eye wasn’t damaged at the time. I sometimes think that there are ‘lucky’ horses and ‘unlucky’ ones; some terrible jumpers go on forever but others have bad things happen to them without ever seeming to do much wrong.

[thehorsesmouth]

Kauto Star was a bloody awful jumper, got remounted at Exeter, Nicholls should of retired him then not to mention those last fences at Kempton he walked through and that terrible jump in the betfair letting that no hoper Snoopy Loopy win and that one at Cheltenham when Kauto and Ruby went sliding along the deck. Even in easy races he made slight mistakes and hit a few twigs out of place how he ever won 8 King Georges and 4 Gold Cups is beyond belief.

Colm Murphy should have considered a flat career for Big Zeb after he fell in two of his first three chases. Became a superb jumper, just like Kauto.

Back to Briar Hill, and I was delighted with his run prior to the fall. He was showing a lot more spark than he had on his previous two runs. He has now improved with each run. One thing I’m not sure of is whether three miles is his cup of tea. He races keen enough at times and is a faster animal than he is given credit for, having appeared lazy on occasion in the past. Presuming he comes out of the race and they run him at Cheltenham, I’d be thinking Coral Cup rather than the World Hurdle.

[RubyLight]

Re: Kauto Star
Kauto was quite a decent jumper in France. The change to the British fences wasn’t easy and they also had the option to send him over hurdles as well. But they where just too confident that chasing would be his game and Nicholls and Ruby proved to be right. But let’s not forget that fall in the GC which was quite heavy and Nicholls admit himself that Kauto was lucky to get away with it.

[Nathan Hughes]

Mullins on Briar Hill

Briar Hill: He’s fine after his fall. I’m not sure he would have won, but he would have given the winner a race and that’s fine for me because at least it showed that he was coming back to form. He’s been showing me some good work recently and hopefully he can do it again. I think he’ll be fine. He’s possibly my World Hurdle hope this year. I put him in the handicaps too, but I think I’d rather run him in the World Hurdle and I think my owner would rather run him in it too.

Blackbeard to conquer the World

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