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Put it this way, I’d rather have all 17 stone of Stevie Wonder in the saddle than Richard Hughes.
Apologise for pocket talking – and for mixing this with aftertiming and irritating off-topic diversion – but the ride given to Dubai Meydan in the last by Ryan Moore was the worst of the flat season so far.
I had to check the racecard to see whether Greville Starkey was back in the saddle after all these years. Or Robert Street. Gaye Kelleway must have been gutted.
Put this boy on a favourite, on a flat track, where the pace is obvious and he doesn’t have to think and he’s functional, efficient – the Ray Wilkins of flat jockeys.
Ask him to do something tricky, like judge pace and optimum position, enough to win a race from behind on a handicap snip at Epsom and he’ll make you cry. (Well he did me today. Buckets).
Hughes? I can see why he irritates everyone. But amongst my contacts he’s related to God compared to what people think of Jamie Spencer.
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Of Ryan Moore:
Ask him to do something tricky, like judge pace and optimum position, enough to win a race from behind on a handicap snip at Epsom and he’ll make you cry. (Well he did me today. Buckets)
Ahem. c.f. Epsom, today, 13:40, Conduit, R. Moore up.
Fantastic spectacle, and he almost repeated the back-to-front trick on Tartan Bearer. He seems to be able to make horses float over the ground in a way which reminds me of Piggott at his best – poetry and power in motion.
My worry is that Ryan Moore is such a perfectionist, that he’ll feel this was the Derby that Got Away, which he shouldn’t. The best horse on the day won, for sure.
Pinza. I’m no fan of Moore whatsoever, but I know I’m in the minority and I was pocket talking last night.
However, you must agree with me that the ride in question was not his finest advertisement, Conduit or no Conduit.
And yet there were parallels with Tartan Bearer. I speculated to a punter up at Donny after the Derby, that had McEvoy ridden Tartan Bearer and Moore Dr Fremantle, history may well have been different.
I feel that Moore generally leaves it too late. McEvoy made a run for glory at just the perfect moment and in doing so, discovered not a Derby winner, but a St Leger one.
Anyroad, at Donny today, I saw a ride which easily superceded this as the worst of the season – the jockey on a well backed course specialist beaten a head was nearly lynched by the angry locals. The atmosphere in deepest Yorkshire was like Longchamp in the seventies when Piggott had to hide in a car boot from angry Gallic torch-bearers after getting a Tierce banker beaten.
I have just dug out my notes from this afternoon.
Ryan Moore says the horse "did not go the early pace" and added it was the horses stamina that got him through.
It did, on first viewing, look a poorly judged ride from Moore but in a way coming from so far back it really shows what a good horse he had underneath him.
I find it interesting connections still consider the horse to be a handicapper – he is going to get hammered for todays win.
Indeed it was Stacey, seabird. I remember she was being feted on here as a highly promising rider some weeks back.
The heavily edited consensus of a grizzled bunch of Doncastrians I was talking to after the race was that the young lady need to work on her timing and her ability to motivate a horse in a finish. They felt it was sadly lacking today.
The heavily edited consensus of a grizzled bunch of Doncastrians I was talking to after the race was that the young lady need to work on her timing and her ability to motivate a horse in a finish. They felt it was sadly lacking today.
Rather fickle of them – whatever the rights and wrongs of yesterday’s ride, Red Wine is no angel; and wasn’t it only a month ago that Stacey did what no other jockey had been able to do hitherto, and guide the old bugger to a first win over 1m6f?
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
GC, your gentlemanly defence does you credit. I know someone who knows Stacey and at Southwell today, I asked whether she had said anything about the ride. She did indeed suggest a lack of willingness on behalf of the horse.
I do think that Hughesy has been riding excetionally well this season. Every race he rides in, he doesn’t give up. Hannon’s been in good for aswell.
Richard Hughes hasn’t given up in any race he’s ridden in?
Are you in fact the aforementioned Stevie Wonder?
[The heavily edited consensus of a grizzled bunch of Doncastrians I was talking to after the race was that the young lady need to work on her timing and her ability to motivate a horse in a finish. They felt it was sadly lacking today.
Well I’m afraid it just goes to show what prats they are, Stacey has done better on this dodgement than all the alleged senior jockeys including Jamie Spencer. His head has to be put there right on the line and only then if he fancies doing it.Anyone with any knowledge would know that
what i have seen of him is my view.- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.