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I found Ted’s comments on Sams technique fair.
Sam has ridden a less than 100% efficient race. Lets move on.
Drone – if he was yours, if they gave him to you tomorrow, and you had your pick of any jockey to ride him in the Gold Cup in March, are you seriosuly suggesting you’d have SWC over Walsh, Geraghty, Johnson or McCoy?
a lot including myself believe Long Run would have achieved much more with a pro on his back. Anyone who thinks differently doesn’t have a clue what they are talking about.
As one of the clueless minority, it’s hard to see (after two KGs and a Gold Cup) exactly how ‘much more’ Long Run could have achieved with professional handling. There’s no way he would have beaten Kauto Star in the Betfair/KG last year – the great horse was simply not for passing – so I’m not entirely sure where all these painfully-lost races are in his history.
I’m convinced that a lot of the criticism is borne from a suspicion of a rich, double-barrelled, have-a-go merchant riding daddy’s horses, the sort of chappie who probably uses a trouser-press and isn’t afraid to call a pleb a pleb. This is unacceptable in Blair’s Britain (he is still in charge, yes?).
Strip out the rhetoric and really this thread comes down to the exciting new revelation that 30-rides-a-year amateurs aren’t as good as seasoned professionals.
Mike
I’m convinced that a lot of the criticism is borne from a suspicion of a rich, double-barrelled, have-a-go merchant riding daddy’s horses, the sort of chappie who probably uses a trouser-press and isn’t afraid to call a pleb a pleb. This is unacceptable in Blair’s Britain (he is still in charge, yes?).
Absolutely right. This is exactly what the criticism is largely based on.
Another chance to bash a seemingly rich, privileged, self-assured, confident and no doubt "out-of-touch" so-called toff.
Just as those who criticise hunting are actually sometimes motivated by pure spite, class-based contempt and hate, and the petty inverted snobbery of those who think it’s being cool to criticise any seemingly privileged toffs whose behaviour they dislike, so Sam Waley-Cohen is getting disproportionate criticism because of his well-to-do background.
There’s no more likelihood of anyone admitting this, of course, than there is of any of Waley-Cohen’s critics
outside this forum
admitting that there may well be a bit of unacknowledged anti-semitism in the criticism of him as well.
Drone – if he was yours, if they gave him to you tomorrow, and you had your pick of any jockey to ride him in the Gold Cup in March, are you seriosuly suggesting you’d have SWC over Walsh, Geraghty, Johnson or McCoy?
I’m not "seriously suggesting" anything I merely suspect that Long Run may go as well, if not better for W-C than any of his professional colleagues. It would be nice to be proven right or wrong but that is unlikely to happen
Errant, difficult, lazy horses are often rationalised away en-masse as being irresolute and therefore ‘need their mind making up for them’ via the McCoyesque bing-bang-billyo; but in truth some of these irresolute types are tender, for want of a better word and would resent the hard stuff and hence underperform. Like I say I don’t know if Long Run is a tender type but from watching him I suspect he might be
Long Run, with the possible exception of this year’s GC – and that is certainly debateable as despite winning the ’11 GC has never otherwise enjoyed Cheltenham – has won all the races he was entitled to, and lost the ones he wasn’t entitled to: as the races panned out, not as necessarily suggested by his pre-race odds. W-C, McCoy, whoever it wouldn’t have made any difference, I believe
So no I wouldn’t go looking for a replacement if Long Run were mine, particularly if my unfurnished if quite capable son had won all the races he was entitled to on him
You and I approach this subject from polar opposite coordinates Cormack: you, I think, love and place a lot of importance on the human element in racing, be that a deliberate differentiation of jockeys into top good and bad, or paying close attention to the words of trainers. I approach and have long approached the game paying little heed to the relative merits of jockeys and trainers, be it what they do or what they say
To paraphrase a familiar quote:
give me the horse and I’ll give you the man
You are a chatty man today Drone, must be the post-christmas euphoria kicking in
Strip out the rhetoric and really this thread comes down to the exciting new revelation that 30-rides-a-year amateurs aren’t as good as seasoned professionals.
Mike
Yep, that is what I was getting at, while using the KG as evidence.
be that a deliberate differentiation of jockeys into top good and bad, or paying close attention to the words of trainers. I approach and have long approached the game paying little heed to the relative merits of jockeys and trainers, be it what they do or what they say
I wouldn’t differentaite jockeys, necessarily, into good or bad but I do think there is a sliding scale. It’s inevitable, I think, in a pursuit that turns on fitness, experience, guile, strength and finesse (among other factors) that there will be a level of polarity between individuals at either end of the scale. Evaluation of where an individual sits is often, in all but the obvious cases, trickier and a subjective matter, hence the debates on jockeyship that often ensue.
You are right though, I do place a lot of emphasis on the human element in racing. I wouldn’t say iI ‘love it’ but I do find it interesting.
I think the problem here is a lot of people inflating the horse in the first place and then looking for reasons why he hasn’t turned out to be as good as they originally thought. The easiest scapegoat being the jockey. Which defeats are we suggesting were down the the jockey rather than Long Run’s own shortcomings?
The likes of McCoy and Johnson make mistakes virtually every day of the week but the only place you are likely to see them highlighted is on betfair. It seems this forum is just mirroring the media in picking on relatively easy targets.
Not 1 to dodge a fight on the whip issue , I thought the ban and the fine was spot on
Although we are in a much better place on the dreaded whip issue , yesterdays display on ground hardly for racing was disgusting ..imo
Ricky
im not a big fan of sam waley cohens but at the end of the day the clue is in the word amatuer thats what he is and a decent one at that from what i remember about ted walsh he wasnt exactly a stylish jockey either although granted a very sucessful amatuer if ted was still riding would he get off long run and let a pro on if it was his ride. Sam will never be as good as the top pros and i would say imo he isnt as good as he used to be probably down to lack of race riding although i agree with those who say long run looks a tricky ride and probably takes a bit of knowing
Waley-Cohen being an "amateur" does not automatically make him any worse of a jockey than the pros, or less worthy of riding Long Run. Amateurs have won the Grand National and other major races before, after all. Him being the son of Long Run’s owner doesn’t make him any worse either.
He does, however, have a tendency to make silly mistakes. I haven’t seen him cause a horse to lose a race directly, but with a horse who isn’t the best jumper out there he’s sort of tempting fate.
While it must be a disadvantage to have limited racing time, it is rare that SWC rides horses he doesn’t know. He did look to be trying to keep it safe yesterday rather, which meant he looked bad at the last two. It is perhaps unfair to be comparing him to the top riders, particularly when a reasonable number of pro’s would also compare unfavorably.
Didn’t hear Ted Walsh’s comments, so can’t comment directly as to their validity, but do remember Ted Walsh getting fairly animated when John Francombe suggested that his style may not all it could have been. (think it was after a Big Buck’s win when Ruby dropped his whip – and the two disagreed)
Not sure why but have been thinking today about the times that McCoy has ridden horses like Kauto and Denman and given them pretty awful rides; I think it was probably all of the expectation that The Giant Bolster would run well because of his jockey booking. And Sam got his horse home. And won. And I kind of wish people would just leave him alone.
I backed Long Run yesterday, as I did when he won the race two years ago. Two years ago I was confident the horse was good enough to beat the out of sorts and Tony McCoy ridden Kauto Star.
However, Cormack is right; Sam Waley-Cohen nearly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, due mainly, as I see it, from not only a lack of technical ability in the saddle but also from an apparent lack of confidence and uncertainty on his part. You could actually see him panicking as the pressure was applied. That said, Long Run doesn’t help matters with his iffy jumping.
It was Long Run’s bravery and staying ability which saw him through. Had a professional ( Geraghty, for example ) been on board, I have little doubt that the favourite would have won more comfortably.
Bearing this in mind, and all things considered, I shall be backing Bobsworth to win the 2013 Cheltenham Gold Cup.
That last fence – Waley Cohen looked like was on a bucking bronco, going in the opposite direction to which the horse was.
His balance is poor and he gives the horse mixed signals about what he wants. A couple of times he asked the horse to come up for him and he did, and they were in sync together, but this isn’t consistent enough in the top races.You watch that ride and then watch Geraghty on the vast majority of his and it’s easy to think it would be a double Gold Cup winner by now if the stable jockey rode it.
In the past 5 seasons SWC has had 106 rides; R Johnson’s had 3,803.
(RJ was 0 from 4 yesterday; SWC was 2 from 2)
Regardless of innate talent, you’d expect RJ to be ‘the better jockey’, on the ‘practice makes perfect premise’, if nothing else.
How many scrutinise SWC when he rides anything except Long Run?
To my mind Long Run has two major facets which any jockey would be forced to cope with – he needs a rip-the-guts-out stamina test to show his best form (his Gold Cup win was off a searing pace), and he does not bend his back properly under pressure. This latter aspect means 99% of his errors are rear-end ones, where he drags his legs (sometimes as high as his stifle) through fences.
Doubtless he has been medically checked in every bone and sinew – the trouble is you cannot simulate race conditions for testing.
SWC knows this jumping weakness very well and, understandably, tries to prepare for it as he feels the horse coming under pressure: A back-end error, dramatically slows the horse’s momentum and jolts its rump upwards often catching the jockey and firing him skywards: SWC tries to allow for this and it can often, understandably, make him look ungainly, but, in 16 chases where his formline is littered with ‘mistake’ ‘blunder’, ‘not fluent’, SWC has yet to be unseated.
Yogi Breisner has spent a lot of time trying to improve the horse’s jumping without success. I think it is unlikely that a pro jockey will suddenly get LR to start picking up his back end. Thus, imo, a pro jockey would be more likely to suffer an unseat from the horse than SWC would.
Given the comparatively tiny number of rides he has and the minuscule percentage of those in which he comes under the microscope, it is grossly unfair to condemn SWC.
Doubtless, Ruby, Barry and others are better jockeys in general than SWC – I’m certain Sam himself would be the first to concede that; but if any pro was put up for the first time in the Gold Cup, given Long Run’s quirks (and idling might also be one), I would be less inclined to back him than if SWC kept the ride.
Joe
Joseph O’Brien is no more qualified to ride the pride of Ballydoyle than Waley Cohen is to ride his own horse.Maybe a lot less.As simple as that.
A lucid, observant and considered post from Steeplechasing, fine indeed
Regarding Ted Walsh: I didn’t realise he was still ranting away on C4 but this was presumably the source of the "Father Ted" reference made by Cormack
Of those old enough to remember him as a jockey, I’m surely not alone in recalling him as an untidy and generally rather brutal rider; therefore I wouldn’t pay any heed whatsoever to his views on the merits of today’s altogether more adept NH jockeys. Not that I heeded anything he said at all for he was always just ‘good copy’ in a tacky populist tabloid sense, but otherwise no more than the proverbial loud empty vessel
In the past 5 seasons SWC has had 106 rides; R Johnson’s had 3,803.
(RJ was 0 from 4 yesterday; SWC was 2 from 2)
Regardless of innate talent, you’d expect RJ to be ‘the better jockey’, on the ‘practice makes perfect premise’, if nothing else.
How many scrutinise SWC when he rides anything except Long Run?
How many other times does he ride in top class races on top class horses ? He’s ridden on other family owned horses for Henderson but does the trainer turn to SWC in other circumstances ? Never. 27 rides for Henderson in 5 years, all on his father’s horses.
Says it all.And it’s all about consistent quality.
Celtic beat Barcelona but if you had to choose one team to beat the Spanish champions for £1m, would you choose Celtic ?
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