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On Saturday Snap Decision won his third G1 Iroquois Hurdle in one of the best races I have ever seen. You can watch the whole race here https://www.youtube.com/live/JrKtW2F5zhU?si=qX2kGDxMoS_ITDxm&t=15134 or just the thrilling stretch run https://twitter.com/HorseToWatch/status/1789419521708544194 This comes after his big victory in the Temple Gwathmey last month where he carried 10-20lbs more than the rest of the field. He is the favorite for the Eclipse championship which has been denied him the past three years. He is the best American hurdler since Good Night Shirt and McDynamo in the 2000s. His kryptonite is soft/yielding turf, so he will never go on any overseas adventures, but he comes by his rating of 167+ (it hasn’t been updated after the Iroquois yet) honestly.
Snap Decision is 10 years old, as is his chief rival Noah and the Ark who’s finished 2nd and 3rd to him this year. This is a normal age for a jumps horse in the UK as it is in the USA, but it is considered too old by the standards of the New York Racing Association, who govern Belmont Park, Aqueduct and Saratoga. They have had a rule for the past few years, perhaps inspired by animal rights people or by a misguided sense of “safety”, that once a horse turns 10 years old he is no longer allowed to race on those aforementioned three tracks. This is silly enough when it is applied to flat racing – every year a few 10yos based in NY must scatter to other circuits – but it is asinine to apply it to jumps.
NYRA tracks host 4 Grade 1 jump races this season, one each month from June to September. That’s 4 out of 7 in the country. These are not just top level races but they are a chance for jumps racing to reach flat racing fans and a television audience who would otherwise never even hear of it. Keeping the top jumps horse out of it is doing a disservice to the sport. The typically firm ground of flat tracks suits Snap, he’s a tidy and careful jumper, and his most noteworthy win prior to Saturday was his 2022 Jonathan Shepherd win under 164lbs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFyMNnFTHy0
To be clear, I don’t think Snap himself will be hurt that much by this rule. His trainer would likely run him in a flat race at Colonial for a prep for the Grand National hurdle in October. It does place an even greater importance on the Grand National hurdle (which was already given too much weight by Eclipse award voters), and the last two years the ground there has turned up yielding, to Snap Decision’s detriment. We don’t need Far Hills to become a mini-Cheltenham as the be-all end-all to racing.
I don’t really know how to conclude this angry rant lol, I certainly don’t have the power to change NYRA’s rule and I don’t think anyone in steeplechasing does. I just wish sanity would prevail and they would at least give Snap an exception, or make the rule not apply to jumps, or not apply to G1 races, or something…
At least I learned from that great rant why Paris-Turf described Metropolitan as disappearing down “l’open stretch” and not the straight at Longchamps yesterday. That rant would sound even better as a sports podcast, Miss Woodford!
Coincidentally, I was asked yesterday if I could provide details of hurdler sent from the O’Neill stable to race in the US, called Zabeel Champion. He won a couple of races late last year and finished third behind Snap Decision in the race Miss Woodford mentions above.
One of his wins came at a track called Montpelier and it’s worth a watch, just to enjoy a course that makes Hexham look flat:
And for those interested, the full career of Snap Decision can be found here:
https://www.equibase.com/profiles/Results.cfm?type=Horse&refno=9687612®istry=T&rbt=TB
Montpelier is James Madison’s estate, later owned by the DuPont family who were generous patrons of steeplechasing. The great Battleship trained at Montpelier prior to his Aintree Grand National victory. You can see how it would help build up a horse’s stamina!
As it wouldn’t allow that link for the race at Montpelier for some reason, I’ve downloaded the video and you can see it now here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CvKa-OxzRakrYkr1zqauEtJW7wwTwbMn/view?usp=drive_link
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