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Ryan Moore, James Doyle and Tom Marquand and are all riding at Leopardstown today. William Buick and Oisin Murphy are in Canada.
OK, they are riding where their retainers have runners. But in an increasingly international racing world, it is a sign of how far down the pecking order the St Leger is nowadays.
Given the importance of the 10 furlong Irish Champion Stakes to modern owners and breeders, it makes no sense to run the St Leger on the same day. Shouldn’t Doncaster and the BHA look to move it to a different date? Why not run it on Friday if it can’t be moved to a different weekend?
We are constantly told the St Leger is “The World’s Oldest Classic” but there is no getting away from the fact it is now the poor relation. Partly because of its distance being unappealing to breeders (in a previous era Los Angeles would be running in it) and partly because of its place in the calendar.
The St Leger never feels like a Classic to me. Always comes across more like a top Group 2 rather than a special Group 1. Easily the weakest of the five Classics IMO.
The entire four days to me is pretty uninspiring and the seven runner main event to be honest I don’t care who wins.
The things I want most in life are the things that I can't win.
It looks more like a race for the Derby also-rans. How many times do you hear the Derby winning connections speaking of the Leger as the season’s next target? They’d rather go for the Arc or the Irish Champion Stakes instead.
And how many times was it won by the Derby winner, if you look back at the past 20 years?Agree with RTB that the Donny card was pretty uninspiring this year as it was in recent years.
Sky Sports Racing has been constantly telling us it is “a great day’s racing”.
I suppose they don’t have much to get excited about outside of Royal Ascot – but anyone can tell it is just an ordinary Saturday card.
David Jennings in the Racing Post says it is the best Saturday of the flat season.
The things I want most in life are the things that I can't win.
Race quality wise it has absolutely no business being a four day meeting (tomorrow’s final day is based around the Leger Legends race – a Class 5 race and a decidedly average looking G3 for Fillies and Mares that most are coming from handicaps!) but then if the crowd is coming in for each day they are not going to change anything.
Irish Champions weekend has also pretty much taken more than just the top jockey’s away from it:
The Doncaster Cup is very much the poor relation with tomorrow’s Irish St Leger attracting the winners of the Lonsdale, Yorkshire, Ascot and Goodwood Cups. Whereas in the past the well trodden path would have always been Ascot/Goodwood/Doncaster for the cup races.
The Champagne Stakes is affected by today’s Champions Juvenile and more so by tomorrow’s National Stakes and the May Hill Stakes you could argue isn’t done any favours with the Moyglare being run tomorrow either.
I don’t think the Irish Champion Stakes by and large takes horses away from the St Leger although Los Angeles pre Irish Champions Weekend you would have thought would have gone straight to Donny from York, although he might also have had the option of the Prix Neil.
No chance they will ever move the meeting so I don’t see the status quo changing quality wise unless of course Coolmore get a horse that has already done the 2000g/Derby double and then we would be looking at increased interest due to the potential chance of seeing a Triple Crown winner.
For me, the Doncaster meeting is the worst “festival meeting” of the flat season. However, I do think the St Leger’s quality is wrongly criticised by many. Maybe it is because of people’s own bias against stayers.
Admittedly the fact Coolmore has a massive percentage of the best staying bred horses doesn’t help its image – makes it seem of worse quality than it actually is… Particularly when Ballydoyle’s best stayer goes elsewhere! But the actual ability of both winners and placed horses aren’t that much worse than the Derby… And better than some other Classics.
Wish I could find my workings out, but around 10 years ago I looked at the Timeform ratings of all Group 1 winners and placed horses going back 10 years. Finding out which races needed the best quality horses. I was surprised how the St Leger held up well. Even by adding 3 lbs to the 1000 and Oaks for the fillies allowance… The 1000 certainly and if I remember rightly the Oaks too were (on average) of poorer quality… And the 2000 wasn’t much ahead of the Leger either. Although this no doubt had something to do with timing. Leger coming a lot later; after many stayers have progressed through the season. Whereas 1000 and 2000 horses often improve after they’ve run in the Guineas. However, stayers don’t tend to do much racing as two year olds, so the length of time they’re being trained is often similar to a Guineas.
Below are this season’s performance ratings put up by the winners of the Classics. (The rating they ran to, not necessarily what they could have run to if pushed harder):
1000 Guineas: 112 + 3 = 115 Elmalka
2000 Guineas: 126 Notable Speech
Oaks: 118 + 3 = 121 Ezeliya
Derby: 124 City Of Troy
St Leger: 120 Jan BrueghelThe rating given to the St Leger’s 3rd horse Deira Mile is 117. Which is better or equal of the third horse in any of the other Classics (Haatem 117 in the 2000).
EDIT: The provisional rating of Jan has been reassessed.
Value Is EverythingBut the powers that be have wanted the top races to clash for years. Why else would they have shunted so many mid week races to a Saturday and introduced the mouthwatering “Super Saturday” for us to enjoy?
Most of the prize money for the Leger meeting is pathetic, less than 80 grand for the Doncaster Cup is laughable and 36 grand for most of the handicaps.
Frankie missed British racing at first but not now, as I think he has said. He was riding at recent meeting at Kentucky Downs, hardly one of America’s bigger tracks and most of the races were worth nearly a million quid to the winners.
The BHA continue to do absolutely nothing to stop the decline of British racing.
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