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No way that was gd to firm by king george time. The surface looked loose on top and the first two relished the conditions. A total farce when the cotc decides the result.
You don’t get times of 2.27 seconds fast without it being pretty fast.
Was it slightly over-watered? Possibly.
But the ground was still at least between Good and Good-Firm.Value Is EverythingIt may have been good IMHO but the turf getting thrown up was clear to see and the front two wholly unsuited by it. The big gaps between horses also suggests though the time was quick most of the field never handled it. Sunway,who was close up in the Irish Derby,beaten 10 lengths. You can’t take that at face value or goliath is one of the top horses in training. Love to see how timeform rate the winner and wouldn’t back him to beat a rodin in the breeders Cup.
Mickey,
Before today, Sunway had run 8 times and not once on good-firm (either official good-firm or Timeform good-firm) which suggested to me he is not thought as effective on good-firm. So him running below form is surely a pointer to it being proper good-firm.Timeform’s provisional ratings might change once they’ve assessed the race in every way possible. But their provisional rating for Goliath is 127. Just 1 lb below Rodin’s very best and ahead of Rebel’s Romance’s best. Bluestocking is rated as running to form on 120.
Value Is EverythingYet Moore confirmed it was good to firm when he was interviewed after winning the 2nd race. I can’t believe that, if they were genuinely concerned about the ground for Augustus Rodin, that he wouldn’t have taken the opportunity to set it up as a possible excuse on live tv.
That was on the straight course Tonge. The concern was regards the round track.
Ginger, the trainer of Sunway has said the horse needs fast ground.
Prior to the King George Ralph Beckett said most considered the ground good on Friday and they put 3 mm on overnight while George Boughey said it was good on Friday but slower on Saturday.The going stick reading for the round track was 6.8, since when did that equate to good to firm? The 2021 King George was run on good to firm yet the going stick reading then was 9.2.
Stickels did a good job at Royal Ascot but made a pigs ear of it here, there was no good reason why he should have watered on Friday evening.These days Ascot stage a 2 day meeting between Royal Ascot and this weekend,Why?
Ground on the run to swinley bottom looked over raced and chopped up to me.“If you want it FIRM then you’re wanting broken legs.”
That is not true, Ginger. Firstly, no one wants to see horses break legs. Secondly, is there any evidence fast ground is more dangerous?
When I started watching racing, good to firm ground was commonplace; firm ground was nothing out of the ordinary; and meetings still went ahead on hard ground at the likes of Bath, Brighton and Carlisle. I am sure a jumps meeting once took place on hard ground at Towcester.
Were there more broken legs in the past? I am not sure if the data is available but I certainly do not remember horses breaking down all the time.
Isn’t the increasing fragility of the breed more likely to be due to a combination of a narrowing of the gene pool through too much in breeding and too much breeding for speed over stamina and robustness?
I cannot believe artificially altered ground is better and safer than naturally fast ground which horses used to routinely run on in the era before watering.
Firm/hard ground on the flat doesn’t cause more broken legs, but it does produce more tendon injuries – the classic heat in the leg that you find the day after a race.
In the era of firm and hard ground being acceptable for racing, trainers had recourse to firing as means of speeding recovery from tendon problems, but that’s no longer an option.
Read almost any of the racing biographies from the inter war period and they have tales of classic horses being trained with the constant fear of them breaking down – firm on the racecourse also meant firm on the gallops of course, no AW surfaces back then. Winning a big race was an achievement, but getting the horse there sound was just as great.
From the 1913 racing annual in my library:
Newmarket Guineas Going on hard side
Epsom Going Hard
Royal Ascot Going Hard
Goodwood Going Good
York Ebor Going Hard
Doncaster St Leger Going Very Hard!
Race comments from Doncaster include ‘Hector sprung a tendon’ in the Great Yorkshire hcp – and ‘Taslett pulled up lame’ in the Leger. And Tetrarch won the Champagne Stakes, his seventh win as a 2yo, but he never raced again.
“In the era of firm and hard ground being acceptable for racing, trainers had recourse to firing as means of speeding recovery from tendon problems, but that’s no longer an option.”
Thanks AP, I had not considered that.
And I think it is right not to race on hard ground anymore. I doubt any trainers would want to run their horses on it anyway.
It would be interesting to know what field sizes were like in the earlier era when fast ground was more commonplace. I seem to recall quite large fields, which doesn’t seem to fit in with lots of horses breaking down with tendon injuries all the time.
I don’t believe there is anything wrong with decent fast ground.
Exactly. Kyprios broke the record by nearly 3 seconds. The cotc will water tonight but only to take the jar out of the ground due to it being a very hot,drying day. It should not be up to just the coct to decide what’s best for horses.Why not ask the trainers and jockeys. Just a thought.
5 of Goodwood’s 8 races went under standard and the slowest race of the day (the first race) was just 1.33s slow. The ground description started off as good and then went to good (good to firm in places) after race 2 to good to firm after race 5.
Only the Group races had single digit fields and the 6F Maiden had 14 runners and there was a total of 7 non-runners where unsuitable ground was the reason given (was surprised Trueshan wasn’t pulled out either). For me Watering to maintain existing ground conditions i.e. no quicker than good to firm should be the only reason cotc’s get the hoses out and I wouldn’t be shocked if that is what happens at Goodwood tonight and it gets 5mm or so.
As for Ascot, watering on quick ground where it really doesn’t have sufficient time to get properly into the ground can cause the very top layer of ground to be loose (where it can be kicked up) even though it is still quick ground underneath that layer.
You could also argue that the big gaps in the King George were as a result of horses being taken way out of their comfort zone early on (most having not had to face quick ground combined with a fast pace prior to the race) and their jockey’s accepting they had no more to give and easing down further out than they might have normally done.
I think he was probably trying to err on the side of caution in watering on the Friday to ensure that the ground on the big day wasn’t too fast – was it just O’Brien that was more vocal about ground conditions (trying to use it as an excuse to explain away another poor run) or were there a lot more trainers equally as unhappy with the state of the ground?
CAS,
Again using the 1913 annual, small fields were fairly common. As an example, the three day Ebor meeting had five races with four runners or less – the four day Leger meeting had five such races, plus a walkover.
An enterprising trainer with a sound horse could make hay, as shown by the exploits of Light Brigade, a 3yo traind by George Lambton. He won a match over 1M 4F at Redcar on Aug 13th, a match over 1M 2F at Stockton on Aug 21st, a match at York on Aug 27th and a match at York on Aug 28th, both those over 1M 4F.
Those four wins netted him just over three grand in prize money – the Leger that year was worth £6,450.
The bigger fields tended to be in 2yo races and selling contests. The biggest I could find at those meetings was 22 runners in a 5F nursery at Doncaster – first prize £211!
More the case that because Goodwood, for the first time I can recall at this meeting, put the stalls in the centre for all the sprints, the ground right up against the rail hadn’t been used – certainly not the first 4F from the 6F start at least. So the winner and second were running on fresh ground, most of the rest on what had had been churned up on the first four days.
I just wish this had occurred to me on Saturday morning. The CSF paid £508!
The times were all fast at yesterday, although it appears in athletics terms they were “wind assisted”. However, the ground must have been closer to good to firm than good to soft.
The horses seemed to like it, especially City Of Troy.
Flat racing on fast ground produces top class racing. Who would have thought it?
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