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Lostintranslation – even without his breathing issues he looked very poor at the 6th from home and also when he had to reach for the 4th last. No matter how many wind ops he might have, the jumping has to be sorted out, if you’re thinking GC.
Aso – would have been a 500/1 shot in a rather “normal” KG. Doesn’t stay one inch beyond 2m5f in graded company.
Footpad – another one who empties one stride beyond 2m5f and when push comes to shove his jumping tends to let him down. Please don’t tell me how good he was as a novice, because he is very mediocre outside novice company.
Cyrname – looked beaten and like walking on eggs as soon as they entered the back straight for the 2nd time. He didn’t stay the trip and away from his beloved Ascot, he might just be only a very good horse. But, I don’t think he has Festival winner written all over him. At least not in G1 company.
Clan Des Obeaux – someone had to win the race, so he was the last one standing. I rate him almost just as good as Silviniaco Conti was in his prime, but still 2-3 lbs below him. Nothing worthy of winning a Gold Cup.
If anyone could come up with a similar weak KG contest, please do so. At the moment I can’t recall a weaker KG in the past 30 years or so.
I’d say the 2003 renewal takes the first prize in this category. Won by the 11-y-old Edredon Bleu (25/1) from the 10-y-old Tiutchev (20/1), neither of whom had ever run further than 2m 5f previously in their careers.
So bad that the archetypal summer jumper, Swansea Bay, started 7/1 off the back of a win in three runner race at Haydock off a mark of 146.
Those were the times when Peter Bowen won a race or two in December with his summer jumpers.
You’re right about the first three home, however that was still a field of thirteen runners. With Fondmort – Cathcart Chase winner, Marlborough the winner of the William Hill NH Chase and Jair Du Cochet.
The quality in this years’ renewal was nowhere near to the one in the 2003 race.
Agree, it was dire. CDO is a good horse but he is very fortunate to have won two weak KGs.
The writing was on the wall for Cyrname when he really reached for one in the home straight on the first circuit. I backed him and my heart sank when I saw him do that!
Hope they manage to sort out LIT but 3m 2f with an uphill finish would make me very worried about his chances.
Mullins must be thinking that he is going to have a major chance if Kemboy and Al Boum Photo turn up fit and well.
Another point. The next time rich owners bleat about prize money, remind them only five horses turned up for one of the most prestigious and valuable races of the season.
Spot on…. Also only four runners in the Betfair Chase with Frodon and Ballyoptic nicely covering the expenses for the next 4-6 months.
How lucky were we, when Kauto, Denman and Long Run were around????
CDO well beaten in his last 3 races, yet strolls home yesterday. The KG has been seriously affected by the 3-mile Grade 1 at Leopardstown; in recent years that race has been much more competitive.
Kauto Star and Denman was a golden era. It is incredible to think how many KGs and GCs Kauto ran in. He was not wrapped in cotton wool either – he won a Tingle Creek en route to winning his first GC!
The power in the NH game has moved to Ireland so I accept this has had an impact on the KG. However, the small field looks terrible for British racing. Only 4 British trained horses in the second most important chase of the season. Are we seriously meant to believe that the combined stables of Henderson, Twiston Davies, King, Hobbs, Pipe, Skelton, Fry, Sherwood and Bailey (and others) had nothing they could run in the race?
This shortage of top class chasers has been developing over a period of years. Here’s an article I published shortly after the 2018 Cheltenham Festival – look in particular at the numbers in the novice chases, the races that should be supplying the KG runners now.
Consider these figures:
Arkle Chase 3 : Champion Hurdle 5 : RSA Chase 5 : Champion Chase 5
Ryanair Chase 3 : Stayers Hurdle 10 : Triumph Hurdle 4 : Gold Cup 6Those are the number of runners trained this side ofthe Irish Sea in the feature races at Cheltenham last month. They paint a bleak picture of the current state of NH racing in this country and show how dependent the festival has become on the Irish involvement to maintain competitive fields.
But does it really help the sport in the UK, if the bulk of the races (and the prize money) at our biggest meeting, are being farmed by Messrs Elliott and Mullins, whose industrial scale operations are backed by mega millionaires. The average owner in this country simply can’t compete and the incentive to get involved is lost. They can see that there is much less chance of winning a Cheltenham race than used to be the case, but more importantly, they can’t outbid the likes of Mr Ryanair and Richie Rich at the sales.
The current market for young NH horses is paradise for sellers – anything that can win an Irish point to point or a French bumper can be guaranteed to fetch six figures. Add in some reasonable form over hurdles and the numbers go sky high. I recently provided info on a French 4-y-old maiden hurdler that looked to have some potential as a future chaser to a possible buyer looking to replace an ageing star. When the connections were approached to ask if they would sell, the price tag quoted was 240,000 euros!
Check the results of any of the recent sales held at Cheltenham after racing (where potential buyers are wined and dined before bidding commences) and you’ll see plenty of prices like that paid for what would seem to anybody with common sense to be ordinary horses. Of course the auction company make great play of the successes, but a huge amount of money is spent on animals that end up in heavy ground novice handicaps, or worse. The top price paid at Cheltenham was £480,000 for an Irish point winner, sold to my namesake a year ago. That one was sent to Colin Tizzard, but dropped dead from a heart attack the first time they gave it a serious gallop at home.
Have a look at this replay of a French ‘bumper’ run in February:
The conditions of that race restricted it to 4-y-old maiden non thoroughbreds, born and bred in France, and as you can see, the track is hardly top drawer. The winner was offered at the Cheltenham sale staged during the festival week, and Willie Mullins paid £155,000 for him. He can do this because he knows that Richie Rich will cover the cost and isn’t bothered by the fact that he has very little chance of recouping that outlay.
The benefit of a mega rich owner to a trainer is not just that he can pay any price to obtain a horse he wants, he can operate on the basis that if one in every ten is a success, the owner is happy, even if the ten have cost several million to buy and keep in training. But for many UK trainers with owners that want horses costing around fifty grand, the market has become impossible.
And that’s the basic problem that has produced the shortage of UK trained festival horses – we don’t have enough owners that can afford (or are willing) to pay the entrance fee – i.e the sum now required to purchase a potentially top class horse.
I suppose it will be interesting to see what happens to the market if Gigginstown sticks to its policy of not buying any new stock. Six figure sums on geldings is madness when you think about logically.
The NH game is not in good shape and the success of Cheltenham, Aintree and Punchestown provides a false picture. A small group of millionaires is bank rolling the sport but the base of the pyramid is very weak.
Mullins and Elliot are clearly not interested in the KG. Mullins only ran Footpad because he cannot run them all against each other in Ireland and Footpad is not at the top of the pecking order. Has Elliot had a runner in the race since Don Cossack fell?
I too have been puzzling over this year’s KG – not just as a race but over the size of the field that lined up eventually, which was small even by the standards of the race. Here’s my contribution to what was going on there, based on an analysis of the original entries.
There were 37 original entries, from 16 trainers in England, Ireland and France. That looks healthy enough numerically. In quality terms too it had all the right names, including the top rated chasers in England and Ireland, the best 2 milers and 3 miles plus horses in England and Ireland, and the best English novices from the previous year. But dig a little deeper and it’s possible to see why the entries declined so steeply. Some of this is about general trends; some of it is about the tribulations of training racehorses, and then there are factors specific to this year’s race.
In general terms, the standout is how entries relate to trainers. 4 trainers were responsible for 4 or more original entries: WP Mullins (9); NJ Henderson (5); PF NIcholls (4); C Tizzard (4) – i.e. 60% of the original entries were from 4 trainers, with WPM providing ~25% of them. Other trainers with more than one entry were Noel Meade (3) and Venetia Williams. In terms of other English trainers, there were entries from Kim Bailey, Amy Murphy, Harry Whittington, Philip Hobbs, Tom George, Mick Channon and William Greatrex – none of which comprised the final field.
The pattern of entries from a small number of big yards is (yet) another indication of how highly concentrated the top chasers are. But it also suggests how an original healthy entry can get quickly whittled down. At the very most, the ‘big’ trainers nowadays will run two against one another in one G1 championship race. If they do otherwise, they lose the chance to win valuable additional prize money elsewhere. Mostly, they divide their horses according to where they think they have the best chance of winning. So, inevitably, a lot of the 37 original entries were never going to be running in the KG but elsewhere. Where?
The extended Christmas programme on both sides of the Irish Sea now offers trainers plenty of opportunities. Looking at the original 37 entries, and leaving out the 5 who lined up in the KG, 12 ran in other races over the immediate Christmas period. Typically this was at Ascot or Leopardstown. But, interestingly, only 3 of these (Monalee, Road to Respect and Bellshill) ran in the 3 mile G1 at Leopardstown, which is often seen as the direct competitor-race to the KG. Clearly, it isn’t as simple. Instead, 2 ran in the valuable Ascot chases the Saturday before Christmas, whilst others took in graded races at Kempton and Leopardstown, including the Desert Orchid and the 2m G1 at Leopardstown. Given an original entry comprising 2-3 milers this is what we should expect to find. The effect of strengthening and extending the Christmas programme, though, has been to spread the quality about – a pattern which will have long term implications for the KG.
In contrast, 15 of the original KG entries were taken out at the various stages and have not (yet) run over the Christmas period, although some are entered for NYD. Some of these were ruled out with problems, from a bruised foot (Thistlecrack) and under-performing on the gallops (Altior) to the more serious (Douvan, Vinndication). This is always going to happen with race horses. Some were shifted to the ‘by-pass the KG’ category. Again, that is understandable. Some in this category, like Bristol de Mai, have been there and not enjoyed it; why bother again? Others (like Defi and Min) had taken a different race programme and raced earlier in December.
But as significant, surely, is that this KG was shaping up to be a seriously ‘hot’ race. Seriously hot races often have small fields. So is it any real surprise that the likes of La Bague au Roi and Elegant Escape were diverted to more realistic targets, whilst previous winners and placed runners such as Might Bite and Native River stayed in their boxes. Probably not. If they were mine, I’d have done the same. “If you’re not in it, you can’t win it” maybe, but mileage matters with NH horses – and why add what was shaping up to be seriously hot miles to the clock when you can wait for another, more suitable, day.
With ref to the clock (my speed figures), Clan Des Obeaux last year when winning the King George earned a speed figure of 136 this year he earned a figure of 130 (-6lbs).
The main problem people have when assessing the race was the performance of lostintranslation who in my book is nothing more than a hype horse (shock/horror), whose best speed figure to date is a measly 125.
Flat: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1DDkTSTVlFh3qbylKq8bYYx7ZycOZNoQ8
NH: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1r1FcjEUEFRXIlojKmtcyGH6NIv9nbBdr
Mike.
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