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… at the age of 28 in America.
[edit – sorry Rory, should have seen your post first!]
(Edited by RichK at 1:30 pm on Oct. 28, 2003)
:biggrin:
I know Dawn Run was a popular winner and all that, but everytime I see the race again, I’m willing Wayward Lad to hold back the mare. One day he will (just as crisp will last home one day) :)
The horse didnt stay up the hill full stop. If he had a prep run, i dont think it would be any different. I know it was an exciting, probably the most exciting of any gold cup, but Dawn Run in the did win by well over a length in the end, closer to two. The fact that she was able to win the champion hurdle over 2m seems to be forgotten by those who knock her.
Wayward lad was slightly before my time, and i dont appreciate him as much as some. I can only remember him well from the major races, gold cups, KGs, and a race at Liverpool where he fell. Lovely looking horse.
He was indeed the most sublime jumper of a fence ~ really poetry in motion, but I do have a book of horses to follow dated 1980/81 which noted him as being an immensely talented but error prone novice chaser. I’m always amused by that thought…
he was definately the moral winner!
There was a very generous mares allowance which made it for Dawn Run. Why do these allowances exist in championship races when horses are fully matured and developed? fair enough for fillies, but fully grown big mares?
Wayward, like the great Desert orchid, was never really a Cheltenham horse and didnt have the luck that desert did
Personally i got a bit sick of some of the drivel that surrounded Dawn Run although the accident was sad
I was going to give a prize for the first person to mention the five pounds allowance. An arguement that doesnt stand much analysis IMHO.
Tell me how many mares have used this generous allowance to run in a gold cup, never mind to win it.
Why are there separate races for mature and developed men and women in athlethics? Is there any world record held by a woman that is better than the mens record? Why?
Anyway, I have a hobby horse on Dawn Run and dont mean to hijack WL RIP. He obviously was a very good horse, but he wasnt the best horse not to win a gold cup, and he wasnt the moral winner of the 86 gold cup.
Wayward lad
No doubt about it, a fabulous horse. Totally agree with MH though, this horse did not stay up the hill. The same thing happened in the 1987 GC. Wayward Lad came to the last with every chance, but just couldn’t hold on .<br>At least he had a long and happy retirement.
….unlike Silver Buck. Was reading recently about his demise, when in the veteran stage and surely only months from retirement. Now there was an end that didn’t fit a great horse.
Silver Buck was still in training when he was killed at the Dickenson’s yard. He ran into a wall after being spooked (he was very highly strung).
I forget the details – Bradley describes the event in that book someone wrote for him. IIRC he was blamed at the time, but I don’t think it was necessarily his fault.
Silver Buck was apparently always an extremely nervous horse, and although close to retirement, he remained in training at the start of the 1984/85 season at the age of 12.
No one knows quite what happened, and it seems bizarre that a horse of his experience should react in such a way, but just as Graham Bradley began to mount him to go to the gallops, Silver Buck spooked and ran headlong into the wall of the stable yard at Harewood, sustaining fatal injuries.
I took it that he might be retired at the end of the 83/84 season, as he was patently in decline, and when he didn’t run in any of the early season events that he would be expected to contest, that’s exactly what I thought, until John Oaksey referred to "the ill fated Silver Buck" on Channel 4 (or was it still ITV then?). The words seemed as brutal as the event must have been.
He was one of my all time favourite horses and produced one of the great races when beating Night Nurse in the Embassy  Final at Haydock ~ he deserved better.
<br>
(Edited by rory at 8:05 pm on Oct. 28, 2003)
For the sake of interest, Wayward Lad’s Gold Cup record was as follows:
83 ~ 3rd beaten 6 1/2 lengths by Bregawn, ridden by Jonjo O’Neill @ 6/1<br>84 ~ PU behind Burrough Hill Lad, ridden by Robert Earnshaw @ 6/4 F<br>85 ~ 8th behind Forgive N’ Forget, ridden by Robert Earnshaw @ 8/1<br>86 ~ 2nd beaten 1 length by Dawn Run, ridden by Graham Bradley @ 8/1<br>87 ~ 5th behind The Thinker, ridden by Graham Bradley @11/1
One of my very favourite horses from the NH code. Brave, talented and game, he was a credit to the Dickinson yard. Reading here about him has brought many happy memories flooding back, including the 1986 Gold Cup which, like many people, is one of my favourite races.<br>Glad he had a long and comfortable retirement. He certainly deserved it.
Wayward Lad was indeed a terrific jumper of fences but I always thought the thing that set him apart was his speed away from a fence. He seemed to land running in a way I’d never seen before and haven’t seen since. At their peak the Dickinsons had a conveyor belt of top-class jumpers, trained and schooled to perfection, and this fellow epitomised it.
What a horse he was, a tremendous jumper of fences, one of the best I’ve seen, and a most striking-looking individual.
Like some others, I was never really taken by all the hype about Dawn Run, fine mare though she was, and I would have preferred Wayward Lad to win. (Though no doubt I backed something else that finished out of the numbers!).
I don’t think he quite stayed 3 1/4 miles, and perhaps preferred a flat track.
Incidentally, if any one from BBC radio looks at this thread, could he/she inform Luke Harvey that the horse he remembers pipping Wayward Lad in the Gold Cup wasn’t Desert Orchid. If Harvey spent less time giggling and twittering, the 6.55 racing bulletin on Five might occasionally contain something intelligible or interesting.<br>
I think Night Nurse – one of my earliest racing memories is watching her p**s
up in a three horse race – must have been some horse. Officially rated the best hurdler ever. However many on here, seems to decry the achievements of dawn run. I know i am beginning to sound paranoid, but i am trying to figure it out in my head. Its the anti-hype that the english use against each irish horse that is proclaimed as great. We got it right about Arkle and our horses repuations are still paying for it. But, pass a 5y0 irish-bred onto Henrietta knight and watch the defence of the horse.How far clear was Dawn Run ahead of the beloved Desert Orchid, Very Promising, and teh supreme novice winner Buck House in teh champion hurdle. Had Cima not been in the race, she would have beaten a decent field a long long way, yet fools trying to misconstue the form always come out with teh CIMA arguement. The fact that she lay up with a breakneck gallop set by desert orchid, quickened off the turn, dessie long since gone, and stayed on up the hill was remarkable.
She also ran gaye brief to half lenght as a novice, and having run the day before. She beat Gaye Brief at Kempton also.
The gold cup was her fifth chase, a month later she beat the queen mother winner over 2m by 5l off levels. Just because it is assumed, by non-irish people, that every thick irishman/woman orgasms at the mention of the words Dawn Run, shouldnt be a reason to jusge her racing career subjectively. her victory got people who had no interest in racing to like the sport, maybe those scenes p**s
ed someone off.Dawn Run, possibly the most overrated jumper in history. Have you actually checked the ratings, or is it the most overhyped horse in history. I think in the 17 years since her gold cup win, there has been 1 CH winning mare, 1 GC placed mare, no instance of a horse completing the double. Celtic Shot did give it a go.
There are very few horses, mares or geldings, that have the versatility and speed to win a champion hurdle, and the stamina to win a greulling gold cup. one again run at a breakneck speed, with Dawn Run in the van the whole way. Run n skips, welsh national winner, stamina gave out in the race.
If lady rebecca won a stayers, there wouldnt be a word on the 5lb allowance.
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