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“Cobblers Dream given Cheltenham target…” read the Racing Post headline after the Lanzarote Hurdle.
Trainer Jane Williams wasn’t impressed and tweeted: “Headlines like this are ridiculous. The horse and connections have just won a major handicap with 20 runners worth 100k. Make the headline about that.”
It’s not just the Racing Post, the whole media are at it – the “Road To Cheltenham” seems to start just after they’ve weighed in after the Martin Pipe at the last one.
Never in the history of sport has one event within a sport dominated focus so completely.
Lingfield this Friday and Sunday provides an antidote to all that.
So what if it’s the “Heavy ground Festival.”
The Jumps season needs to start being about the Jumps season again.
I can’t wait and if anyone disagrees I’ll set the dogs on them, err, once I’ve acquired some dogs, that is.
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"It is good to see Lingfield starting to thrive again as a jumps track and I hope next weekend is a great success.
Agree the jumps season as a whole needs a boost. The focus on Cheltenham now is totally out of proportion.
Jane Williams is right. There are lots of other races offering good prize money. If I was training, I doubt I would even look at the festival and would target the valuable prizes elsewhere.
Good for Jane and its about time there was a lot more of this. Paul Nichols is hitting back a bit too
Its getting to the stage that im actually resenting cheltenham a bit
Wish all the best to Lingfield but pitching the entrance at £35 was not clever? It wouldn’t put me off (im heading for ascot Saturday) but surely it will others?
In theory it is a great idea but I fear you may get a lot of second or third tier runners turning up with maybe the odd outsider for Cheltenham thrown in – that being said it is heartening to see that at the moment the decs for Friday for all bar one of the seven races are comfortably in the double digits (13 & 14 runners) with two currently having 20 & 21 runners respectively.
Lets just hope the weather gods look kindly on Lingfield and we don’t get an abandonment as is usually the case with jumping at the track – the ground is already heavy as it is and may not be able to take much rain.
Completely agree with the thread starter. It’s become tedious, and tiresome. The whole point of a season in sports is the action and contests throughout the campaign, not one event at the end.
I’m trying to think when this obsession (as that’s what it is) started. I reckon the last 10 years or so.
A lot of people don’t realise, but it’s harming the sport in a big way. More races added, that aren’t really needed, just dilutes the product. NH isn’t big enough to justify all the races, there simply aren’t enough top quality horses around.Good luck to Lingfield for this initiative!!
I think the obsession has always been there but with now two dedicated racing channels showing every race meeting plus the advent of social media it is now much more publicised and in the public domain than it ever was before, when you would only have your 3 or 4 televised races from BBC, ITV7 from World of Sport (back in the day) and after that CH4 Racing which would show 4 or 5 races.
I hope Lingfield is a success but unfortunately it will most likely depend on it unearthing a decent horse(s) that I am afraid to say may need to have success at Cheltenham or Aintree to encourage the jumping part of this fixture to be continued because I don’t see them throwing that kind of prize money out year on year just to see the lower level horses turning up for a chance to grab a big pay day.
Fingers crossed.
LD,
You could make the same argument about ARC throwing prize money at lower level horses in respect of the AW Championship meeting held on Good Friday. Look back through the past results and very few of the names of the winners will mean much – they haven’t been future Classic or Royal Ascot winners.
But ARC have persisted with the project and at the new venue this year, Newcastle will provide just over a million pounds in prize money. And almost £400k on the same day at Lingfield for a card of sub 100 handicaps designed to reward horses that have supported AW racing through the winter.
My view is that so long as they are attracting terrestrial TV coverage and decent crowds, the quality of the horses won’t be an issue. It’s not as if any of these races are going to be won by Class 5/Class 6 handicappers – it’ll be good horses, just not the stars. And none the worse for that.
I would agree AP.
The metrics for success this weekend will be the size and competitiveness of the fields, betting turnover and viewing figures.
RP can’t wait to speculate about Cheltenham targets for a Lingfield Million winner.
BUY THE SUN
Spot on, TTC.
This Cheltenham Festival obsession is like a contagious disease and I even see signs of it spreading onto this forum at times.
Can’t any horse win a Jumps race anymore without people speculating whether or not it is good enough to go to Cheltenham?
This will be a good meeting and offers opportunity to decent horses who thrive in testing ground.
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"A bloated event, where the best no longer meet the best. Hardly worth obsessing about all season.
As an aside, I’ve noticed various media / online outlets sneakily talking about market moves in the “Five Championship Events”. The dreaded Ryanair is NOT a bloody “Championship Event” in my book, and should never have been upgraded to Grade 1 status.
Looking forward to Lingfield at the weekend. Especially if The Mighty Cthulhu runs on Sunday. Haway the Gosh.
BUY THE SUN
Interesting that Goshen/Cthulhu is entered in the Cheltenham Festival Betting Guide Hurdle.
Im totally with everyone here. Trainers don’t help either with the Henderson and O’Neills “only one day matters!” bollocks
Well excuse me for laughing like a drain if one of their charges gets carried out or brought down on the “one day that matters”
Aside from the Rynair, the GC is also not the championship stayers chase. Thats the
KGV IMO. Routinely produces higher rated winners (although this isn’t the ideal time to mention that..) and a fairer quicker searching test.Ian. You are right about it infecting the forum. If these people think “only four days matter!” then perhaps they can **** off and not appear until those four days each year whence they will be greeted with a “who are you?”
And doesn’t help having that whole separate room for Cheltenham 22. very tempted to go on each and every thread there and type “who gives a ****”
Problem is that the execs at Cheltenham/The Jockey Club Racecourses do not care what a few anoraks (I think we all count as those, even if we may not individually own any anoraks!) on an Internet forum think.
All that matters to them is selling loads of tickets to the lager-swilling masses, sadly.
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