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Hot on the heels of Zanirs success earlier this month, there has been another British winner in France in the last hour. The Nick Williams trained Maljimar has won a 20,000 Euro cross country steeplechase at Compiegne tonight. In addition to this, both Williams and Lucy Wadham have entries at Enghien next week.
2:00 – Knockara Beau
2:30 – Local Hero
3:05 – Denman (Nap)
3:40 – Mister Apples
4:15 – Pepsyrock
4:50 – Hold Fast
5:25 – Megastar1:30 – Local Hero 150 EW (Banker)
2:05 – Bellvano 100 EW
2:40 – Mossley 50 EW
3:20 – Midnight Chase 50 EW
4:00 – Sericina 50 EW
4:40 – Qaspal 50 EW
5:15 – Pepe Simo 50 EWThere is an Irish pub just off the Reeperbahn – if you’re going down the Reeperbahn heading out of Hamburg, it’s on the left down a little side street (but still visible from the Reeperbahn). Theres a British pub there as well, I think it’s called the Welcomme Inn (or something like that). I’m not sure if they would show it though to be honest.
1:30 – Mr. Gardner 50 EW
2:05 – Knockara Beau 200 EW (Banker)
2:40 – Gauvain 50 EW
3:20 – Five For Three 100 EW
4:00 – Peplum 50 EW
4:40 – Mostly Bob 50 EW1:30 – Some Target 50 EW
2:05 – Megastar 150 EW (Banker)
2:40 – Mikael D’Haguenet 50 EW
3:20 – Golden Silver 100 EW
4:00 – Dantari 50 EW
4:40 – Kayef 50 EW
5:15 – Dynamic Approach 50 EW1:30 – Zaidpour 50 EW
2:05 – Ghizao 100 Win
2:40 – Fair Along 50 EW
3:20 – Dunguib 50 EW
4:00 – Quezac De La Roque (Banker) 200 EW
4:40 – Santera 50 EW
5:15 – Osric 50 EWNo problem. Hamburg, like most German cities, has nowhere near the amount of bookmakers you would find in a British city, but it shouldn’t be a problem finding somewhere to watch the Gold Cup. The Wettenleip Sports Bar on Steindamm, near the main train station is a decent place to watch racing and other sports (huge screen showing wall to wall Bundesliga matches). They usually show British racing there as well. The only thing is that Steindamm is in a red light district, so it can be slightly intimidating, especially in the evenings. Personally, I prefer the Albers bookmakers on Schanzenstrasse (that’s more a British style bookmakers), but it is a bit way out of the city and can be a bit tricky to find. There is also a bookmakers near the racecourse at Horn.
There are a couple of other bookmakers around. Where abouts in Hamburg will you be,maybe I can find something nearer to you.
Spoken to a French friend of mine who has the following news:
Madra Ocean – unfortunately he died at the water jump.
Quaker Mome – He was OK, and could even run in a similar chase at Nantes next week.
Larizia – She’s OK, but looked to have a slight cut of one of her front legs.
One horse you may have seen at Angers was Saga Mome, who won the big handicap despite giving lumps of weight away all round, and apparently, she could be on her way to England very soon!
Fair along ran a good trial yesterday, stayed on strongly and was infront after the post, the first 2 were out on there feet and he look as fresh as paint unsaddling. Bit small for the national but really tries over fences and is quite clever when he gets one wrong
Fair Along has also got an entry in the Nakayama Grand Jump 7 days later on April 16th. It will be interesting to see where they go with the horse, but personally I would head to Japan – I think the 2m 5f round Nakayama would suit the horse better than 4 1/2 miles round Aintree, and the prize money is better in Japan of course.
The Czech trained horse Klip won two races in his career – the first one at Slusovice in 1999 and the second one in Pardubice in 2007. Eight years – could that be the record?
First off, what a distressing experience for those directly involved at the course be they connections or spectators.
Clearly racing should not have gone ahead after the incident and that it did was a mistake.
However, today provided an unprecedented set of circumstances and I will await the outcome of the investigation before making any judgements.
We have already had the burnt mouth’s that weren’t and the singed lead rein that wasn’t. That shows just how speculation can muddy waters.
Plenty of posts on what is obviously a very emotive subject, but the posting by Zanybody pretty much echoes my own personal thoughts on this. Back in December 2007, I was in the very same parade ring at Newbury as Christian had Swordsman running, and his American owners could not be there, so I was there on their behalf. If todays incident would have happened then an Swordsman had been a fatality, I really don’t know what I would have done. I do know that I would have had to tell the owners that their horse had died from an apparent electric shock in the parade ring, and I would have probably done it with tears streaming down my face. I really feel for the connections of the two horses that died, especially the lad/lass looking after them.
An earlier posting mentioned that Keith Goldsworthy saw the lights in the grandstand ‘going on and off like a disco’. To me, that would have said that the electrical issue may not just be confined to the parade ring, and I for one would have maybe been more than a little apprehensive letting a horse run in the race, having just seen possible electrical issues both in the parade ring and grandstand – could the electrical issue have maybe affected the actual racecourse itself? That’s what would have worried me. If I was looking after a horse for an owner, my immediate thought would have been for that horses safety. Again, this is my own personal view, but in light of what had happened, were I in a position of owner or owners representative, I would not have been happy to let the horse go on to the course, and would have wanted to get the horses out of there as soon as possible, purely for their safety.
I can see that one or two posters have got very strong, possibly even controversial views on this. I don’t want to play devils advocate here and say who is right and who is wrong, but having been in the very same parade ring just over 3 years ago, if the incidents of today had happened then, I would have simply wanted to get out of the place as soon as possible, both for the safety of myself and the horse. However, as I said, this would be purely my decision. As Zanybody rightly points out, awaiting the outcome of the investigation is the correct thing to do as speculation can be a dangerous thing. However, as at the time of the incident, it would have been impossible to confirm exactly where the electrical issue was, I would have personally erred on the side of caution.
Right, Christian has got back to me, but not only has he confirmed that it’s NOT Palmridge, but he’s actually been speaking to a few other people about it – including a very famous French trainer! And they’ve pretty much all come back with pretty much the same information:
I don’t know who thé horse is, but it looks like a Macaire horse. With Fougedoire silks.
So basically, despite getting the creme de le creme of European trainers involved, we don’t appear to have got much further! At least we can see that I was way off with the McManus silks, however, no-one seems to know where the course is.
I’ve sent the photo to a French mate of mine, and he’s come back to me in the last few minutes, and to be honest, if he’s right, I’m quite embarrassed, as he think it’s a German horse called Palmridge owned by JP McManus and trained by one of the Doumens (he wasn’t sure which), running at Lyon about 5 years ago – and you’ve guessed it, Christian used to train him!! Apparently, Palmridge ran in a hurdle race at Lyon, and won. I certainly think the bank in the background could be the one at Lyon – on the cross country course at Lyon, the horses go through the trees, then literally drop down back onto the course and go over a bank which looks very much like the one in the picture.
I’ve sent the picture off to Christian, and I’m sure he’ll be able to say if the horse is indeed Palmridge.
The colours look like JP McManus’ and judging by the cross country bank in the background, I’d be tempted to say Punchestown, but I couldn’t be 100%. The bank to be honest looks more like something from a French course like Le Lion d’Angers or Lyon, but I’m not aware of JP ever having any runners there.
There is a sand steeplechase course at Honzrath in south west Germany. It’s only used once a year unfortunately. However, the Swiss seem to have found the answer to holding hurdle races in winter – stage them on the snow in the Swiss ski resort of Arosa! You can find a bit of footage here:
http://www.myswitzerland.com/video/?id=1547
A good idea from Joncol as well regarding undersoil heating. If football grounds can do it, then surely racecourses can! My idea would be to pick half a dozen courses which stage top races throughout the winter (any more might be too expensive) – off the top of my head, I would say Cheltenham, Kempton, Ascot, Wetherby, Newbury and Chepstow. That way, you could maybe make rescheduling races that much easier, say for example if a couple of smaller courses lose their meetings, they could always be transferred to one of the ‘heated’ tracks.
Vincennes stages a tremendous Christmas card of nine races in excess of 600K prize money this year. Even when Christmas is not on a Sunday the prize money there rivals the best of what British racing has to offer at the busiest of times.
There used to be quite a bit of trotting on Christmas Day – Padova in Italy and a couple of other places used to stage Christmas Day trotting, but now it’s just Vincennes in France and Bergsaker in Sweden as far as I’m aware.
You’re right about the excellent prize money on offer at Vincennes, however Christmas Day in Japan sees the Nakayama Daishogai Steeplechase. It’s usually run on Boxing day but they’ve brought it forward by a day this year, so this will be staged tomorrow with incredible prize money of £1.15 million, making it I believe the second richest jumps race in the world.
