Forum Replies Created
- Posts
Thank you for all the time and effort put in Astralcharmer. A couple of thoughts on that final table.
Five of the top ten operate in Warwickshire or Gloucestershire, all within 25 miles of the M5. Two more in Somerset also adjacent to the M5. That’s a major change from the dominance of Lambourn and Berkshire and Wiltshire generally as the centre of NH racing in the South, back when I started to follow the sport.
Equally surprising is that you have to go down to No 24 to find the first yard based in Yorkshire. Again a very dominant source of NH winners back in the 70’s and 80’s.
Field of Gold is an interesting horse. He made his reputation in races against his own age group, but if you look back now at the Irish 2000 Gns and the St James Palace, the horses he beat have done nothing to boost the form of those races.
As soon as FoG came up against older horses, he got beaten. Excuses were made for Goodwood and Ascot, but perhaps the reality is that he isn’t really a superstar, just the best of a moderate bunch of 3yo milers.
We’ll learn a lot more about him at Sandown, where the daft conditions allow a Classic winner to run with no penalty, while Zeus Olympios gets a 3lb penalty for winning a weak Group 2.
Well there is a 12F Novice Stakes at Southwell next Saturday evening, that he could enter tomorrow. He’d have a double penalty and as the race includes 3-y-olds, that would mean him carrying 11st 2lbs. But that’s still less than he’s had in most hurdle races.
And it would give him the third run he needs to qualify for Class 1 and 2 handicaps, which are the only ones he can get into off his 101 handicap rating.
Of course this would be a sensible piece of placing with a clear objective, so not at all likely to be adopted by the prevaricating boss of Seven Barrows.
The stupidity of a system based on numbers is that you end up with the same rules applying to races as different as a 3-y-old juvenile hurdle and the Grand National.
Or on the flat, same numbers for the Brocklesby Stakes and the Cesarewitch.
It’s a sound argument, but it runs up against he fact that there are no Novice or Beginners Chases at this time of the year, only novice handicap chases.
The BHA, in their wisdom, opted to remove all such races from the program between April 1st and September 1st, with the exception of Graded Novice Chases run at Aintree.
Young Getaway could have waited for a novice handicap chase, but they are few and far between, and finding one in your local area, over the desired distance and handicap rating band, would be a matter of luck.
Big sigh of relief at Newbury office, CH entered just after 11am.
As Yeats reports, watering under way to ensure he runs.
Surprise, surprise, the John Porter is now being run as the third race on the card.
But so far, no sign of the star performer amongst the entries. Perhaps the ‘good to firm’ is going to deter Mr Henderson.
ERL,
The veterans chases qualifiers are all rated 0-150, so he’d need to run badly for about two years to get down to a mark that would let him run in those.
Quite difficult to place becomes almost impossible to place!
But, but, weren’t we told that reducing the field size would make it safer and reduce the number of fallers.
That heavy rain during the 1:55 probably didn’t help. Rain on watered ground can make the surface very slippery, affecting both take off and landing for the horses.
Much the most worrying sight for me was the fact that in places there was nothing covering the hard core of the fences on the second circuit. Very noticeable from the head on shot at Bechers when you look at the previous fence in the background.
Never seen so many hurdles totally flattened either. Are those padded hurdles difficult to hammer into position? Or does the course need better trained staff at each obstacle?
LD73,
I reckon there would have been a lot more complaints if the BHA had done as you suggest and let those meetings go ahead.
Because nobody would have been happy if they found out they weren’t getting any prize money. I’d suggest that the reason this outfit weren’t given a licence is because they couldn’t come up with guarantees for the necessary funds. This is what happened leading up to the original Great Leighs closure, when meetings were held and the BHA/Levy Board had to come up with the prize money when the owners couldn’t pay. Can’t blame the BHA for once bitten, twice shy.
The ‘story’ is that they were trying to scratch the two horses from the Dante. But the initial entry stage for the Dante was today, with entries closing at midday.
So prior to midday, there was no entry to scratch, If they wanted to remove those names from the Dante, they needed to just cancel the entries, which could be done at any time up to midday.
On the Racing Admin system, cancel and scratch are two different functions. If they entered an instruction to scratch the horses with those names, that probably took effect on the 2000 Gns, as that would be the only race they had been entered for which was ‘Open for scratching’.
So not ‘the computer went bananas’, more a misunderstanding of the system.
Seems the handicapper has got caught up in all the hype about the Ebor and the Melbourne Cup.
The runner-up at Southwell was giving CH 5lbs and is now rated 85, so that’s a 95 performance at best by CH.
The runner-up at Kempton was at level weights (bar a 1lb weight for age allowance) and he’s also been given a mark of 85. Even allowing for CH having a fair bit in hand there, I couldn’t rate that higher than 95 either.
The John Porter is currently scheduled to be the first race on the card, off at 1:25. I can see that being changed when Newbury get the scent of a bigger than usual crowd!
Running a horse called Albert Einstein again and expecting a different result may be optimistic.
First thing to say is there’s no possibility of a passport being at the start – how would it get there and who’d be holding it. I’ve owned enough horses and attended enough races to know that passport is only produced in the stables during the pre-race identity and medical check.
I’ve also seen enough horses withdrawn at the start after being checked by the vet, to believe that the standard procedure is for the withdrawn horse to wait behind the stalls until the race has been started. And that the course would provide transport to the start for stable staff if the horse needs to led back with no jockey – this would be requested by the starter over the radio. The jockey would then be driven back to the stands.
This isn’t a common event and I’d hazard a guess that Billy The Kid has never been in this situation before. The vets assume he knows what he’s supposed to do without being told, he assumes he can ride the horse back as he’s only trotting, not going racing pace, the same as he would do with a horse that had failed to go into the stalls. A classic case of ‘what we have here is a failure to communicate’.
The stewards report gives no detail of what rule they say he has broken, which doesn’t help.
Just to add I’ve had this happen with a horse I owned. He unseated the jockey as they went onto the course, did a circuit of Chelmsford at a canter, and pulled up back at the gate where the jockey and stable staff were waiting for him. The racecourse vet refused to let the jockey remount and ruled the horse a non runner. The horse was fine, had used no more energy than you’d use getting to the mile start at Newmarket. By the time you add up the entry fee, transport, staff overtime, jockey fee (which still had to be paid in full), that cost me the best part of £500 to not get a run. So it’s no wonder connections get a bit irritated when this happens.
There was a more famous example, when Coneygree was withdrawn by the vet at Plumpton before his intended debut over fences. The vet insisted the horse was lame. Four months later he won the Gold Cup.
They should rename this as ‘Eight Equines In Need Of A Handicap Mark Novice Stakes’.
CH is going to win by a wide margin, because none of the others will want to get within hailing distance at the finish.
The rules on getting a handicap mark and how that is different depending on the type of race and the actual rating allocated get more complex by the year. Here’s the latest version, updated by the BHA quite recently:
https://rules.britishhorseracing.com/#!/book/34/chapter/s3535-weights-and-handicapping-code
