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<br>It isn’t just that the horses seem to run less, many trainers also seem terrified of carrying top weight in the big races.
How many times recently have we read a quote in the week before one of the features handicaps to the effect that ‘my horse won’t run if the weights go up’.
The result is that all the best horses stay at home and we see races like the Tote Gold Trophy with a top weight rated 157, but only three runners set to carry 11st+
Or the Racing Post Chase, with a top rated of 152.
Not only did horses run more often in the 70’s and 80’s, they cheerfully carried bigger weights as well. And it didn’t seem to do them any harm – for example, Desert Orchid won three handicaps under 12st in the season 88/89 prior to taking the Gold Cup.
And he won the Racing Post Chase under 12st 3lbs, at a time when I believe his official rating was 183.
AP
AP
<br>The over-riding importance of Cheltenham isn’t just in the minds of owners and trainers. Every year I get invited to do two or three Cheltenham preview sessions and at the one held by the LRC, around three hundred people regularly attend.
These previews are held all over the country, as well as in Ireland and I’d guess the total attendance is on a par with a good Saturday racecourse crowd.
But I’ve never been asked to do a preview for any flat meeting!
I don’t think it’s the program that’s at fault, but the modern fashion not to run top class horses in handicaps. The season didn’t revolve around Cheltenham when Desert Orchid was turning out in the Tingle Creek, the Victor Chandler, the Racing Post Chase and the Whitbread.
But the likes of Best Mate, Flagship Uberalles, One Man etc have very rarely turned out in a handicap. If we could look forward to Best Mate carrying 12st in the Hennessey, as Burrough Hill Lad did (not to mention Arkle), then the anticipation would eliminate any talk of Cheltenham.
But as long as our superstar is trained by someone that doesn’t like running horses from May to October (ground too fast), or in January and February (ground too soft), there’s not much chance of a change in the trend.
BTW, that’s not intended as a criticism of HK, just a comment on her own reported remarks. Her handling of Best Mate has been superb and beyond criticism in my view and his Gold Cup win last March is a race I can recall without any need to use a VCR. The continued enthusiasm of Edredon Bleu last season was another testament to her skills – she is undoubtedly a great trainer of chasers.
She has used the approach of not running horses too often and giving them a break before Cheltenham, and it’s worked so well that others were bound to follow her example.
AP
<br>Nick,
You say ‘someone is certainly guilty IMO’.
But guilty of what? Are you saying that Nimello was deliberately stopped? Are you saying that the Berry yard ran Hillside Girl whn they knew it was lame, or that Berry ordered the jockey to pull the horse up.
Or has the farrier conspired with the jockeys to have these horses stopped?
Isn’t this exactly the problem the JC face – difficult to obtain a conviction if you can’t even specify the exact nature of the crime.
<br>AP
<br>Gentlemen,
I’m not suggesting that there isn’t a problem, neither am I ‘shrugging my shoulders’.
I’m just pointing out that you’ve all apparently decided the farrier did it, when the evidence is flimsy to say the least. All we have is the unsupported information provided by the Post based on unidenitifed sources, presumably within Betfair.
At the moment, we have no solid proof that anyone ‘did’ anything to actively bring about the defeats of Hillside Girl and Nimello. We only know that the betting patterns were highly suspicious and indicated that one or more persons were certain these horses wouldn’t win.
I have to say I’m still unconvinced by the tale that the farrier lost £100k laying a horse in a Wolverhampton seller when the SP was 14/1. Where the hell did he find the backers? Or have I missed something and are the outsiders in AW sellers regularly attracting more business than horses at the same sort of price in big handicaps?
AP
Tdk,
Oh come on – do you really believe that the trainer and lad responsible for the horse aren’t going to notice if the shoes have been fitted wrongly in the hours between it being done and the horse actually racing.
Do you know any lad that would happily allow a farrier to mistreat one of his horses?
Not to mention the fact that Nimello is trained in Yorkshire and I’m fairly sure there’s more than one farrier working in the north of England.
If this chap did lay Nimello, does it automatically mean he’s bent?
There seems to be an awful lot of fingers being pointed on the basis of very little hard evidence.
AP
<br>Paul,
Get a sense of humour please – regular customers/regular losers is a gag line.
Perhaps if I spiced it up with laughing faces and ‘ha-ha’ you’d be able to spot that?
Just out of interest, if you don’t like me offering my opinions, whose opinions would you prefer me to offer?
AP<br>
<br>James,
No argument here about the extent or rate of change. There are days when I feel very old indeed.
I was never sure what ‘professional punter’ meant anyway. Perhaps I should stick to the job title on my car insurance – ‘Market Analyst’.
I just didn’t tell them I meant the betting market rather than the stock market.
I’m left wondering who’s losing this money the arbers are winning. Given that Betfair are taking their cut as well, there must be a lot more losers on the exchanges than ever appear on Fantasy Island (aka the BF forum)
Like you, I woud find spending my life stuck in front of a PC pinching a tenth of a point here and a tenth there soul destroying. Then again, maybe I’d view that differently if I had a mortgage, a wife and kids and a couple of credit cards.
Like the opportunities I founnd with spread betting a few years ago, which are now long gone, I suspect the the funding from losing punters will dry up over time.
AP
<br>James,
I’d always associated the people that run Ladbrokes with having three figure IQ’s.
They must easily be able to identify the punters that are using this approach, so why don’t they restrict their stakes, just like they do with any other successful punter.
If an arber is being offered £5 at the price and the rest at SP, his game is ended and Ladbrokes can hold the price and lay it to their regular customers. (I use the term ‘regular customers’ in it’s bookmaking sense, where of course it really means ‘regular losers’)
AP
<br>Last time I went to the Derby was in 1969. Took my place in a stand beyond the winning post, which is now the owners and trainers bar. The Queen and the Royal party used to walk up the course to visit the paddock, which was then about a furlong past the line on the far side of the course.
As she passed in front of us, the crowd gave three cheers (it was a more deferential world in 1969), then as quiet descended again, a loud Cockney voice from the back of the stand called out –
"What are you all cheering for, she’s betting with our money"
Even the old Duke of Norfolk cracked a smile and the Queen Mum looked as if she was going to wet herself.
Alan
<br>Marling,
Do you not follow cricket or rugby?
Both have been persistently and constantly criticised in the press, by people from inside and outside each sport.
Rugby has torn itself into pieces over turning professional and the subsequent debates on promotion and relegation have been used to run down the administration of the sport.
And the cricket press is almost entirely nergative about the England team, county cricket, one day cricket, the structure of the game, the authorities and anything else you care to name.
One of the great difficulties of writing about racing is that every interest group (owners, trainers, breeders, racecourses, BHB, even ATR) has their own agenda. They all use propaganda and spin as relentlessly as the government, leaving the journalist to try to sort out the truth.
As for youngsters breaking in, is it really any more difficult than with any other sport – after all we’ve only just got rid of the BBC motor racing and rugby commentators who were both about 80 years old.
Alan
<br>Redman,
We are, of course, a nation of conniving corrupt cheating scumbags, totally lacking in morality and always on the lookout for a chance to make an illegal buck.
That’s why so many of us were sent to Australia in the first place.
As an exchange user who simply uses my experience and interprets what I see in my own way, I’m getting heartily sick of this constant campaign you are waging – and I’m starting to wonder whose interests you believe you represent?
Alan
<br>Not sure what criteria were used to make the selections, but personally I’d exclude jockeys and trainers. They take a living from racing and the likes of Piggot, Dettori, McCoy, O’Brien have generated a massive following within the sport and recognition outside it. But despite their achievements, they didn’t have as much impact on the sport as my choice.
I’d actually vote for someone that didn’t make the final list, Lord George Bentinck. In a short life, he introduced a great many things into racing that we now take for granted and had the influence to get his ideas accepted without making enemies.
He ran Goodwood, and made that course an important venue, as well as devising jockeys colours, racecards, number boards, flag starts, scheduled starts, parade rings and the canter down in front of the crowd. And all that in the period between 1820 and 1840.
And no, I never met him myself ……….
Alan
<br>The extra day on the Friday in 1995 was only added to support Comic Relief and various roles were auctioned off, such as starter, judge etc, to raise funds.
I’m not likely to forget the day as I still carry around a Tote ticket which includes 5 of the 6 winners in the Jackpot to a 20p stake (total outlay £56). I missed the EBF final winner, the well backed favourite Bear Claw.
If any of my four selections in that race had been a non runner, I’d have been on the winner automatically and my ticket would have been worth £57,600. If I’d known that in advance, I’d have gone down to the start and made sure one of them was a non runner!
Alan
<br>I wonder if the ‘interested parties’ they consulted included the racecourses that race either side of the Festival.
Uttoxeter have spent years building up a decent program around the Midlands Grand National, based on races that don’t clash with Cheltenham. The more horses that go to Cheltenham, the fewer there are to go elsewhere.
Pursue this to it’s logical conclusion and we might as well extend the meeting to seven days. They could include a race for four year old chasers trained in Somerset, a 3M chase for grey horses only, a six mile cross country race for 12 year olds and upwards, a two mile hurdle for pregnant mares, a three mile hurdle for horses under 15 hands – I’m sure we can come up with other ideas to fill even more days…..
Alan
<br>Mark Johnston must pay his stable staff more than anybody else if he thinks they can afford a PC, an Internet link and enough in the bank to fund a Betfair deposit.
And I can’t think of many trainers that would even know how to get in to BF, let alone work out how to use it – and they live on overdrafts as well.
But I agree it should be ruled out and I’d have no problems with the same rule for owners in respect of their own horses.
Alan
<br>Bear,
A Gold Cup, the King George with several horses, a Stayers Hurdle, a Triumph Hurdle, not to mention the world wide wins of Jim and Tonic and numerous big races in France.
Difficult to think of many that could match that and all achieved with French jockeys as well!
And he gives a better interview in English than any of our trainers could manage in French.
Alan
<br>DJ,
Simple – I do the afternoons on ATR because I enjoy it and it provides a break from the routine. I live alone and the job is a solitary one, so the contact is also enjoyable.
It’s the same with writing – I write because I enjoy writing and always have, right back to producing ‘compositions’ for school when I was a kid.
It’s safe to say that I’ve never made enough from media work in a year to match the average weekly wage. The two books I published produced royalties over five or six years that were less than a fireman’s annual income. And I never actually received 25% of that money as the publisher went bust.
I didn’t go seeking the work with ATR – they came to me – and since gambling is by it’s nature uncertain (as your accounts showed until November), why turn down other income.
I’m not going to enter a debate about who’d do best etc – not sure it’s relevant anyway.
Alan
