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Neptune Collonges was improving hand over fist in the 2007/8 season…have a look at his form and he stayed on strongly as Kauto Star had been exhausted trying to keep tabs on Denman which caused him to tire close home,otherwise he would have finished further in front of Neptune Collonges,though the grey horse was no slouch himself !
Kauto Star only beat L’Ami by half a length at Newbury,and lost to Our Vic at Aintree,at level weights also,so what does that prove ?
Please stop meandering to the press over-hype about the Grand National.
There are fatalities in Horse Racing throughout the year,whether it be at Festival meetings,day to day affairs,and not just confined to NH racing as the Flat has it’s fair share too,and several horses are sadly lost on the gallops without any race being involved even !
Unfortunately,such is life…and ONE race should never be highlighted as the main cause of it all !
Denman beat Kauto Star 3 times out of 4 at Cheltenham and the 2009 race was a gimmee for Kauto Star as reflected by his odds on starting price, as everyone knew Denman was nowhere near the same horse !
IF he was he would never have started at 7/1 ,or been demolished the way he had been by Madison Du Berlais at Kempton who beat him a lot further than Kauto Star did,whilst Neptune Collonges was injured in the 2009 Gold Cup and didn’t show his true running either.
You cannot compare the form of those 2 Gold Cups…Denman was better when both arrived on the scene in the best of health for the 2008 race and that decided matters once and for all for most,irrespective of what happened afterwards.
Same here,The Young Fella, and the first race I ever recall seeing on TV was the 1961 race,as a mere 6 year old, when I picked the grey horse,Nicolaus Silver,my 8 years older brother is Nicholas,and my father backed it and it won at 28/1 !!
Great memories of all the races since then also,the greatest race for most being the 1973 race where the gallant front-running Crisp was caught by Red Rum in the shadows of the post having been almost a fence clear at one stage,carrying top weight of 12 stone and conceding 19lbs to the National legend, who won the race three times and was second twice,carrying 12 stone himself to win in 1974 !
So did the "U" horse win ?
Did you know there has never been a single winner of either the Grand National or the Derby whose name began with the letter U ??
A ridiculous comment, aji !
All true Horse Racing enthusiasts love the Grand National and many become interested in the Sport itself because of this amazing spectacle,admittedly it is half the spectacle it was before,understandably for safety reasons,but,nonetheless,the whole World watches it and envies this amazing British institution !
As for Long Run,he is only turning 8 so does have time on his side and maybe the Waley Cohen’s might fancy a crack at it….Garrison Savannah was the last Gold Cup winner to go close to winning it in 1991 and Long Run would have every chance too,granted a clear round.
Denman would certainly have gone for it had he not had his debilitating heart problems and there is every chance he could have won it,even with top weight.
He was certainly the best chaser not to win the Gold Cup in the past 50 years as far as I am concerned,though Fred Winter had an even better one in the yard in the ill-fated Killiney,who was expected to win at least 3 Gold Cups,such was the regard he was held in,and the likes of Champion Hurdlers,Bula and Lanzarote, tried to win it,though at least Fred finally trained the winner in 1978 when Midnight Court won at a very generous price of 5/2,though he missed out with the temperamental Brown Chamberlin, and I was there in 1984, when he veered to the right over the last 2 fences costing him the ground that Burrough Hill Lad beat him by !
Kauto Star was french-bred and was equally at home on soft ground as Denman was.
I wish people would stop clutching at straws and making excuses for Kauto Star’s defeats by Denman,and not exaggerate in saying that Denman could only beat him over 3m 2f at Cheltenham and nowhere else and over no other distance !
Denman was a front-runner and had Kauto Star beat at every point of the 2008 Gold Cup and if the race was run over 2 miles, and any distance you wish to mention, Denman would have prevailed.
He had enough speed to go close to winning the Sun Alliance Novices hurdle also,and I will even ignore the FACT that Denman still returned to defeat Kauto Star twice more after his debilitating heart problem to stress that he beat him fair and square when both horses were at their best aged 8,and at that stage of their careers Denman would have beaten Kauto Star anywhere as far as many are concerned,including the 2007 King George IF Denman had run in it….just watch his imperious performance in the Lexus Chase then for verification…far more impressive than Kauto’s King George win that year.
To give you an indication of Arkle’s dominance,he beat Freddie easily conceding him 2 stones and Caduval was over a distance behind him in the 1965 Gold Cup,yet both those horses carried top weights in their Grand National races !
The handicapper said that Arkle would have been set a weight of 14 stones plus,though of course 12st 7lbs was the maximum he could have carried, with everything else on 10st 7lbs and below !
gingertipster, the Frankel comparison is ridiculous as he never raced further than 10 and a half furlongs…though he would have stayed a mile and a half as far as I am concerned.
The bottom line is if you look at Denman’s steeplechase form prior to his debilitating heart problem he was unbeaten,unlike Kauto Star,and proved superior to Kauto Star in their much eagerly awaited encounter in the 2008 Cheltenham Gold Cup !
He was the better horse when both were at their best.
I am not dissing other truly great horses !
Red Rum was a joy to watch around Aintree too,but even you must concede that both Golden Miller and Crisp put up greater individual performances there.
Assumedly,you also believe that Arkle would have won the Grand National had he run in it in 1966 ?
Well said,Wordfromthewise !
Drone….you have got to be kidding me and every other true National Hunt Horse Racing fan !!
AP McCoy has been in control of 99 per cent of the horses he has ridden and has been the ultimate factor in success or failure….racehorses need a jockey to stay on board first and foremost especially when jumping hurdles and fences at speed,let alone to coax them to actually win the race too !
Phil Taylor has a luxury day compared to AP McCoy every day of his sporting life,and, many are hard pressed to agree that Darts really is a true sport anyway !
Richard Pitman to this day still blames himself for Crisp’s defeat !
Andy Pandy went on to win the Whitbread Gold Cup Chase easily barely 3 weeks later and his jockey is adamant he would have won the 1977 Grand National also…watch the race again if you have any doubts…and he carried on riderless and had plenty left in the tank !
No-one let alone me has any reason to "big" Arkle up….everyone is quite aware of how phenomenal he was !
There should be two missing horses…The Dikler and Captain Christy as all won the Gold Cup and the King George !
Grands Crus is back on track for the race.
If he performs as he did at Kempton last year then he would have a massive chance of winning it.
It also depends on which Long Run shows up on the day.
We will just have to disagree,gingertipster, as Paul Nicholls himself said there were no excuses for Kauto Star’s defeat in the 2008 Gold Cup,he went off 5/4 favourite and Ruby Walsh was shell-shocked at the end of the race as he realised he had picked the wrong one !
Obviously,the respective SPs of the two horses in the following years race said it all,with Kauto Star odds on and,a much inferior, Denman a 7/1 shot,and, after that race Nicholls was thrilled as to how well Denman had run considering what he had been through in the previous summer.
This debate could run forever…back to the subject matter and more rain was falling at Haydock today,and, tomorrow’s races really will become a lottery there.
