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comparably bad is the disqualification of Royal Gait in the Gold Cup at Royal Ascot in the late 1980s
Or Cahervillahow being disqualified in the 1991 Whitbread.
Yes, I guess that very few of the over 20,000 in Saturday realized who Calandagan really is. And this applies to other equine athletes, too….
Ruby – I grew up with the Derby meeting (none of this “festival” nonsense) being over four days, Wednesday to Saturday.
Then you also remember back in the 1990s (might have been over three days already) when you had the Coronation Cup on a Wednesday and then just Class D races for the remainder of the card. I wasn’t much of an experienced racing fan in those days and thought the cards were already quite boring.
If you want to attract more newcomers to the game, you need to make the racing interesting and you need a bit of luck with the weather.My main question is: Why do we need a two day meeting at Epsom?
Looking at the US cards on Kentucky Derby, Preakness or Belmont Stakes Day, they’re quite decent. You have at least another 4-5 G1s and a few G2s as well. At Epsom you have the Derby, the Oaks and the Coronation Cup with the remaining races being equivalent to a better Saturday at Haydock or York.
I don’t get the point of a two day meeting. You could argue that three races over 1m4f might not do the track any favours, but with the Derby the 5th race on the card on Day two, the ground was already in pretty bad shape.
I’ve not seen anyone siding with them.
Same with me, but the BHA just living in their own bubble.
The five horses deemed NRs under rule H6:
The first two ran in NH races and were well adrift of the main body before the field came under starter’s orders. To make both non-runners was the only logical decision. The first one on the Flat had a gate failure, the 2nd one got it’s legs STUCK in the stalls and in the 3rd case the jockey couldn’t remove the blindfold. I think that all five decisions are 100% reasonable.
The Benvenuto Cellini rule doesn’t even come close to those mentioned above, imo.
The main problem is what I already wrote in the Derby thread:
If the starter declares him a NR straight away and the announcement is made within seconds after the start then it is somehow okay. But not minutes after the race has ended. And was the starter aware of the leg on the shelf? No he wasn’t, otherwise he would have declared him a NR before the gates had opened.
This was a Stewards decision, but why?
I mean a horse banging it’s head in the stalls is far worse than happened yesterday.It would be a stupid thing to do. The Derby distance should be 12 furlongs and if you don’t have the right horse for the race, then you might reconsider your purchase policy.
I wonder if changing the trip to ten and a half or eleven furlongs might do the trick. There aren’t many, if any stallions at all producing winners over the Derby trip. What drives me crazy are the astronomical sums spent at auctions for horses that even fail to win a race, let alone Group 1s.
I don’t think we are blaming Coolmore for being shrewd and successful, but the game has become boring.
Just look at today’s cards. For a Saturday there was no other standout meeting and there were no Group races at the remaining tracks. I know we are in the pre-Royal Ascot phase, but it’s f*****g June, we should have competitive racing on a Saturday at more than just one track.It’s funny that, despite all their success, Coolmore have never had a true champion.
That’s so true. I still rate Giant’s Causeway as one of their all-time greats. Apart from the staying G1 races how many four year olds (and older) have won G1s for him in GB? Highland Reel was a KG winner at four, but how many more did he have?
If we could get some quality in return. Maybe I’m just too naive, but racing was much more fun when you had to guess which horse would be a proper Derby candidate. Nowadays it’s like CAS and other pointed out, the Lads get their share of darts and once every 2-3 years they hit the bullseye.
But ask them about the 3-yo hierarchy within the stable and they’ll get wrong almost every single time.‘‘Twas wet and windy – and they were strung out like three mile chasers in several races – but Derby Day is still special to me, as a (relatively) local lad.
Nice to hear that. A pity that even the Coronation Cup had such underwhelming result. Francis-Henri Graffard was quite upset about himself after letting Calandagan run after all.
A Derby without Aga Khan, Godolphin or John Gosden owned/trained runners just doesn’t feel the same. I also miss Sir Michael Stoute in this race, he had more winners than Godolphin in the past 26 years.
Good old days….. long gone.p (lower case) denotes capable of better
P (capital) means capable of a lot betterThanks for the explanation, Gladders. I hope you enjoyed your day out at the track.
Whelan joins McNamara and Beggy as a Ballydoyle work rider who has ridden a Derby winner.
Back in 1997 we laughed at Willie Ryan being a Derby winning jockey.
Coolmore are obviously good at what they do. But this was another year when they didn’t really have a star and just threw a few darts at the board and hoped they hit the bullseye.
With their darts the bullseye becomes bigger every year. But, you have to give them credit for winning it even with lesser horses. I wonder what the Godolphin operation is thinking right now.
Couldn’t agree more BHL. Timeform has given the winner a rating of 123p. I think the ‘p’ stands for something like open to improvement?
The experts will know a bit more about that. But he is just a very mediocre winner and how bad is this for Godolphin with no horses in both Epsom Classics?I have my doubts about them being successful at recruiting new fans over the last two days. But yes, they have to be informed better. It’s not an easy game to understand.
Let’s see were the winner and the placed horses go next. BC surely must be a definite runner at The Curragh.
Ruby, Number 1 lesson of punting, and I always tell newcomers, don’t throw your ticket away until they have announced “Weighed In”.
Spot on, rob. But on Derby day, you have plenty of newcomers who aren’t that familiar with such rules. Apart form that the horse wasn’t involved in the finish, the Enquiry affecting him seemed rather unlikely.
