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I’d love to see Lady Cecil continue with a permanent licence.
Next best option would be for Mike Marshall to take over.
I backed Libertarian @ 6/1 for the Leger. Expecting a "Yorkshire" trainer to go for it even if winning in Ireland. However, now bought by Godolphin and will be trained at Newmarket after the Irish Derby. Less likely to go to Donny now.
Yeah; it’s not as though Godolphin have supported the Leger over the last twenty-odd years or anything.
… moments after Cunningham had drawn attention to the horse’s ugly leg action and inability to cope with undulating tracks.
Did Cunningham mean courses like Ascot, Newmarket and The Curragh? The courses at which Chigun’s last three victories occurred?
If you’re going to have a form "expert", at least make sure he knows what he’s talking about.
Anyone remember El Cuite? A very talented horse who possessed massive potential but never quite hit the heights because of bad luck.
El Cuite was probably the one that got away.
I was at Sandown the day Shahrastani beat Henry’s colt Bonhomie in the Guardian Classic Trial. While there were some long faces in the Cecil camp after their charge had surrendered his unbeaten record to the subsequent dual Derby winner, I got chatting to a couple of the stable lads and they told me that there was a much better prospect in the yard.
Sir Henry liked his horses to finish upsides in their work but there were rare occasions when the riders were allowed to release the handbrake, just to see upon what kind of rare talent they were sitting. On one such occasion, a week or so before this trip to Esher in April 1986, a trio of Bonhomie, Faraway Dancer and El Cuite made their way up the Limekilns and, after half a mile or so, were asked to stretch a little more earnestly. El Cuite quickened in a heartbeat and soon put twelve or fifteen lengths between himself and his toiling companions. Here, surely, was the yard’s number one Derby hope. Sadly, he damaged a tendon shortly afterwards and didn’t reappear until later in the season, hacking up in a Newbury handicap and then winning Group One events in France and Italy.
Kept in training at four, with the Gold Cup his target, El Cuite lost his unbeaten record (he’d easily landed a maiden on his only start at two) when breaking down in the Jockey Club Stakes. He never raced again.
Abolish handicaps.
Make all races WFA conditions events.
Might make "the sport" more "transparent."
And yet he landed a right touch with Kneller in the Ebor, Himself.
Still, at least there was no cheating or malpractice involved. Henry merely protected the horse’s handicap mark by not running him again after he’d hacked up at Pontefract in April.
I always thought that owners’ colours were protected by copyright laws, yet the virtual races have loads of plagiarised silks. Paddy Power seem to be particularly bad in this respect; you’ll hear their in-house commentator mentioning owners by name as their virtual charge thunders to victory.
TAPK: the owner was the Tavistock family, whose other winners include Japan Cup victor Jupiter Island.
Joni: Precocious was a colt, not a filly. Henry trained a filly called Be My Valentine, who won her maiden and then dead-heated in the St Hugh’s Stakes in 1983, only to be named the outright winner some days later. She never ran again, to the best of my recollection.The fact that Sir Henry has been poorly for some time now makes the news of his passing not only easier to bear (although I still had tears in my eyes when I heard) but also made me relieved that the great man’s suffering is finally at an end.
Sir Henry Cecil WAS a genius, unlike the vast majority upon whom that particular label is bestowed. He just knew when a horse was ailing or how best to improve one, mentally as well as physically. We are lucky to have seen such a wonderful trainer and, by all accounts, a thoroughly good man grace the particular stage upon which we choose to focus.
Rest in peace, Sir Henry.
Never conetested the great races
What utter nonsense.
The Dewhurst, 2,000 Guineas, St James’s Palace Stakes, Sussex Stakes (twice), Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, Queen Anne Stakes, Juddmonte International Stakes and Champion Stakes are all prestigious group one races. They were made great by the mere presence of Frankel.
The 2012 Juddmonte International was a "greater" race than any Derby I’ve ever witnessed, given that Frankel thrashed group one horses like Farhh and St Nicholas Abbey without getting out of second gear.
Oh I see. I suppose that is why they kept him in training then.
A very facile line of reasoning.
Connections knew that there wasn’t a horse around to challenge Feankel at a mile, which he why he was kept to that trip for much of his career. I believe (and I may well be wrong, but I’m going by what I’ve both read and heard) that they always thought that the only thing which could beat the horse was a lack of stamina, hence the decision never to test him at a mile and a half and to only run him twice at a mile and a quarter.
There is no criticism implied here- Frankel is Prince Khalid’s horse and the owner makes the decisions, after all- but it would’ve been nice to have seen the most talented flat racehorse of the modern era at least attempt to win the Derby and I have no doubts that the Frankel we saw pre-Guineas would’ve settled well enough to have won the Epsom race comfortably.
What a bizarre comment Gladiateur. Why would anyone want a ready made excuse to avoid the Derby?
I think that the decision to try to retire the horse unbeaten was taken very early in his career.
Watch Frankel’s maiden race again. A little keen, but hardly a tearaway. At Doncaster, he settled in behind Diamond Geezer. In the Royal Lodge, he’s dropped out last. Ditto in the Dewhurst, although he does pull fairly hard. In the Greenham, he is again keen early but eventually settles in quite nicely behind Picture Editor.
All of these races can be found on YouTube and they portray a horse who is keen but by no means intractable. It’s understandable that Frankel pulled in his races- nothing could go fast enough for him- but he wasn’t the headstrong animal some imply.
I defer to nobody in my appreciation of Sir Henry Cecil’s training ability but remain firmly of the opinion that the decision to let Frankel blitz his Guineas field was deliberately designed to give connections a ready-made excuse to avoid the Derby. Had Frankel been ridden from behind (as he had been in all of his previous races) at Newmarket and won going away, the world and his wife would have been clamouring for the horse to tackle Epsom. By making all in the first classic of the season, connections knew that the media would be saying that there would be no chance of the horse lasting the Derby trip.
