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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.
Agree re- missing the spectacle. Mind you, some dross used to turn up in it…
It was all dross last year.
And Main Sequence gets beaten by a horse who barely seemed Listed class, with an OR of 101.
Just how bad were the fields beaten by Camelot in the classics last year?
Apparently the attack happened at about 8.30 but he wasnt found until about 10pm.
The attack was at 8:30am and the body discovered at 10am, not pm.
There have been several attacks on bookmakers in south east London of late- one Paddy Power branch was robbed twice in the space of a month. Both incidents came at closing time. Another Paddy Power shop and a Hills both had attempted robberies as soon as they opened. A Stan James was robbed at half eight in the morning, too.
The trend appears to be that robbers are targeting shops either as they open or close, as there are fewer people around at that time. Perhaps if bookmakers opened and closed at more sensible times, such incidents wouldn’t occur. I remember when bookies were only open from 11:00 until 18:00; those days are long gone, thanks to the arrival of FOBTs.
By the way, did anybody else read the piece on the wretched FIXED odds betting terminals in the Grauniad the other day?
Heard they told staff not to talk to anyone about the incident in hope it wouldn’t reach the papers, some despicable people in the betting industry.
Indeed.
I thought it odd that a man being mauled to death by dogs made the national news, yet another killed by his fellow human didn’t. The murder in Morden only made the local paper and the Racing Post- the main news channels, both on television and in print, completely ignored it.
Now why would the bookmakers want to keep this quiet, I wonder?
Greedy bookmakers update:
Corals expect a manager or deputy manager to open a shop and single man until 1pm, at which point another member of staff comes in. You have two workers until four o’clock. The person who opened the shop then goes home and the other is left to single man until 18:30, at which point a cashier comes in. So there is one member of staff on their own from four until half six. Makes sense, especially as the evening meetings overlap with the afternoon ones at this time of year.
Even better is Paddy Power’s new scheme, "Operation Panther". Shop managers are being asked to visit rival betting shops, pose as normal customers and target big-spending FOBT customers. The latter group are to be offered Paddy Power’s VIP gold cards (a bit like Ladbrokes’ Odds-On cards, but limited to machine players) and- wait for it- free carbonated drinks if they defect to Paddy Power. Already, several managers have been either threatened with physical violence or actually hit.
Cityscape palpably failed to give his true running, while the rest of them were just Group 3/ Listed class performers, so this was hardly the strongest Group One race ever run.
However, Farhh could do no more than win as he liked and looks set for a successful season, given that last year’s crop of three year olds was moderate; he’ll take a lot of beating if, as expected, he’s kept away from the same owners’ Dawn Approach later in the season.
I’ve decided to watch it on mute today, apart from when O’Brien and Gosden were being interviewed. It’s been far better without having to listen to the constant drivel from the presenters.
