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Energumene just confirmed as retired after a finishing 3rd over a trip too short for him these days – proper horse and glad he gets out in one piece for hopefully a long and happy retirement.
Wonder what Barry Connell will say now that MN was firmly put in his pace – even with that serious early mistake and being a little sticky over the last two IET was in a different league.
He looked a bit of a plodder last season to be fair and today he was being niggled along at the top of the hill – also quite a fair number of Aidan’s 3 yr old horses coming back this season first time out have looked rather undercooked fitness wise.
A quick look over the shoulder or between their legs after the last would negate having to use the whip when you realise they are well clear and there is always vigorous hands and heels riding they can resort to instead, which wouldn’t incur the wrath of stewards for not riding out properly either.
Very good but not an all time great as he was very much style over substance as his rivals were not (by and large) highly rated G1 performers. In his last four races, he beat:
Sumitas 8L in POW at Royal Ascot, Sumitas then went on to run a further eight times and lost each time including a 7L 5th to Giants Causeway in the Irish Champion Stakes. He only made the frame twice in those eight runs.
Behrens beaten 6L in the Dubai World Cup, Behrens was an admirable performer but often found wanting at the top level, he ran a further four times after without winning but did make the frame three times…..in his career he was placed more times (10) than he won (6) in a 22 race career.
The 118 rated Lear Spear was beaten 4½L in Sheikh Maktoum Challenge (and 19L in the Dubai World Cup) who when returning to the turf went on to finish 3rd 7L behind Giants Causeway in Juddmonte International and won a Doncaster Listed race over 12F but in a 27 race career he won only six times.
Almushtarak was beaten 6L in one of the worse renewals of the QE2 (just four runners the other two were rated 113 (Gold Academy) and 119 (Balisada), Almushtarak was rated as high as 120 (when winning the G2 Celebration Mile) but after the QE2 he ran a further seven times managing a 3rd placed effort in the G2 Sandown Mile. Of those other six races, he only managed to beat 7 of the 63 rivals he faced.
If they land in, on or drag their hind legs through a fence and lose their backend they can injury themselves just as easily as we sadly saw at Aintree but with that being said if water jumps were banned I wouldn’t complain about it.
As I said I do think if you are going to continue having water jumps they should only be in front of the stands where the crowd can actually see the spectacle of a horse jumping it but there are not a lot of jumps course that do actually have them in that position……so I don’t see the point having a water jump anywhere else.
I fear that the BHA would very much view them as simply being another part of the jumping test that a horse faces in a chase race…….it might sadly take a very high profile horse to lose its life in order to see a ban coming in.
Not sure……..I think for water jumps that are not in front of the stands they are irrelevant and should be turned into a standard fence but will they just see this as a horse making a jumping mistake rather than it being because of a water jump
If they ban water jumps then what about other horses that make the same type of mistake at other fences and sustain an injury, do we ban those fences as well?
RIP Thistle Ask – condolences to all but especially the groom.
Incredible achievement from the whole Skelton yard, lovely to see many of the staff around the winners enclosure to welcome the horse back but racing once again proves how the incredible highs can be mixed with the incredible and heartbreaking lows….fingers crossed for Thistle Ask but it didn’t look good.
Edit: RIP Thistle Ask – condolences to the connection but as always especially to the groom
No excuse judging from the RaceTech photo finish print in the RP
Personally I don’t think using it for safety and correctional purposes only will work – we see horses hang into the whip all the time and the best course of action when a horse hangs to get him to straighten up is to put the whip down and get both hands on the reins and pull them away from the direction they are hanging to.
If they go to the discretion of the Stewards then there would need to be a centralised professional body with probably a jockey or two on the panel presiding over each case and frankly I don’t see that happening either.
All the capitulation they have done through the years means that they have backed themselves very much into a corner in that they can’t up the number of strikes permitted (they don’t have the bottle to stand up to the usual suspects who shout loudest) and they won’t go back to not having a number of strikes and I don’t think they are quite at the banning of the whip stage…….yet but that really is the most likely outcome somewhere down the line.
CAS – Agreed re number of strikes, it was always a slippery slope once that came into play especially in NH races.
You can easily not go above the permitted number of strikes and still give a horse a harder time than somebody who has gone over the number but used it in a more judicious way (i.e. four or five times where they have used it once or twice before putting it down and reverting to hands and heels etc).
I remember back when it came in (on the first Champions Day where Soumillon got done on Cirrus des Aigles if memory serves) they were at pains to state that if you exceeded the number of strikes it would simply trigger a Stewards Enquiry to look into the ride and not automatically result in a jockey being banned………I guess that part of the rule went out the window pretty quickly.
I still think it is a sad state of affairs to where Stewards are now clearly having to review replays specifically to count the number of strikes a jockey has and in a great number of cases where bans are handed out, if you weren’t counting, you would be hard pressed to say that a jockey has overused the whip…..obviously there are cases where you can see they have but I would imagine they are in the minority overall.
Still think they need to get a pacemaker for FOG and then he can sit more handy instead of being dropped out the back (and thus out of position) in a tactically run race.
Winner was electric out of the stalls and gained well over a length and then Buick rode them to sleep on the front end.
The Lockinge could be a right old race this season if they all turn up.
A ‘minor setback’ that will mean he misses both the English and the Irish Guineas which is on the 23 May……surely that is not such a minor setback
If he had been racing frequently along with being in training since September then I would fully be on board with him having a break.
That being said lets not get carried away in thinking that in lieu of him only getting no further than the second hurdle in his only NH race that they compensated for that by working him harder than normal at home……..also take into account that they would have given him a decent break following his Newcastle fall to get over that and along with the odd schooling session I would think he was probably doing something like half to three quarter speed work maybe two or even three times a week the rest of the time. Trainers just don’t push their horses in their work at home because it more often than not would be counter productive when it came to actually going racing.
I would have much rather Hendo just came out and said we are going to wait until the Autumn when the ground should be easier for him and then we will make up for lost time by giving him an agressive campaign of three or even four races (rising through the various grades) to find out just how good he could be on the flat.
Hendo at Newbury today had this to say:
“I had a long chat with Ryan Moore yesterday,” explained Henderson. “The horse has been on the go since September and he has got to have a holiday. I should think it’s probably better for him to have that now, rather than later, so he can be ready for an early autumn campaign.”
Good lord!
