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Newbury race times today have been between 1.38 to 3.41 seconds slow compared to between 1.36s to 10.69s slow yesterday (the slowly run 2m handicap being the very odd one out) and watching on TV it looked to be lovely spring ground with not a lot of divets being kicked up and maybe heading slightly towards the faster side of good (5.0 on going reading as of this morning).
Unless you have a real soft ground actioned horse (who really shouldn’t have been entered to run at the meeting in the first place) then you should not really be pulling your horse out on account of the ground, it has clearly been well watered with 8-12mm added Monday to ensure that there is no jar in the ground.
That being said, of the 7 non runners at Newbury today, three were due to the ground with the remaining 4 being a mixture of 2 due to a vet’s certificate (for being lame and a bruised foot) with the remaining 2 being self certificates stating ‘off feed’ and ‘not sound’.
Of those 3 that did state the ground as a reason, Al Mubir and Jimmy Speaking have both won on good ground but the majority of their wins have had the word soft in the going description and Al Mubir had even won on heavy. The other horse, Something Splendid, has had just 2 career wins and they both came on good to soft ground although he has been placed on good ground and finished 4th on good to firm.
This season I think it would have required him to send more horses over much more regularly throught the season rather than targeting just the big prizes hoping he could stay in touch to where great hauls at Cheltenham, Aintree and Sandown would overhaul whatever lead Skelton had.
Also had he not been trailing in the Irish Title quite as much he might have done more but unlike the last two seasons, Skelton has reached new heights prize money wise to the extent that for all the firepower Willie can call upon the gap was just too significant even for him to claw back.
Drop him back in trip and if he settles going that bit quicker off an early pace then he will have more energy to use at the finish – otherwise, just let him roll from the front and see how that suits him, it wouldn’t surprise me if 5F ends up being his trip ridden that way.
There is also the possibility that he was just a very precocious mature 2 yr old that didn’t have as much developing to do from 2 to 3 and now finds that his contemporaries have simply caught up and/or surpassed him in that process.
Zavateri got into a barging match with the much bigger AE and would probably have won (or gone very close) without getting involved in that – the trainer said he would need the run so he would be the one I would take out of the race.
Hopefully this race puts pay to any further thought that AE is a miler – he still pulled too much in behind early on and just kept on without looking like a horse that wants any further than 7F.
For me they need to drop him back to 6F (or even 5F eventually) and potentially let him roll along on the front rather than try to fight him to settle and waste his energies…….it also might just be that he was a very forward mature two year old that hasn’t done as much as his contemporaries from two to three.
Sandown is currently watering (7.5mm twice a week) on ground described today as ‘good’ (6.8 on Turftrax reading) ahead of the jumps finale on Saturday, no doubt to ensure that they don’t have to run on the dreaded good ground.
I guess that is rather unfortunate for any of those flat horses running on the Friday that were hoping for naturally fast Spring ground in mid April.
They way I look at it is that I don’t think the horse would have a problem racing on ground on the fast side of good as he is a fluent mover and doesn’t have an action that would suggest he needs give in the ground.
I doubt that the ground at Newbury today would pose any problem for the horse given it has been artificially watered to be ‘safe’ ground. The times for the first two races (albeit both for newcomers of age 2 and 3 which were pretty slowly run) were slow by 2.93s and 4.28s respectively which would suggest that the official ground description of good (watered) probably isn’t that far off the mark.
Re: Chester – the course is only just one mile around and as such I would not imagine connections would deem it a suitable option, even if it gives them an inbuilt excuse if he ran badly – which would probably result in many of us here questioning Hendo’s reasoning for running him there in the first place.
The trip question is a little more open to interpretation as his first two runs over 12F were against novices/lowly rated horses and as such he wasn’t hard pressed to travel as he did and quicken up but as he goes up in grade he will be facing quicker/better horses and as such he may require a slightly further trip, which is why I think 14F and 16F races should also be seriously considered……..they will also open up more options especially if Hendo is going to be ultra picky on what ground he will and will not run him on for 12F races.
I think for a horse that has never known anything but galloping tracks with nice long straights, it would all end up happening a little too quickly for him on a course like Chester where you are on the turn for most of the races, even if they could produce the exact ground Nicky is looking for (whatever that is).
York has an almost 5F long home straight much like Newbury whilst Newcastle (Northumberland Plate maybe???) has a 4F straight and even Southwell and Kempton (on their 12F course) has a 3F straight, Ascot has just about a 2½F long home straight which you would have to be careful about not getting too far back on him if you were thinking of running him in something like the 12F Cumberland Lodge or the 16F Long Distance Cup on Champions Day.
I did just remember that at the Guineas Meeting you have the G2 Jockey Club Stakes over 12F which in three of the last four years has been run on good ground and won by a 110, 104 (by the 9yr old Outbox) and 106 rated horses respectively………..if they actually got good ground again this season, would that be actually good enough for Hendo?
For me the Yorkshire Cup should be the next port of call but with Hendo he will likely make a further song and dance within the usual dog and pony show over the ground, so I am hoping the weather dumps enough rain on the Knavesmire to take that excuse off the table.
He was a blazing shooting star over hurdles in that his Supreme year and Champion Hurdle year were the brightest of bright spots but that brightness has steadily waned as his fragility (both the horse and the trainers cotton wool approach) rose more to the surface post his Champion Hurdle year.
I am still of the opinon that Hendo has talked himself into believing that he can’t race on quicker ground even though there is absolutely no evidence to support that train of thought. The ground at Newbury will be quicker than anything he has raced on for sure but it will also have been heavily watered (at least up until they confirmed he wasn’t running) so I have no doubt it would have been perfectly safe jar free ground regardless of what Hendo thinks.
If this is the standard they are setting for ground conditions that they are prepared to race on then forget about a Melbourne Cup and potentially he could end up missing most of the English flat season (unless the weather intervenes). They might have to look elsewhere around Europe (France and Germany tend to have softer ground and some of the German G1 can be low on quality but then Hendo has never been know for his travelling horses so Buckley might have to insist).
I was hopeful that the switch to the flat could have led to a very good twilight to his career with plenty of viable races in the 12-16F range that he could be aimed at but his trainer seems hell bent on getting in his way of proving what a worthwhile exercise this switch could have been.
I can somewhat understand if it was over hurdles but it is an actual flat race and they have no evidence that he won’t act on good or slightly quicker ground – he has a fluent action i.e. not a high knee action that quick ground could cause him to be jarred up and I think this is more Nicky’s own fears where he has talked himself into thinking the ground is an issue.
I would be more shocked to see him at Chester as that track is far too sharp for him and even if the ground did get soft he might run into notably soft ground lover and year older Hamish (although his only future entry on the RP is for the Yorkshire Cup).
What do you think the odds are that when the rain does come to soften up the ground we will then hear the reason of ‘too soft, so we will wait for better ground”.
HDLG – 100% agree that he would be an incredible horse to own, closing in on £500k in total prize money and a winner of 9 of his 17 races under rules – the Grand National was the first completed race where he has finished out of the first four home.
Don’t think it has ever been a counting issue more of question of an adrenaline in heat of the battle thing where some simply forget that they have a whip count to stick to.
In some races when you watch a driving finish you can clearly see a jockey put his whip down and go to hands and hells riding as they have clearly been counting and have reached their total uses limit.
These type of incidents are always going to happen with the current rules where you have a number limit – I do wonder if most of the Stewards time is spent watching replays of races in which they are all counting the number of strikes of the whip each jockey has used.
Their next three fixtures for 23 and 30 of April and 7 May have now all been moved to Southwell.
HDLG – Having been involved in a 4½ month court trial where things aren’t as black and white as your comment would indicate (if only they were, life would be so much simpler), there will be a lot of evidence that never gets out into the media/public domain that will show varying levels of mitigation for an individual(s) actions.
Having had that court experience it certain made me less inclined to jump to automatic conclusions of guilt or not based off of just the small percentage of information that news outlets reports on to Joe Public.
In no way shape or form do I condone what he did to that gentleman and there of course must be punishment for his actions but I am just not sure how much a prison sentence in this case will serve as it would appear so out of character for the man given what we know about him (calling the police instead in a subsequent incident that happened) and how he has got to where he is in his professional life and what he does in the community prior to this incident.
Had there been any kind of history with this type of behaviour then yes a prison term would be 100% warranted but maybe a suspended sentence with court mandated training and/or counselling for any underlying issues may have been a more constructive way to go.
With regards to his business I hope some workaround can be found (does he have an assistant trainer that could step in?) for the next 18 months or so – it is not quite as simple as horses and staff just going to other yards and we all go on our merry way.
Aside from the poor start he had, one could also argue that the trip at Aintree may have also been an issue – the Irish and Welsh Nationals are 3m5f and 3m6½F so we are talking about another 4½F to 5F further, so he still has that stamina angle to prove but I personally don’t think the weight was an issue, as he carried 3lbs more when winning the Welsh National off 11-13.
That being said, he was coming off a Gold Cup campaign and I truly believe this was an after thought to go to Aintree especially off a hard race in the Gold Cup (a lot of those that ran well at Cheltenham went on to run flat at Aintree). So that could be a major factor in his poor run and as such you could give him the benefit of the doubt.
So if they gear a campaign specifically around Aintree with a maximum of three runs beforehand (rather than Aintree being his 6th run of the season like it was this time), then I think he would be a major contender to add to his National hauls.
Outside of a direct and immediate threat to your family, I would say there is never a reason to take the law into your own hands, that being said, this comment in some way may explain his over the top reaction:
Elias described “a terrifying previous incident” about six weeks beforehand when trespassers had threatened Williams with a shotgun and made threats about burning his property. That led to him “reacting on the spur of the moment to a situation he believed was far more serious than it actually was”.
A pre-sentencing report compiled to assist the judge spoke of Williams suffering “unresolved trauma which impaired his judgement” as a result of the earlier incident. Elias emphasised that the trainer had shown insight and changed his behaviour, calling the police to deal with a subsequent incident rather than intervening himself”
Oddly if the incident itself had happened 13 days later, changes to the law meant that the judge could have suspened the whole sentence, that being said, it would appear that he will most likely be out no later than 18 months into his sentence, with the balance of the three years to be served in the community.
It could end up being an extremely costly lesson not just in the immediate future but also long term in potential damage to his reputation which could affect his ability to bring in new owners to his yard (or even keep his current ones).
