Forum Replies Created
- Posts
Looks like you’re right, ham. Hope that works out for her – Jamie Spencer could be a good influence on her style.
Also a big Poppy fan here – a strong jockey and a lovely person. Also a little worried about how things have gone for her this season.
After a good start to the campaign (She Believes a nice winner in a good race at Ascot), she had a nasty ‘totting-up’ whip ban (28 days I think) that really set her back at a key time. I’m not sure what happened but she also seems to have lost her role with Tony Carroll, who was her main supporter last season and through the AW over the winter. She got beaten on Mister Music in a Southwell claimer back in May (perhaps not her best ride) and seems to have fallen out of favour with Carroll ever since – Elisha Whittington now the main claimer he uses. She has also changed her agent in 2019 which might have made a difference.
Sylvester Kirk seems to be using Poppy a bit more often at the moment and hopefully that’s a link she can build on.
It’s all a symptom of the unacknowledged cancer within the sport.
The species is being inbred to death, horses are getting more fragile, more prone to illness, less viable as racing animals. Calyx (4 races, 2 years, 2 injuries) is the latest wonky donkey who’ll be injecting his toxic DNA into a genepool that could well do without him. Average no. of appearances per career and per year statistics are dwindling to quite appalling levels. At this stage of the season a huge amount have fallen by the wayside.
I’d suggest that tracks like Doncaster should accept reality and cater to supply and demand. Low-grade races are still very well subscribed. Let’s have less C2 handicaps and conditions races 1m – 1m 4f and more in the C5 – C7 bracket. It’s not sexy and the class snobs will object, but this is where the field sizes are holding up at the moment.
Magical is a fine individual- tough, hardy and classy. As with Farhh and Excelebration for Frankel, it’s great that Enable has such undeniably SOLID G1 horses as Magical and Crystal Ocean pulsing through her formlines.
I don’t see how any future wise guys could be asking ‘was she really that good?’ with all that hardcore class underpinning the form.
Can understand Potato’s point about connections being loyal to Watson. However, Watson is imo a considerably better (more consistent) jockey than Stott. Better strike rate and ran to form stats despite Stott being based more in the less competitive North… Watson is one of the very best younger jockeys, would not surprise me if getting a top job – maybe when Frankie retires?
I subscribe to John Whitley’s speed figures and he also compiles jockey efficiency ratings. Kevin Stott was #1 according to his data crunching of all UK jockeys in 2018. Personally I don’t rate Watson anything near as highly as you – needs to get stronger and more consistent. It’ll come though, could well be one of the top 10 jockeys in time.
Cloth Cap could be a shout, Lemons – National already nominated as the target by Jonjo. Does need to win a nice pot to get his rating up though.
Another howler in the almost daily stream of PR disasters for the Racing Post as the increasingly biased anti-whip paper is forced to print a sheepish apology in today’s edition.
Having led the website and print edition yesterday with a scoop about trainer Jonny Portman supposedly calling for the whip to be removed “for encouragement purposes”, they’ve been forced to print a full retraction today:
CORRECTION
The Racing Post misrepresented Jonathan Portman in a headline in yesterday’s paper, in which we claimed the trainer was calling for a whip ban. The Racing Post is happy to acknowledge this is not the case.
Surely the biased and incompetent Tom Kerr’s resignation must follow. It seemed impossible to lower the bar much further after Bruce Millington’s tenure as editor, but Kerr seems completely out of his depth. How can a sport’s little industry newspaper manage to shock, appal and offend almost every day of the week?
Also bizarre to see Cormack (again mistakenly using TheRacingForum’s Twitter account rather than his own personal one)…will he ever grasp social media?) inexplicably defending the Racing Post after this. One suspects the anti-whip ‘movement’ will never gain any traction with these shambling characters at the helm.
Clive,
Sorry to hear this happened to you. Do you know how the account was hacked in the first place? Was your computer infected with spyware or something like that, or are you suggesting that Paddy Power customer information has been leaked/compromised at their end?
Would suspect the former is more likely (not a dig at your personally but generally is what happens in these situations) but even so companies and banks usually work together to help victims get refunded. A friend of mine had money stolen (he thinks from one of those dodgy ATM cardreaders) and the thief spent £800 on furniture and frozen meat! The companies and his bank collaborated and he had his money back within 5 days.
Sad to hear Paddy Power aren’t like that. Not sure if he has been banned by Cormack or just doesn’t post any more but Simon Nott would be a good person to contribute here. He tweeted that he’d had money stolen from his online bookie account a few months ago, but understand he got his money back. He could have some good advice. He’s on FinalFurlong and Twitter if he doesn’t see this here.
Never heard Dan Tudhope referred to as ‘The Dominator’ before – perhaps by his other half after dark but otherwise…
I’m on this myself, Spud. Worried about Lizzie (don’t think she rides this course too well) but should appreciate the rainfall.
Hope we’ll be high-fiving…
VTC – A Toi Phil joins the likes of Mitchouka, Dakota Moirette, Arkwrisht, Prince Of Scars, Blow By Blow, Tombstone, Ball D’Arc, Poli Roi and Valseur Lido in the Gigginstown draft at the Goffs September Sale.
https://www.goffsuk.com/sales-results/sales/september-hit-sale-2019
The problem with Shantous isn’t really with fences, technique or anything like that. I spoke to a buyer whose opinion was that you need to add on a few grand to whatever you’re paying for a Shantou since you know they’ll probably need two or three wind procedures in their careers and they’ll just get worse and worse – typically a major issue with his stock.
Maybe since most staying jumpers start chasing in their third season in training, it gives the impression of the fences being the problem.
Worth noting that this race is no longer sponsored by 32Red, who seem to have welched on their support.
The Racing Post and ATR websites provide generic information on stallions and their progeny history by ground description, recording wins, places, level stakes P&L, strike rate etc. You can also get something similar via the FlatStats website.
ProForm is pricy but it is a much more powerful tool for scrutinising this stuff. I got it to give me a really detailed breakdown of every stallion with ‘impact value’ data for each stallion, showing you whether their progeny are running above or below expectation v Betfair SP on each going description. It also expresses this in terms of % of rivals beaten and gives you a clear idea of whether the market underrates or overrates the stallion in different conditions.
Like I say, ProForm is an expensive tool but I *think* you can get a free trial or pay for a short subscription. It really blows all the Racing Post/ATR data out of the water and gives you a much deeper insight.
