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My brother had pitches at a few of the flapping meetings up here years ago. Great fun and an education on how to make a book when all runners were owned, trained and ridden by a bunch of conmen.
One day we worked at the Merrymas at Irvine in Ayrshire close to the old Bogside racecourse. A grey horse won the first race by a mile and then turned out for a later race but this time it was almost black! It started raining when the runners were parading and the dye washed off!
Is there any connection between this incident and The Langholm Dyer?
Neuss and Dortmund are likely suspects for winter racing
Pavarotti’s favourite German Jumps tracks, as I understand it.
Jumps racing in Germany takes place at Hoppygarten.
http://www.galopp-sport.de/dvrWebApp/htdocs/aktive/nonsecure/renndaten/renntermineChronologisch.jsp
This is the official website for German racing. No dates shown beyond the end of this year.
You might want to contact some of the tracks. Neuss and Dortmund are likely suspects for winter racing. You’ll get info here:
http://www.galopp-sport.de/dvrWebApp/htdocs/aktive/nonsecure/renndaten/rennbahnenListe.jsp
I think the Curtain Call are correct to appeal their placing behind Alexander Volta.
I am also surprised that Johnny Murtagh didn’t pick up a suspension for not making greater effort to straighten up his horse. He couldn’t do much about the interference with Curtain Call, or the first bout of interference with Tartan Bearer, but he should have been able to avoid the second and third bouts. He would have had to lose momentum and sacrifice his chance of winning in order to do it, in one of the biggest races of the season, but the rules should require it.
That said, I think any suggestion that his horse’s trajectory across the course was a deliberate manoeuvre is utterly paranoid.
Don’t think anyone ever did make excuses for the Brigadier. People just wondered how Roberto managed to perform to that level. A bee sting was the theory at the time. Maybe it was just BB’s riding though..
American jockeys are good, and could well have been a lot better than the European jockeys at the time.
Remember how well Bill Shoemaker did on his few visits to Europe (second in the Derby on Hawaiian Sound, big priced winners at Epsom, Ascot and the Curragh). Steve Cauthen taught European jockeys a thing or two about pace (actually he probably introduced them to it), Cash Asmussen was style personified and Gary Stevens was well on his way to the top of the European tree when he surprisingly went home after only a couple of months.
Everyone is wrong most of the time when it comes to picking winners, and everyone gets egg on their face sometimes.
Anyway, what’s more important for a pundit than picking winners is being able to comment sensibly on what is taking place and both of them are very good in that department. O’Brien is a sharp-eyed race reader and has a sound knowledge of the Irish form book while Duggan’s forte is spotting horses with potential.
It seems to me the two most underrated pundits on tv must be Gary O’Brien and David Duggan, who cover the Irish racing on ATR. I pick my own selections but I always like to hear them leaning in the same direction.
In most non-handicap Betfair markets the bulk of trading revolves around the favourite, even when the favourite is not odds on.
This is where the bigger punters have to concentrate, especially on the quieter days, because most of the time they wouldn’t be able to get a decent bet on a longer priced horse. For them, betting has to be mainly about taking a view on the favourite, either for or against.
In fairness to Chris McGrath of the Indo, who broke this story, the text of his article uses the term "assistant", but not "assistant trainer", and agrees in all essential respects with subsequent information from other sources.
Unfortunately the headline to his article does use the term, but that could have been inserted by a sub-editor and anyway we know not to take headlines too literally. Don’t we?
In any case it seems a logical step for Fallon to take and I’m sure Stoute knows what he’s doing. The only question mark I would have is how will Ryan Moore take it?
Prufrock said:
I wonder if there has been a stewards into Concrete And Clay winning this afternoon. On its last run Timeform Perspective said: "ran a remarkable race given how far out of his ground he was for most of the way, and he should do a fair bit better than this in due course; he was plum last at halfway and still had more in front of him than behind him 2 out before finishing with a rattle to grab third."
Today, rushed up into lead 3 out and thrashed all the way home.
I had a similar thought, but I don’t think Charles O’Brien’s is a gambling stable and I don’t think they made any money out of today’s improvement.
In his early days his illustrious father would have had plenty on.
Due to the more restricted racing programme in Ireland, you get very big fields in maiden and novice races and they all tend to attract some good horses.
Therefore you get horses with a big range of abilities running in these races with completely different levels of expectation. Some are just going through a period of purgatory before getting a handicap mark, others are looking for a gentle introduction and a select few are hoping to win.
Another question that needs asking is on what evidence the BHA saw fit to suspend Fallon’s permission to ride in Britain, given the claims being made in today’s Racing Post:
THE BHA on Sunday continued its attempts to distance itself from the embarrassment of the Kieren Fallon trial collapse, with sources within Shaftesbury Avenue insisting the governing body had been strongly opposed to the use of Australian steward Ray Murrihy as the key prosecution witness.
Furthermore, they claim that, as far as the BHA is concerned, Fallon was only a peripheral figure in the file passed by the then Jockey Club to the City of London police in September 2004. That file, it is claimed, focused on the betting activities of professional gambler Miles Rodgers.
The problem with Goodwood is that there are too many messy finishes caused by horses rolling across each other towards the far rail.
What about Towcester? The facilities are modern, the views are excellent and admission is free. I have to admit that no horse would vote for it, though, because it’s the stiffest track I know of.
"Did you have any inkling your horse might win that race?"
"Certainly not, I was sure he was completely useless."
