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last two given terrible rides
hopefully better today.Pontefract 4.00 Sirvino Win / place
Handicaps are graded but the only worry about changing the way trainers view weight ect is the apprentices. Why would trainers use them if the weight isn’t such an issue?
I personally laugh hearing trainers bang on about 7 pounds here 5 pounds there but if its going to stop apprentices chances I would leave it how it is.
Simon Rowlands explains what we can learn from Cape Blanco’s winning performance at Leopardstown. Meanwhile, a jockey substitution highlights the need for a new a law and race distances get shorter at Haydock.
"Cape Blanco was best equipped to cope and ended up doing to his opponents something like what Harbinger had done to him the time before at Ascot."
I had intended moving on from sectionals this week but simply could not pass over an opportunity to remark upon those from Leopardstown at the weekend.When a horse makes all and is unchallenged, as Cape Blanco was in the Irish Champion Stakes, it is natural to wonder whether they have been flattered. Such speculation was certainly in evidence on the Betfair Forum after Saturday’s race. I even read somewhere that the winner had "quickened off a slow pace".
Not so.
The history books will show that Cape Blanco ran the mile-and-a-quarter of Leopardstown’s outer track 0.01 sec faster than had Sea The Stars on slightly softer going 12 months before. But the near-identical times were achieved in hugely different fashions.
Cape Blanco got to the two-furlong marker about 2.6 sec quicker than had Sea The Stars, from which it follows that he ran the final quarter-of-a-mile in the same sort of time longer. That equates to nearly 15 lengths at the speeds the horses were travelling and is a huge difference over such a short distance.
Not only did Cape Blanco run the closing stages markedly slower than Sea The Stars, he ran it slower than all the other winners on Saturday’s card, which included two-year-old races and handicaps. And he did this because he had set such a searching pace earlier on.
Cape Blanco’s finishing speed was little more than 90% of his average speed, when something like 98% would have been optimum given the state of the ground, and it says something for him that his overall time was respectable.
Among the excuses made for Rip Van Winkle, who never got in a blow in second, was that he was unable to quicken late on the rain-softened ground. That is nonsense. He did not need to quicken, just to slow less. But he couldn’t.
You get pace profiles like this over jumps from time to time, but seldom on the Flat unless the ground is genuinely deep. When a horse goes as hard up front as did Cape Blanco, he either has to be ignored or he takes those who chase him out of their comfort zones also.
There are reasons to believe that most or all of those behind Cape Blanco were a bit below their best, but that might be in no small part because of how the race was run. Cape Blanco was best equipped to cope and ended up doing to them something like what Harbinger had done to him the time before at Ascot.
Doubts about the form of the beaten horses should not blind onlookers to the quality of performance put up by the winners in either instance.
Simon write for betfair betting. What do you make of his Timing which are accurate i assume….Great analysis
What your saying is "the horse is different class" Class horses are quicker away and finish slower.
The two days in question 5th September 2009 and 4th September 2010 looking at the times ,I would say it might of been a lot slower for sea of the stars, but you will never find out for sure !!
hopefully better today.