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T20 was brought in to satisfy the barely interested fan, who couldn’t cope with the length of Test or even one day match. Now there’s “Snooker Shoot-Out” for the impatient fan who can’t control their ADHD long enough to watch a match over a few hours.
So the thought of something as cancerous as “Snooker Shoot-Out” infecting racing is pretty embarrassing, especially considering races rarely last longer than 7 minutes, or a hell of a lot less if we’re talking flat racing, which we seemingly are? Speculating here, but could it even potentially cause harm to horses if trainers feel forced to run them where they’d otherwise withdraw because of the ground or a touch of lameness??
Of course Gosden and “top trainiers” would want it, they have a glut of handicap quality horses they can throw at the competition and make a load of money from.
That’s an interesting viewpoint, I’ve never considered hurdling a massively important aspect, as long as the horse jumps straight and doesn’t keep pecking on landing or hitting the hurdle I tick them off as fine and pretty much ignore it, I guess that’s wrong.
Also I suppose it shouldn’t be thought about as a horse losing a length when slow over a hurdle and more in terms of the energy lost getting back up to speed and catching up being the real killer. I guess I always just thought how can 8 little obstacles make a 20 odd lengths difference for a half decent chaser, if they can jump 4.5ft they must be fine over 3.5. Foxrock was a 158 improving chaser running in a handicap hurdle off 128, 8/1, easy money I thought, he came 8th.
Maybe, I’m hoping for one last glimmer!!
Sorry, I thought you were taking his recent problems as a chance to have a bash at his talent in his prime.
I don’t rate the strength in depth this year, MTOY has come second at the festival in each of his 4 attempts, only finishing outside the top three in one of his 24 starts, 14/1 EW seems tasty to me? I’m off to look down the back of the sofa.
Ruby, a horse as old as Faugheen has not won a Champion Hurdle since 1981, it is no disgrace or true reflection of his talent if he falls short this year after the couple of years of injuries he’s had.
I didn’t mean to say he wasn’t trying today and wasn’t bothered, more that he couldn’t because something was causing him problems and distracting him. Time will tell, fingers crossed, potentially a great price if there is a simple cause or he’s just overcoming it.
I’d go along with that Ginger. Still fancy him to win the champion hurdle on Morgiana form, but I just can’t see him getting back to that level in that time at his age.
Fingers crossed, would love him to do it one last time, even just to silence detractors, devastating horse at his best, could’ve been a 3 time champion hurdle winner, or even a 3 time stayers hurdle winner for that matter.
I’m with you LD73, I’m looking for the positives. It’s a head scratcher, he looked close to his best in the Morgiana, enthusiastic, positive head movement, ears back. There’s something bothering him seemingly, he didn’t even seem to want to try much today, if he was just a bit unfit, he would’ve at least tried and probably cantered past that field anyway
Well that was a shame to see Faugheen still far short of his best, there were definitely a few points along the way that showed all wasn’t well, he didn’t travel overly well and stretch the field, his head movement was laboured and lacking the usual enthusiasm, when asked turning in to the straight he just didn’t go away, at his best he would’ve opened up half a dozen lengths on that field when asked. Real shame. Fingers crossed he can put in one big performance in March and have a good battle with Buveur D’air.
Yup, and no odds on winners.
From a punters point of view I hate huge fields for the amount of research required and small fields for the 1/5 favourites, but I love both occasionally, both often offer more drama than your 8-10 horse fields. Also for me the easiest races to analyse and therefore most profitable are races with poor horses, smallish fields and bottomless ground, find the most dour plodder and count your money.
I don’t think anyone here is dismissing him at all, merely saying that 172 is a very high rating and to surpass that you have to be a very special horse, which he isn’t quite, ipso facto he’s not underrated, or if he is, then he’s not the most underrated horse of recent times.
I find it very hard to believe that any horse would come close to understanding a race in it’s entirety, but some can certainly be taught or rewarded in to having a good idea that to get ahead when asked is desirable, a fair few want that naturally too of course.
It can be very important when betting, to know what kind of horse you are betting on. Some horses want to be somewhere near the front, but are not always bothered about leading, such as Cloudy Dream or MTOY, they make great EW horses as you’ll tend to at least get your money back if they don’t win.
Others want to just run, such as Special Tiara, Peace and Co, Ar Mad, the list goes on, whether that’s because they want to be leaders or because they love to run depends on the horse I imagine, obviously they’re not such good EW bets if they occasionally burn themselves out in the first mile!
Horses can definitely be competitive, the best always are, some give up the second they know they can’t compete and get all sulky, you can actually see the exact moment that Kauto Star, while battling Denman, spots Long Run cruising past them in the 2011 GC, he jumps the last, basically says **** this, and just trots up the hill!
I think it’s easy for the public to go against UDS for a few reasons, they were begging to see what he could really do at Cheltenham in 2014, but weren’t given the chance, that wasn’t great PR.
He’s been overshadowed by some amazing horses in his stables and was automatically made the villain of the piece when soundly beaten in his prime by a 10 year old Sprinter Sacre.
I think his OR has always been fair though. 172 is what Annie Power was considering allowance, UDS has never impressed me to her level.
I’m glad you think so, I’m sure you’re absolutely right, I can’t really argue with any of that, in truth she was just one of those horses you get drawn to for inexplicable reasons.
Yeah I really shouldn’t knock Colin Bowe, he’s more in the point to point world I believe and a perfectly good trainer I’m sure, but when I see a horse raced that often, it always feels like going after the short term gain of a few grand over long term potential of something greater.
So you believe some horses can do better with such a busy season? I can understand 6 or 7 race seasons, but I’m sure there is a reason why 99% of horses aren’t pushed beyond that? But yes, didn’t seem to obviously bother her or curb her enthusiasm.
I fancied her in time as stayers hurdle horse, she may well have not settled at the slower pace, but if put in front on decent ground I fancied her to run all day to stay there
I’m well aware that most of this is just me being fanatical and seeing something in a horse that may or may not have been there! Yes retired to stud at 7 seemingly, bit of Robin Des Champs in there, so may produce a Quevega-esque mare one day!!
Yeah wasn’t going to call you out on Seabass, but would like to know what you saw, yes he won his 6 races (4 that season) before that years gold cup, but they were all on at least soft ground or worse and maximum 22 furlongs, with the 2012 GC being run on good ground, only hindsight from his decent GN run suggesting he might’ve had a tiny chance in the GC??
One horse that will always be a what if horse for me is Little King Robin, surely under rated, never topped 146 and that was only recognised right at the end of her career. Beat Artic Fire over 2 miles at her best, the thing was, she was raced 31 times in 2 years!!! I know some horses are hardy and thrive off a hard season, but without knowing the horse intimately, I think that’s a tad ott! She was raced 14 times in the 7 months before beating Artic fire, how far could she have won by (or maybe lost I guess you could argue) if that was only 3 or 4 runs and she was trained by a half decent trainer, I’ll never know. I loved that horse’s heart and efficient gait, could’ve been anything in the right hands I thought, but instead overraced and retired at 6.
I think in practice it would be very hard to get working well. Hurdlers only peak earlier because they progress to chasing later and there is less to gain from experience and improving at their jumps.
Surely the limit would have to be at least 10 or there would be plenty of horses near their best clearing up.
I think retiring horses while theyre fit and young enough to go in to another line of work should be encouraged. There is nothing worse than seeing a once 160 rated horse running off 130 for a couple of grand and breaking a leg when they should be been given a well earned retirement 2 seasons previous. Having said that, probably the second worse things is seeing a poor jumper pushed to death over fences because there was no money left in hurdling for them.
I use Sky, which essentially uses the videos from sportinglife, so you could try that, but at the moment it seems as if all ATR videos are not being shown for whatever reason, hopefully that’ll be resolved quickly. So if that’s messed it all up for you, the only other option might be to search for the specific race on youtube.
