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Could I propose an honourable exception in the form of Hunter Chases, almost all of which are class 5 or 6.
Very profitable if you get a handle of the PTP form and the stables and jockeys. Bookies hate them, as a rule, which has to be a good indicator.
There is the Racing Post website (though you now have to pay for this information).
Otherwise, try attheraces.co.uk or sportinglife.com, both free sites
And then there is this classic. The Galway Races by the Dubliners.
Topical too this month!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTT-g0y9nsc
Nicky Henderson’s ban will cover 56 jump meetings (average of 0.6 meetings a day).
In the months Jul-Sep 2006, 2007 and 2008, NH ran 31 over jumps and 12 on the flat. In three years.
Bit like getting a 3 month driving ban in Norway in December…..I’d take it.
£20 is very steep, to say the least; plus, as I am interested only in the jumps, if I do subscribe it will only be if there is no minimum 12 month contact, and I can subscribe Nov- April.
But even then, I’m very unlikely to subscribe- the stuff about £600 of free admissions is all fine and dandy, if you take up every offer. Can’t think many people do.
I used to subscribe to the weekends only, and if they reintroduced this, I may be interested.
Looks good!
I bet Peter Bowen’s horsebox is breathing a sigh of releif!!!And bang goes that old quiz question:
"What is the nearest racecourse to Peter Bowen’s yard?"
Everyone says "Chepstow", but apparently it’s Wexford. Not for much longer mind.
In an ideal world, the course would tell us. Just as in an ideal world we’d know the weights (body weights that is) of the horses.
Unfortunately, when it comes to matters such as this, British racing is still rooted in the early 20th century, so we just have to guess.
Surely it’s not beyond the wit of the clerk to the course to wander round pushing one of those bike wheels on sticks, and putting the information in the public domain.
The problem at Ayr this season has been the ground which has been at best soft and mostly heavy all season. After a while the supply of soft ground horses on the go is reduced by virtue of attrition, and it got to the point where the March 7th meeting had only 34 runners in 7 races. They could help themselves if the drainage could be improved, but the west of Scotland is generally wtter than most parts and really suffers in a rai ny spell.
Rob
I’ve been doing my own speed figures for jumps for 15 years now, and I think I can say that when the ground is truly heavy at Ayr, it is the heaviest in the UK, with going corrections showing the ground is worse than anywhere.
Other courses worthy of mention in this category are Towcester, Uttoxeter and Lingfield (on the odd occasion that they stage jumps there).
Ayr is probably the only UK course which would qualify for my unofficial ‘Irish-Heavy’ ground description. Or as Alistair Down once put it:
"The Going was officially described as ‘Yangtse-Delta-at-rice-picking-time’."
I went to the Midlands Racing Club Cheltenham preview on the Thursday before the Festival. Hislop, Machin, Mellish, Sam Turner at al on the panel.
John Hales was there, and was asked up to the mic to discuss NC’s chances. No doubt that he fancied his horse big time. It seems that he had plotted how the race would be run with military precision. Can’t remember the precise details, but he was saying something along the lines that he hoped to be 7L ahead of Kauto at the top of the hill, and 4L behind him over the last, and would then do Kauto again up the hill.
He seemed, as I say, big on his chances, but not to the point of obsessiveness.
I just suspect that with John Hales, the journey from lighting the fuse, to it going off is a rather short one sometimes.
It may well be that the toys did come out of the pram…and that at times he can appear graceless (eg when he spoke about having "put him on the deck" when talking about Moscow Flyer).
Storm in a teacup methinks.
Smooth Escort was a maiden when he won the 4 miler in 1991, as was Topsham Bay the year before.
Not sure if either of them had won a point mind.
I buy a copy every time I go to Ireland (4-5 times a year) and it is excellent value, not least from the perspective of bloodstock & breeding.
How long does it take to arrive if sent by post?
I’d be very interested in a subscription, if they made it available online as a PDF like the Post do. Perhaps anyone from the I.F. reading this might give that some thought.
Spot on, Drone. Compare and contrast this with a horse like Echo’s Of Dawn, for whom the application of an apostrophe simply appears to be a grammatical blight with nothing in his breeding or ownership to offer grounds for mitigation.
gc
Was Echo’s Of Dawn named by a greengrocer maybe?
Cheers, that makes sense.
Personally I blame Paul bloody Nicholls! Kawto, Cow-toe, Korto- and now this
Just a quickie- the time of the Big Buck’s v Punchestown race at Cheltenham the other day.
Very odd- despite the presence of the likes of Fair Along and Lough Derg in the field, it was (on heavy ground) only 6:39.18.
It rated a very low speed figure from Raceform for a race of this sort of just 67. Moreover, Raceform didn’t rate Big Buck’s’ previous win too highly from a speed perspective either (a 92) where most races of that type are regularly rated well over 100.
Back to the Cleeve Hurdle- the time of 6:39.18 was only 14 seconds quicker than it took Joe Lively to cover the chase course over an extra furlong and a half.
Punchestown’s two speed figures before Cheltenham were 107 and 113.
Conclusion- in a truly run race on better ground, Punchestown will definitely be seen to better advantage. The last time Big Buck’s faced this in a Cheltenham race, he was notably done for toe (Jewson last year’s Festival).
The Whitbread at Cheltenham? Doesn’t seem right, but if change is for the better….
They have run races over 3m 4f 110 yards on the New Course, so that would not pose a problem in terms of chopping down the Whitbread distance overly.
The Hunter chase evening is run on the New Course- perhaps they could move that to the Friday night, which would make it a brilliant weekend.
