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At Wolverhampton today Oisin Murphy was riding one of Imad Alsagar’s horses which appeared to get blocked in and was well beaten. It could have looked as if it were a terrible ride, but the reality was the horse would not quicken when asked to. The point I am continually making is the jockeys are often blamed when the horse is simply not good enough.
My view is that if the horse is good enough, Holly Doyle will win the race. She has just won the feature race at Goodwood today. I woudn’t agree that she rode a poor race on Zgharta; rather she was unlucky in not getting a clear run in the Goodwood race
Of course I agree that Oisin Murphy is a superb jockey and if he was the first retainer to Imad Alsagar, then a great deal. But when it comes to the key Group 1 races it is possible that Oisin will not be able to ride for him. In addition, all the top riders seem to have retainers for the best trainers. Imad Asagar might find it difficult to find a better jockey in these races.
I think that horse racing protests too much. Tax is not the problem – in the 1970’s betting tax was set at 10%, meaning we paid tax of 10% or our stake and if we didn’t our winnings were reduced by 10%. Racing still flourished because in those days it was exciting.
These days it is dull overall – there is too much and most of it is low quality. It all went pear-shaped when racing kept on pandering to bookmakers by introducing irrelevant all-weather meetings, giving them another advantage as poor quality racing is more difficult to predict.
Tax paid by bookmakers has no adverse impact on punters, unless they increase margins in their favour. In which case sensible punters should not bet. The solution is to revive racing to make it interesting again and put pressure on bookmakers to stop being greedy by offering fair odds.
I think that Imad Alsagar and his team have made a mistake. In my view they blamed Hollie Doyle for getting beat on Zgharta at Goodwood and the ‘a change of strategy’ was to ensure they had a winner at the York Festival at York.
I know from many years experience that jockeys often get blamed when the problem is the horse. So it proved with Zhgarta that despite being favourite and being ridden by Ousin Murphy it still got best.
Engaging Murphy would have been great if he was first in line to ride their horses, but he has other retainers who have first choice. Their will be times when he cannot ride their horses.
