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I think you’ll find that Squirt appears millions of times in the pedigrees of all modern thoroughbreds, not just in 80%!
Well, BG didn’t quite get the quality of mates that Frankel has, but they were more than good enough to produce some top horses if he could have passed on the right genes. There were one or two decent performers from his first crop or two, but mostly his stock were very slow, often temperamental too.
Frankel has been rather disappointing so far when you consider the stellar books of mares he’s had, normally only available to literally just a handful of already proven world class stallions like Galileo, Dubai, Deep Impact and Tapit.
If you look at past outstanding colts who went on to become outstanding stallions, horses like Hyperion, Nearco, Ribot, Bold Ruler, well they started churning out top flight winners straight away, and they would have covered less than 50 mares a season.
Unfortunately, there have been even more outstanding champions who’ve disappointed at stud, just think of Citation, Tulloch, Brigadier Gerard, Spectacular Bid, Secretariat (although he did become champion broodmare sire one year), Dayjur, Dancing Brave etc.
Of last year’s first season sires, Nathaniel and Helmet have impressed more, when you consider the class of mares they got.High point: the Gold Cup was an outstanding, the race of the season so far.
Low point: the idiot throwing the beer glass.I don’t care for the fashion stuff any more than the rest of you, but it’s always been that way on television, so I fear we’re stuck with it.
That aside, the coverage has been excellent, with plenty of zest and enthusiam, unlike C4 and the BBC.
I go along with Black Caviar’s race, that was spellbinding.
I believe around 10,000 people watched the race on a big screen in the centre of Melbourne.
I think you have to be careful about picking out trainers to move from or to.
Sometimes a trainer can have a season or so when there seems to be some sort of virus running around the yard, nothing that makes the horses exactly “ill”, they’re looking well but just running rather below par most of the time.
And some horses just benefit from a change of routine or surroundings.
Taking Dandy Nicholls as a random example from those suggested as a trainer to move from rather than to, well, he made his name taking cast-offs from other yards, freshening them up, and then winning loads of races with them. Sometimes these things just go in random cycles.
A weird choice of stallion for Annie Power, I really can’t see what they’re trying to achieve.
The outcrosses will most likely come from French or German stallions, ones whose pedigrees aren’t saturated with SW, ND and Mr P. As you imply, close inbreeding isn’t a great strategy when you’re looking to produce big, strong athletic types, although of course there are always going to be exceptions.
When I first started following the sport, the big national hunt stallions were Vulgan and Fortina, both French-bred.
Returning to the original topic of Fair Eva, she looked to me like a “made” two year old last year and doesn’t seem to have progressed physically this year. She also looks more of a sprinter than a miler, so might do better returned to a shorter trip.
On the subject of Frankel-as-a-stallion, we’d all like him to do well, but on the evidence so far, he’s proved a little disappointing. Don’t forget he received an absolutely stellar book of mares for his first season (and an almost equally classy one for his second), the sort of book normally reserved for a handful of world class sires like Galileo or Deep Impact. Even a selling plater would get some half-decent winners with those mares. I feel he should be doing a little better at this stage, although far too early to write him off.
Whatever you think about the other presenters, I don’t think it’s fair to criticise Dettori. His job is to be a jockey, not a pundit. It’s likely that he didn’t know he’d be available for TV work until the day before.
I thought Cumani did fine, it was her first outing with the team after all.
War Fronts are notorious for not training on, particularly the really precocious types, Air Force Blue being the most obvious example. Aidan O’Brien burbled about him being the best 2-y-o they’d ever had, yet as a 3-y-o he was barely Listed class.
Seven Heavens just pulled too hard and looks like a bit of a head case.
Perhaps a visit from the vet would render him more tractable.
Yes, it would be a great if there were some kind of regulations in place regarding soundness in potential stallions, rather like what they have in Germany, a country whose contribution to the modern thoroughbred is out of all proportion to the size of their tiny bloodstock industry.
Not much hope of that, though!
It might help if racing journalists were a little less supine in their attitude towards the big studs and stallion masters. We’re constantly seeing horses retiring to stud after a handful of races, with insanely large books of mares in place, yet no questions asked, or criticisms made, by our fearless reporters.
It’s a shame they’re not covering the Dubai World Cup meeting rather than the not very interesting fare on offer at Newbury and Kelso.
Disagree big time.
I watched the entire ITV coverage just to escape the Dubai stuff which completely wrecked RUK’s coverage this afternoon.
With narrow-minded views like yours around, how can racing expect to be reach out to the outside world and get new fans?
You appear not to have noticed that the “Dubai stuff” was top class international sport.
Too many foreigners in it for you, perhaps.
It’s a shame they’re not covering the Dubai World Cup meeting rather than the not very interesting fare on offer at Newbury and Kelso.
I’ll give the trotting a miss I think
Trotting in France is more popular than flat and nh put together – the D’Amerique generates more interest among French people than the Arc, in spite of it being run in the depths of winter.
I’m guessing a little, but this may be because the horses stay in training for longer and race more frequently (tougher breed plus A.I.). The form is more reliable and horses get bigger followings than the thoroughbreds. D’Amerique winners like Bold Eagle, Ready Cash, Jag De Bellouet etc, are far better known than almost any Arc winner you could name.
