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Not very original I know, but it’s the Ryanair for me – it just dilutes the fields for the two most important chases of the meeting.
He’s due to be up in court soon on some sexual offence charge. That may have more to do with it.
All race distances require a blend of speed and stamina from its participants, nothing better or worse about any particular distance compared to any other.
If you want serious specialist speed, then look to quarter horses for that. A five furlong horse would look like a leaden-footer plodder compared to First Down Dash and his tribe of speedballs!
There’d be no point in selling Epsom. The downs, apart from the grandstand areas, are public land and there’s zero chance of anyone ever being able to build there.
It looks a high rate of return now but looked just on the right side of generous when it was issued. I remember someone from Hargreaves Lansdown saying what a poor deal it would be for investors
The bond was unlisted, therefore not covered by the FSCS. Basically investors were giving an unsecured loan to the Jockey Club. To the best of my knowledge the interest was taxable as well. Hence the junk bond coupon.
Looking at it now, the fact they didn’t just borrow the Cheltenham money from a financial institution given the basement lending rates at the time, perhaps even as far back as 2013 they had stretched their line of “regular” credit as far as it would go.
Be interesting to know where the other 400 million is coming from.
Yes, the rate, just inside junk territory (although not formally assessed by any ratings agency so far as I know) , was probably about ballpark for what was on offer, neither generous nor stingy.
I wouldn’t take too much notice of what Hargreaves Lansdown says. With their charges, not exactly the investor’s best friend!
I clearly remember watching a race from Goodwood, must have been about 1958 and probably the Goodwood Cup or Goodwood stakes – a long race anyway, and being mesmerised by the patterns generated by the horses galloping along.
It was probably about a year later that I started to develop an interest in the sport, but I think a seed must have been sown then.
“Speed-influenced” horses have long been a feature of jump racing in the UK and Ireland, think of stallions like Flamenco, Knight Of The Garter, Lord Gayle, Anshan etc.
Are you saying it’s the cost to the track itself of maintaining the turf track compared to the trotting track (it must be two or three times the acreage).
Or that it’s France Galop that’s short of money and can’t afford to subsidise Enghien’s jump meetings? (Cheval Francais, who run the track, are all about trotting).
Sorry to keep firing questions at you!
More adieu than au revoir, I think. Why has this happened?
Enghien has two big trotting Group 1s, the Atlantique in the spring (2150m) and Washington in July (1609m, ie one mile), so the track doesn’t seem to be short of funds or prestige.
I know that Kings Theatres have more than his fair share of wind failures at the sales in Ireland. Some of the big hefty youngsters with thick gullets give you a clue as to wind problems. 25 years ago all our horses ran with no wind problems – jump on 10 years ago and nearly every horse we had in training had to have its wind tinkered with.
That is most interesting.
Do you think that part of it is because veterinary science has advanced a lot, and therefore it’s easier to discover and sort minor wind problems, so trainers feel they ought to operate?
Or, have things really got worse in recent times? If we’re talking only 25 years, then the finger has to point at Sadler’s Wells, as he’s been by far the biggest single influence on national hunt breeding in the UK and Ireland, with so many of his sons covering vast books of jumping-bred mares.
Are French-bred jumpers less susceptible to these problems?
@titusOates, there really is no correlation between racing ability and coat colour. Of course, you’ll get outliers in any distribution, but it’s misleading to pick a few examples and generalise from them.
Heterozygous bays like Mill Reef and Northern Dancer will pass on the chestnut gene 50% of the time, but the mare contributes 50% as well. There’s no evidence to suggest that when a bay mare passes on the chestnut gene rather than the bay one when the bay sire passes on the chestnut gene, then the transference of the most desirable “ability genes” (for want of a better expression) from the stallion will be inhibited in some way. Also, many of the bay offspring of those two stallions will have received a chestnut gene from the stallion.
Just to correct what you wrote about Darshaan, he was a homozygous bay, so couldn’t sire a chestnut.
On why there are fewer chestnuts about than there were, some of the most influential stallions at the end of the last century, such as Sadler’s Wells, Danehill, Danzig, have happened to be homozygous bays. But now, we’ve got such stars as Galileo, Dubawi and Frankel, all heterozygous bays, plus Tapit, a chestnut under his grey patina.
and (unlike several sires) there is no correspondence so far between colour and ability.
An unlikely idea. What sires are those?
He’s ok, and won’t put off the first-time or occasional viewer. You wouldn’t want them all to be like him, but he provides a counterpoint to the nerdyness of specialist broadcasters, whatever the sport.
Most specialist racing presenters on tv or radio probably come across to non-racing enthusiasts (ie potential fans) as being rather weird, and not in an intriguing way.
I’d give Winx the edge over Almanzor, although he’s an clearly an outstanding performer as well. If nothing else, she’s so far won a lot more Group 1s than he has!
I’m not clear why Winx needs to come over here for people to “see how good she is”. You could equally well argue that Almanzor ought to go to race in Australia to show how good he is. After all, there are plenty of valuable races down under in the 1600 to 2000 metre range for him to run in.
