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Truly bloody awful and to witness the aftermath; I can’t imagine what the Hunt family are going through.
We are all entitled to our opinions but i do sometimes wonder what people want to see from the ITV broadcast. Overall, i think they do a good job and we as racing fans have live racing every week and with Royal Ascot and other meetings, we have midweek racing as well on terrestrial. The comments around “having a Royal winner”, what’s the problem? it is after all Royal Ascot. I bet if we trawl back through the television archives, we might have someone saying “to top the meeting off it would be good if Henry Cecil/Michael Stoute/Geoff Wragg (insert your own trainer) had a winner”. ITV must be doing something right though, as people on here must be watching the whole show for them to be giving negative comments. If you don’t like the coverage, you can either do a Chezza and put the mute button on or as racing fans you know when each race is off, so just tune in then, watch the race and then switch off.
Now Yeats that is nostalgic; FA Cup draw on radio 2. Remember sneaking off to the toilet at school to listen on my Walkman, to find out who Saints would draw. As for the Derby reverting back to a Wednesday, to me it would make it a bit more special but alas that’s not going to happen. How did they stretch Epsom out for four days when I was kid? Come the Oaks on the Saturday and the course was looking tired.
What’s with all the negativity? Fabulous training and riding performance and let’s wait for a few months down the line to see if this was a poor renewal.
Do i detect a slight defence of his jockey by John Gosden (in case she is beaten), by suggesting that Emily Upjohn is not quite there yet but will be spot on for her next run. Or am i reading too much into it and he’s just being honest?
i too wish there was less negativity prior to the race; look back in a couple of months and if it wasn’t up to scratch then fair enough. Just looking at recent history and off relatively low ratings we’ve had the likes of Snowfall winning off 108, Enable off 107 and Taghrooda off 103. Even beaten horses like Emily Upjohn (110), Nashwa (107) and Tarnawa (101) have gone on to big race successes.
At this rate Mr Shepherd might not be the only one losing rides, watch out Mr Shoemark.
If I were the connections of Maasai Mara I would be very aggrieved with the starter and being declared a runner to boot!
It is what it is nowadays. Of course it’s easier then when i started to watch the race, back in the days of The Pilgarlic but rightly or wrongly we are not going to go back. To be honest though every course seems to be easier than it used to be. I remember watching the Charlie Hall in the eighties and Wetherby was tough to jump, the same at the old Haydock and in particular the third last at Kempton. Cheltenham is meant to be the pinnacle but is that really the test it once was. I do echo GM23’s thoughts though, insomuch that it was an easier watch compared to last year.
Even if you are for or against the changes, we now know whats needed to win these days, so go and fill your pockets!Looks like three odds on chances this season, two of which were in races against professionals. Okay, we know we’re we are at with David Maxwell but I still think he had a good ride yesterday.
To be fair to David Maxwell, his win stats are just below Jack Tudor and above Brendan Powell, so maybe these two jockeys shouldn’t have ridden in the race either! He also doesn’t just compete in Hunter Chases but in races against professionals (don’t know the numbers of each though).
You’re not wrong and especially about Dunne. Well done Bryony that was a cracking ride.
Stilvi, you keep saying these horses weren’t Grade 1 standard but Hermes Allen had been a Grade 1 winner over hurdles and prior to Boxing Day had won a Grade 2 over fences. Correct me if I’m wrong but it’s the first Grade 1 of the season for novices, so if the likes of Hermes Allen weren’t potentially Grade 1, who’s going to actually run in this race? To me his performance on the day was just wow and the clock backs that up. Can we not jump the gun and say he won’t like Cheltenham, he won’t like this and he won’t like that et al. We don’t know. Seem to remember a lot of people on here questioning what Galopin had done prior to his first Gold Cup and look how that’s turned out.
I might not have the solution but a few suggestions would be…
Run your horses for a start. Putting the Mares race aside, in the three novice hurdles at Cheltenham Britain had a combined nine runners! A third of which were trained by Ben Pauling who nearly won the Albert Bartlett. Run them and see how good they are, might not come to anything but you won’t know until you’ve tried.
It seems Willie Mullins gets all the best horses from France but as he’s now cornered that market why not try German breeding as an example. A few years ago German bred horses had a half decent record at Cheltenham from very few runners.
Go looking for owners. Most of the trainers must know a friend of a friend of a friend. Go pigeon hole Sir Jim Ratcliffe, see if he’s into racing. I just checked the Sunday Times rich list and Alan Howard is at number 100 with a fortune of 1.75bn; surely there are some people above him who would love to get into Racing and have Cheltenham runners/winners; it would also seem a perfect time now to acquire new owners between both of the festivals.
Get in with Godolphin/Qatar Racing and the like and see if you can acquire their so called decent cast offs at the end of the season.
Who are all the top British owners? Someone touched upon this in another thread and i think there’s only Ronnie Bartlett, Kenny Alexander, Munir/Soude and to a lesser extent Tony Bloom (correct me if i’m wrong). Ask Munir and Soude why they only have a handful of horses left in this country.
None of what i’ve suggested may work but lets at least try.
