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The 2025 King George VI Chase

jinnyj said:
Luke is great in person. Very down to earth and will happily chat to anyone who approaches him at at point to point (and that's even without being able to get him to come and compere my Awards evenings (I have tried several times!)

Jason too is lovely and we go back a very long way. In fact I taught him riding in the Pony Club for three years. And he was a great kid - very talented and small so I used to try and get him to think about being a jockey. But at the time legendary Showjumper, David Broome, was the Master of the hunt affiliated with our Pony Club so they all wanted to emulate him. Anyway fast forward a few years and I was working for Cumani and Jason pitches up at the Open Day with his parents. I introduced him to Cumani as he was booked to go on the course at the British Racing School the following week. Cumani offered him a job on the spot on my recommendation and he duly returned to the yard following his course and lived with me for a while. He's an absolutely great person and you most definitely have him very wrong. He's still thrilled to see me every time I am at Ascot or Goodwood and wander down to the commentary box and I get a big hug.

When Jason was in the Pony Club, we had our summer camp at Chepstow Racecourse. And he was so talented (he rode this lovely coloured pony called Toby) so the other instructors used to come over and "borrow" him to get other kids ponies to jump - as you so never got on them your selves in case you showed yourself up when they wouldn't jump for you either.
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Yeah, ok Jinny, I may have misjudged him. But he should still smile a bit more for the cameras.

I’m not that keen on Ed Chamberlain. I think I’m on safe ground here, unless he had a two foot growth spurt at 13 and was in your Pony Club before that.
 
Double J said:
Strange how people see a race. Some saying best ever, i thought it was a pile of shite.

Mark Walsh and Paul Townend, by their usual standard, absolutely disgraced themselves.
The ride on Fact To File was bewildering. Maybe he had an eye on Townend, but just send the f$%^ing horse. Maybe it was instructions, but instructions surely weren’t sit midfield 6 wide

If all lined up in the Gold Cup, Id wanna be on Jango. (Cant see Galoping or Iknow losing sleep like) could be best Gold Cup field in some time
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Paul Townend gave Gaelic Warrior a perfectly good ride. Above average I would say.
 
I used to work with Ed Chamberlin on Sports Adviser donkeys years ago - I think he was at Ladbrokes at the time and we both freelanced there.

Really nice guy and very polite and respectful to everyone.

Doesn't seem to have changed much from what I've seen of him on TV.

As for Jason Weaver, why do you need him, or anyone, to smile, Len?

Don't know Weaver, but he seems alright to me.
 
I’ve liked Luke ever since he ( and his dog) featured in a tv documentary about jockeys many years ago. Then we was on R5 for a while. When they dropped him we wrote and complained. I like self depreciating people. I like Ed, too. He could easily have stuck with the football but he joined ITV Racing because of a genuine love of the sport.
 
Ian_Davies said:
I used to work with Ed Chamberlin on Sports Adviser donkeys years ago - I think he was at Ladbrokes at the time and we both freelanced there.

Really nice guy and very polite and respectful to everyone.

Doesn't seem to have changed much from what I've seen of him on TV.

As for Jason Weaver, why do you need him, or anyone, to smile, Len?

Don't know Weaver, but he seems alright to me.
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I like smiley people, that’s all! 😀

Jinny has vouched for JW, so all is well.
 
GETTING BACK ON TRACK


f$%^ing hell what a race! I'm willing to bet that saves Kempton Race Course.

This is why we love horse racing, and regardless of owners you don't like or like, Its the Horses and the jockeys that races them, its the people on the farms that take cares of them, its the trainers that keep them fresh and preps, its the people getting their schedules sorted, its even the people that clean up their shit.


THIS IS HORSE RACING!!!!!
 
I really want to pull Ed's bottom tooth out - it irritates me enough to refer to him as Snaggletooth. And I find him a bit of a twat at times but no he wasn't in the same Pony Club. Does he even ride a horse? I thought he was just seconded from a football punditry job?

Gaelic Warrior wins the GC for me.
 
Yes, getting back to the race, I'd say the way it was run verged on unsatisfactory but that was down to Cobden slowing the pace down a good bit to give his own horse a better chance to get home after being mugged last year, which gave rise to the suspicion that maybe IEF didn't truly stay the trip. It looked to me like Cobden tried to make it a two and a half mile race but it backfired on him.

I think the other jockeys were happy to stack up in behind Cobden and let the race pan out and 'may the best man win'.

The sectional tools at ATR give grades of efficiency of ride (from the point of view of distribution of energy) and nothing got better than a C. That might mean the form won't be franked if they meet again and different tactics are employed.

But the final mile was a spectacle and a half!
 
You lot take some pleasing don't you.all the talk before the race about it being a cracking race and it was a cracker,it didn't disappoint me even though Banbridge got mugged.
It's always "wrong pace" "jockey in a bad position" "didn't stay "
I just don't understand how anyone can call it a shite race.
 
Outsider said:
You lot take some pleasing don't you.all the talk before the race about it being a cracking race and it was a cracker,it didn't disappoint me even though Banbridge got mugged.
It's always "wrong pace" "jockey in a bad position" "didn't stay "
I just don't understand how anyone can call it a shite race.
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You get people like that in these forums in general

Im in one for my Football team and its mostly people that are hard to please and mope about.
 
We all view the game through different prisms, using different language and drawing upon our different life experiences

I wouldn't write over half the things I read others write on here, but that's alright - it's what makes it interesting.

I thought it was a fascinating race, but it is a fact of racing life that exciting close finishes are, more often than not, prompted by flaws in the race, the standard of the participants, or the way the race unfolded.

Some won't care, they just want to celebrate a cracking contest, but many here are punters looking for clues for the future.

Half the disputes here are caused by the ongoing inability of some to realise that we all view the game differently and that's alright - it's ok to be into racing for different reasons.
 
Outsider said:
You lot take some pleasing don't you.all the talk before the race about it being a cracking race and it was a cracker,it didn't disappoint me even though Banbridge got mugged.
It's always "wrong pace" "jockey in a bad position" "didn't stay "
I just don't understand how anyone can call it a shite race.
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Correct.

Some of the drivel spouted is highly amusing.
 
Interesting that some would take Jango or Gaelic Warrior for the GC out of that. If you ask me Jukebox Man outstayed and outfought them. And he's the best jumper of the three, with more to come.
To my mind, if they all make it to Cheltenham, he only has the defending champion to beat.
 
Generous1991 said:
Interesting that some would take Jango or Gaelic Warrior for the GC out of that. If you ask me Jukebox Man outstayed and outfought them. And he's the best jumper of the three, with more to come.
To my mind, if they all make it to Cheltenham, he only has the defending champion to beat.
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I see what you mean.

I didn't think Jango was truly on it at times yesterday, so I do think he's the one who could improve the most.

Take absolutely nothing away from the winner though. I just think Jango ran on and stayed on quite well, especially given I thought his jumping was scrappy at times and he might be beat three or four fences out. He rallied really well like a good horse for future races.
 
Ian_Davies said:
No manners, but what a critic.

Getting back to the race, when half a length separates the first four home, you don't have to be Einstein to realise it wasn't the highest-quality King George ever, great spectacle notwithstanding, interesting fractions and overall time, notwithstanding.

But the winner looks the one most likely to be suited by the stiffer stamina test in the Cheltenham Gold Cup to me, not only the way he battled back today, but his Albert Bartlett effort as a novice in bad ground.

He'd be behind Inowayurthinking and Galopin Des Champs on the numbers, but he's the one who's come out and put down a marker and I reckon there's more to come.
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"Why do we bother, Fawlty?"

"I didn't know you did, Major."
 

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