2018 Gold Cuppin'

Grasshopper said:
Spot on. Besides, there was nothing wrong with the KG run anyway. The Biter didn’t do a lick in the straight at Kempton, and his superiority over the rest of the field, is in no way reflected by a winning-margin of a length.......in much the same way that his RSA superiority isn’t reflected by beating Whisper a nose.
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I'm sorry Lazy? What does that mean? lazy!! Perhaps he idled or slowed after the last but as Steve Mellis said straight away after the race he/we were expecting something more spectacular and it never came.

But have it your way he was lazy hence a very ordinary chaser finished right up his backside.

So when he's lazy in the Gold Cup that won't matter because of why?

He gets lazy around Native River he'll get run into the ground and if he gets lazy in the closing stages John boy will go past him like he's a tree.

I actually have him in several AP bets but Confident....not after that I am not. Sizing John on form would have won that race by half the track
 
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Will be interesting to see how he gets on in the Gold Cup.
Has always struck me as a King George winner. Just not convinced over the Gold Cup. The Oppo is not looking that strong mind.
 
Regarding Native River, have many horses won the GC after only having one prep run close to the race?
 
Tanlic said:
I'm sorry Lazy? What does that mean? lazy!! Perhaps he idled or slowed after the last but as Steve Mellis said straight away after the race he/we were expecting something more spectacular and it never came.

But have it your way he was lazy hence a very ordinary chaser finished right up his backside.

So when he's lazy in the Gold Cup that won't matter because of why?

He gets lazy around Native River he'll get run into the ground and if he gets lazy in the closing stages John boy will go past him like he's a tree.

I actually have him in several AP bets but Confident....not after that I am not. Sizing John on form would have won that race by half the track
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Will give you a £ if you can find the word "lazy" anywhere in the post you quoted. :p

Bear in mind that a horse who nearly won a Hennessy off 161 also finished right up The Biter's rear-end in the Sun Alliance - after being allowed to catch-up 15L between the last two. It's the reference to the King George being as good as the Biter is, that Euro is warning against..........so you're sorta falling into your own trap with this one, you dope.

Native River won't be able to go the gallop The Biter will set, and you're ante-post bets are safe.

As for Sizing John, all that has happened in the intervening months, is that the Gold Cup form (Cheltenham and Punchestown) has completely fallen apart, suggesting it probably wasn't much cop.......or at the very least, it was not as good as it looked at the time. Exciting, yes, but not the stellar performances they perhaps looked at the time.

If SJ had run at Kempton, the Biter would have enjoyed the company for a while in the straight, and then ran away from him........with Double Shuffle and TFT both trailing in their respective wakes.
 
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Desert Orchid said:
Our Duke might well have beaten the lot of them but for his mistake. That mistake cost him plenty of distance and momentum. I'd also ask why the jockey allowed him to slow up going into the fence. He started the approach to the fence with a share of the lead. By the time he got to it he was two or three lengths down, all in the space of about a dozen strides. He was then shaken up vigorously until approaching the last where, again, he was allowed to slow down for a number of strides. After the last he stayed on pretty strongly again. He is an awful lot better than his finishing position but I haven't seen him race often enough to know if his jumping is a problem.
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I think the answer, DO, is that Our Duke lacks confidence, and the jockey is clever enough not to throw him at the fences, so he is steadied-up whilst others are being ridden into them. The Dook basically fiddled every fence on Sunday bar maybe on or two, where you would say he jumped OK.

I also agree that it was a bit of a miracle that he was still in the race with two to go, though that might also be down to the steady nature of the race. The Gold Cup is a different matter though. He will get left behind if he jumps like that, and the race will be over before his stamina has a chance to kick-in.

Is there any prospect of Our Duke's jumping suddenly improving over the next five weeks? Hard to see it happening, and I would reluctantly have to write him off as a serious Gold Cup player myself.
 
Our Duke has had kissing spine issues and had an operation, maybe his back problems are not one hundred per cent cured and thus his jumping.
 
Grasshopper said:
As for Sizing John, all that has happened in the intervening months, is that the Gold Cup form (Cheltenham and Punchestown) has completely fallen apart, suggesting it probably wasn't much cop.......or at the very least, it was not as good as it looked at the time.
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I honestly don't believe things are quite so cut and dried. As with the Hennessy and Grand National - Many Clouds was the first horse for how long to win another chase of any sort after the National? - any strongly-run race can leave its mark but top races can take much longer from which to recover. UTPT, for example, has been given the rest of this season off and SFP has now disappointed to varying degrees in every run this season. It now looks like Whisper has been bottomed by the Hennessy, trying to give a horse like Total Recall so much weight.
 
Are the races so strongly-run that they are bottoming very, very good horses.....or are they just good/very good horses, without the additional superlative?

Probably not quite cut-and-dried like you say, DO, but that works both ways, and the suggestion that Sizing John would give Might Bite a walloping, is hardly solid, given subsequent events......which is what I was challenging, really.
 
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I think Sizing John at his very best (ie last year's Gold Cup) would not see which way Might Bite, on his very best form, went.

I'm just not sure of MB's form this season. I accept he was probably idling at Kempton and Simon Rowlands's piece seems strongly of the opinion he is a lot better than we saw there. But that's not saying that much really. Anybody who can read form can tell you scraping home from Double Shuffle is an awful long way from hammering - as he was in the process of doing - a horse that went up to 169 for almost defying top weight in a brutal Hennessy.

But which one will turn up in March?
 
You'd have to surmise the March version if the ground is decent - Nicky's almost always prefer better underfoot conditions. Look at Musselburgh yesterday, he sends horses up there because they generally have good ground. It pisses down and two of his three shorties get beat.
 
I didn't realise it had rained yesterday at Musselburgh. We didn't have any rain over here in the Hamilton area.
 
Might have been overnight. It was soft ground anyway.

Even if you don't like Might Bite it's hard to see an alternative. I love Coney Island but see him as being best at 3m or shorter (made the same costly mistake with SJ to be fair)

Road to Respect? I think Balko Des Flos was the best horse at Xmas but he goes Ryanair (ironically for a compensation race that looks a better renewal than this - UDS, Top Notch, Coney Island (please please), Waiting Patiently, Balko, Foxy.
 
Denman Chase, just the five entries - Native River, Cloudy Dream, Fountains Windfall, Saphir du Rheu, Traffic Fluide.
 
Desert Orchid said:
I've just watched the finish of yesterday's race again a few times.

Some observations:


Killultagh Vic would probably have won but I'm not convinced it would have been a wide margin the way Outlander and Edwulf kept pulling away from Djakadam.
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I see Timeform agree with the bit I've highlighted in blue. I don't know their reasoning, just that they're rating him as winning by two lengths.
 
JamesRB said:
Denman Chase, just the five entries - Native River, Cloudy Dream, Fountains Windfall, Saphir du Rheu, Traffic Fluide.
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Can't help but be disappointed every time I see a potential line up over here for a top race.

Native river " fit and raring to go " according to Tizzard...unless of course he gets beat in which case they thought he was fit but probably needed the run.

So we have 2 horses who haven't run for 300 days, a blatant non stayer, a novice who's fell on 50% of his chase starts and Traffic Fluide who in two starts over 3 mile in graded company has been beaten a combined total of 120 lengths. If anyone fancies strapping a saddle on me I feel I'd have a genuine chance of picking up some prize money.

I await the wonderful ramblings of the Bradstocks as to why Coneygree hasn't turned up.
 
Desert Orchid said:
I see Timeform agree with the bit I've highlighted in blue. I don't know their reasoning, just that they're rating him as winning by two lengths.
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You got some nerve posting that man!!! You only changed your mind after you were told you were talking shyte now you want credit for wisdom.......you must be joking:confused:
 
They won't run him in a bog after a wind op seems the most likely excuse

No sense in running if it is going to set him back and Newbury looks certain to be heavy if it survives
 
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Tanlic said:
Look up lol

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I reckon we will see the Gold Cup winner on Saturday as much as I have a dislike for Tizzard I think he's got it right witn Native River. He is so consistent has the right to have improved and Gold Cups are won with a combination of speed and staying power. The problem with the more dependant on speed is they more often or not find the course not lending to their asset as much as say Aintree...a dour classy stayed is what I think will win this not an airy fairy Might Bite type...Sizing is the bigger danger but Native River for me...the bummer is if he wins all my current so bets are down the swanee

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I'm very much warming to Road To Respect at 10/1 nrnb bog. Seems to be still improving, handles any going, 3rd top OR behind Might Bite (given 169 for beating 151 Double Shuffle) and Sizing John (under a cloud). I'd freely admit that either of those could turn in a monster performance on the day but I think that RTR is a good ew price. If only he had a different trainer!
 
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