Equine Retirements, Long Term Injuries and Departures

A real shame that. The trainer said he saw the horse had cut himself badly as soon as he’d finished the post-race interview on Saturday. Hope the horse makes a full recovery


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Iceo was simply hideous to see. I was looking down at my iPad and looked up at exactly the wrong moment.
 
Me too. I thought today was going to be hard watching with the ground conditions so I was only half watching but that has really thrown me. Awful, just awful.
 
Gesskille today in the X Country :(

And listening to Henry Brooke being interviewed after winning the next....absolutely heartbreaking :(
 
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Only saw the interview on the FB page as out and didn't see race. Bless all of them. Heartbroken for them all. I'd just come back from our yard where one waiting for the vet to arrive and be PTS and couldn't stop crying and then saw that :(
 
What happened? He was fifth and the last to finish with everything else pulled up.

ps: I feel awful having backed him ew, feels like I’ve picked the pocket of someone killed in a car accident. More to the point I don’t think you can condone an event where 14 of the 19 runners are pulled up and then one of the finishers dies. Won’t ever bet on it again.
 
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The Welsh National used to be held after Easter, at least in the old days.
It then moved to mid January in my youth before settling on days first before then after Christmas in the mid 1980s.
Heavy going gets very heavy at Chepstow.
 
The Welsh National is one of the best races in the National Hunt calendar and remains so. The fact the horse in question, Complete Unknown, finished the race in fifth place, but then died afterwards, is really sad, but doesn't mean the Welsh National is all of a sudden a rotten race.

The heavy ground probably meant a load got pulled up, probably because their jockeys felt they weren't acting on the ground or weren't going to get round. Again. not an accurate reflection of the Welsh National itself, more so the testing conditions the horses ran in.

A real shame about Complete Unknown, but I could go try and run a marathon in a minute, then die tragically after the marathon. I wouldn't expect the actual marathon was to blame for what happend to me.

I thought Boothill had a horrible fall in a six or seven runner race in a two mile chase yesterday at Kempton. Thankfully the horse got up, but if he hadn't, I couldn't have a go at the track or the race.
 
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Well that makes you wonder how he finished fifth, and why he wasn't pulled up during the race, doesn't it.

I heartily hope his jockey hasn't been negligent on him, because if that's the case, he should be hauled in front of the BHA immediately.
 
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Marb said:
The Welsh National is one of the best races in the National Hunt calendar and remains so. The fact the horse in question, Complete Unknown, finished the race in fifth place, but then died afterwards, is really sad, but doesn't mean the Welsh National is all of a sudden a rotten race.

The heavy ground probably meant a load got pulled up, probably because their jockeys felt they weren't acting on the ground or weren't going to get round. Again. not an accurate reflection of the Welsh National itself, more so the testing conditions the horses ran in.

A real shame about Complete Unknown, but I could go try and run a marathon in a minute, then die tragically after the marathon. I wouldn't expect the actual marathon was to blame for what happend to me.

I thought Boothill had a horrible fall in a six or seven runner race in a two mile chase yesterday at Kempton. Thankfully the horse got up, but if he hadn't, I couldn't have a go at the track or the race.
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I think any race where 14 of the 19 runners are pulled up and one of the 5 to finish dies is clearly attritional and has asked far too much of the horses. It became not a race, but a question of survival. Down to the conditions added to the extreme distance of the race, I know, but it’s unpalatable to me unless you can do the unthinkable and only run it on decent ground.
 
I'd take the opposite view, Bj.

If 14 of the 19 are pulled up then the jockeys deserve credit for looking after the horses in difficult conditions.

The winner didn't appear to have a hard race (although he probably did). I'd say down the years we've watched far more attritional races and sometimes over shorter trips. and the ground is probably deeper more often in Ireland than it was yesterday.

It's sad that we've lost CU. He was obviously thought at home to be a potential Hennessy winner and when that went south they've obviously thought the slower pace and longer trip of yesterday's race might suit him better but he wasn't looking like winning from the moment Nassalam took up the running. I'd toyed with the idea of backing CU for the Gold Cup before the Hennessy given the strength of the yard but he wasn't building on a promising novice season. No doubt Cobden will have all sorts of stuff messing inside his head this morning. I'm sparing a thought for him too.
 
Don’t disagree, desert, but that doesn’t alter the view that the race was too much for them - that’s presumably why the concerned jockeys pulled them up.

Still not clear about Complete Unknown. I could understand a heart attack, but can’t envisage a “catastrophic injury” that would have allowed him to finish.
 
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Awful news about Complete Unknown, I watched the race back and I noticed he absolutely clouted the 3rd or 4th last fence and from that point, he was paddling, made me wonder if he had emptied or whether he had suffered an injury at that fence but adrenaline was keeping him going to some degree.
 
barjon said:
Don’t disagree, desert, but that doesn’t alter the view that the race was too much for them - that’s presumably why the concerned jockeys pulled them up.
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It's sport and different horses act in different conditions. Those that act best in really soft ground shouldn't be denied their chance to show that,just as I've argued against over-watering because it denies those that act best on fast ground the chance to show their true ability. It's up to owners and trainers to withdraw their horse if conditions are likely to harm them but I imagine a lot of yesterday's jockeys would have been told if they're chasing a lost cause they should look after the horse, which a lot of them did.
 
I suppose he could have injured his pelvis when hitting the fence and whilst not overly apparent (action would have possibly been disguised as laboured in any case) which then got progressively worse and he kept moving on it. I had a horse here fracture their pelvis in the stable and didn’t pick up on it initially as the horse just looked stiff. However as the days progressed, so did the injury and I ended up having to have it pts. A fracture is something I’m normally quite accurate on so this must have started out quite minor and widened.

All jockeys are instructed not to continue if their horses get tired and they would most definitely have been reminded about it prior to yesterday’s race in the weighing room.
 
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