Diamond Geezer
Gone But Not Forgotten
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Greg Wood in The Guardian
A quarrel which would normally remain behind closed stable doors emerged in public on Thursday, when Luca Cumani said that Jamie Spencer, who has not had a booking for the Cumani yard since early August, had given "two very bad rides" to his Melbourne Cup contender Mount Athos, in races at Royal Ascot and Glorious Goodwood earlier this season.
The jockey clearly did not take kindly to the criticism and responded to Cumani's comments on Twitter. "The only picture that I can find to answer today's news!! #spaghetti" the jockey tweeted, alongside a picture of a grown man in a pram, surrounded by broken toys.
Mount Athos finished fifth in last year's Melbourne Cup and is on course to line up for Australia's most famous race once again in November. He started the current season with a victory for Spencer in the Ormonde Stakes at Chester, before finishing fifth when 11-4 for the Hardwicke Stakes at Royal Ascot and only eighth when 3-1 favourite for the Goodwood Cup. On his latest start, with Richard Hughes replacing Spencer in the saddle, Mount Athos narrowly failed to win the March Stakes, again at Goodwood.
In an interview with the Australian radio station RSN Racing & Sport on Thursday, Cumani was asked whether the five-year-old had been either "disappointing" or "below par" in the Hardwicke and Goodwood Cup respectively.
"No, not at all," Cumani said. "I'm afraid it's on record that he was given two very bad rides and that wasn't the plan to ride him like that. So I insisted on a change of jockey [for the March Stakes] and we got the result we expected. Asked to explain the best way to ride Mount Athos, Cumani said: "Certainly not the way he was ridden at Ascot and at Goodwood, ie dropped out a long way at the back and then trying to make a run in the fastest part of the race, when the other horses are accelerating, which is about three furlongs out.
"That's the way he was ridden twice, that's the way it didn't work out and that wasn't the way to ride him."
Cumani has saddled both Purple Moon and Bauer to finish second in the Melbourne Cup, with the latter's failure by a nose behind Viewed in 2008 a particularly painful memory. Bauer actually recorded a faster official time than the winner but, while the microchip behind his saddle went round the course more swiftly than his opponent's, the tip of his nose did not.
Mount Athos will carry 54kg in this year's race, the same burden as 12 months ago, and will travel to Australia either three weeks or a fortnight beforehand.
"He probably hasn't improved but he's certainly no worse than he was this time last year," Cumani said. "I'm very happy with [his weight], happy with his condition and happy with the way he ran his race last time. It's just those two blips were entirely due to the way he was ridden.
"You need a lot of things to go right, a good journey over with the horse a good preparation for the race, then you need a good enough draw and you need a lot of luck in running."
Following his ride on Mount Athos on Goodwood, Spencer rode Nargys for Cumani in the Oak Tree Stakes at the same course the following day, a mount for which he had already been declared. Since then, however, he has not had a ride for the stable.
A quarrel which would normally remain behind closed stable doors emerged in public on Thursday, when Luca Cumani said that Jamie Spencer, who has not had a booking for the Cumani yard since early August, had given "two very bad rides" to his Melbourne Cup contender Mount Athos, in races at Royal Ascot and Glorious Goodwood earlier this season.
The jockey clearly did not take kindly to the criticism and responded to Cumani's comments on Twitter. "The only picture that I can find to answer today's news!! #spaghetti" the jockey tweeted, alongside a picture of a grown man in a pram, surrounded by broken toys.
Mount Athos finished fifth in last year's Melbourne Cup and is on course to line up for Australia's most famous race once again in November. He started the current season with a victory for Spencer in the Ormonde Stakes at Chester, before finishing fifth when 11-4 for the Hardwicke Stakes at Royal Ascot and only eighth when 3-1 favourite for the Goodwood Cup. On his latest start, with Richard Hughes replacing Spencer in the saddle, Mount Athos narrowly failed to win the March Stakes, again at Goodwood.
In an interview with the Australian radio station RSN Racing & Sport on Thursday, Cumani was asked whether the five-year-old had been either "disappointing" or "below par" in the Hardwicke and Goodwood Cup respectively.
"No, not at all," Cumani said. "I'm afraid it's on record that he was given two very bad rides and that wasn't the plan to ride him like that. So I insisted on a change of jockey [for the March Stakes] and we got the result we expected. Asked to explain the best way to ride Mount Athos, Cumani said: "Certainly not the way he was ridden at Ascot and at Goodwood, ie dropped out a long way at the back and then trying to make a run in the fastest part of the race, when the other horses are accelerating, which is about three furlongs out.
"That's the way he was ridden twice, that's the way it didn't work out and that wasn't the way to ride him."
Cumani has saddled both Purple Moon and Bauer to finish second in the Melbourne Cup, with the latter's failure by a nose behind Viewed in 2008 a particularly painful memory. Bauer actually recorded a faster official time than the winner but, while the microchip behind his saddle went round the course more swiftly than his opponent's, the tip of his nose did not.
Mount Athos will carry 54kg in this year's race, the same burden as 12 months ago, and will travel to Australia either three weeks or a fortnight beforehand.
"He probably hasn't improved but he's certainly no worse than he was this time last year," Cumani said. "I'm very happy with [his weight], happy with his condition and happy with the way he ran his race last time. It's just those two blips were entirely due to the way he was ridden.
"You need a lot of things to go right, a good journey over with the horse a good preparation for the race, then you need a good enough draw and you need a lot of luck in running."
Following his ride on Mount Athos on Goodwood, Spencer rode Nargys for Cumani in the Oak Tree Stakes at the same course the following day, a mount for which he had already been declared. Since then, however, he has not had a ride for the stable.
