Irish Grand National

Dobbin's arm is now unbroken! It still doesn't sound very good for the National though.

From the RP:

TONY DOBBIN faces a race against time to be fit for the John Smith's Grand National meeting at Aintree after hurting his arm when Cloudy Lane was brought down in the Powers Whiskey Irish Grand National at Fairyhouse.

The Donald McCain-trained seven-year-old was involved in a pile-up at the third-last after Cheeky Lady suffered a fatal fall.

Dobbin, who is due to partner Longshanks for Kim Bailey in the National on Saturday, suffered a kick on his arm and was taken to hospital for assessment.

Initial indications were he had fractured his right arm, but his agent Richard Hale said on Monday night: "I've just come off the phone to Tony and it's not broken - but he has got soft tissue damage and it is badly bruised. "They have put a cast on it to keep the swelling down, which he will have on for a couple of days, so really it's impossible to say whether he will be fit for Thursday and the rest of the Aintree meeting.

"It's not broken, but he can't do a lot with it at the moment. He definitely won't be riding for a couple of days and we'll just have to see how it progresses.

"He'll be doing all he can. The cast is just a two-day thing to try and alleviate the swelling. Hopefully he will be back for Aintree, but we'll justhave to see."
 
That is scary how quick they got that info out.I went to hospital with Dobbs and have only just got home from dropping him back to airport,yet its all over internet already!
 
Better news for Dobbin though - fingers crossed for him.

By the way , after today will any of his critics admit that Jonjo can actually train ?
 
Maybe if he could train I would!! :P

Jeez, must be nice to train the odd winner given the firepower he's supplied with, the money that's spent & being based at Jackdaw's Castle.........
 
Quite funny to see this disparity of opinion on Jonjo - the younger woman I worked with at Fontwell today has worked in various yards, assisting with breaking-in, and also assisting a trainer or two in the past. She told me she taught Laura Mongan to ride, so her horsiness goes back some way. Anyway, one of the betting-mad blokes who works there had a good old ding-dong (in a heated but friendly way - just like the forum!) about whether AP was a good horseman or not. The woman said no, he's not - Ruby Walsh and Mick Fitz are good horseman who are also very good jockeys, AP is just an unrefined bash-em-over-it brute. Then to Jonjo - and her opinion was that he was just the same as AP when he rode. As for AP - no finesse, no picking up a horse that's tiring on its forehand and presenting it, just whack-whack-get-over-it stuff, which of course sometimes leads a less-experienced horse to fall. She didn't doubt his courage, but she certainly had no qualms about his lack of finessing a ride.

We need another topic for what she had to say about Martin Pipe's methods! Apparently, some of the much-vaunted blood 'testing' he did was actually to take blood from the horses, spin it, and reintroduce it to the horses so that they were less likely to blow up as their blood was artificially oxygenated. However, she said this procedure had led to him sending back the highest number of passports (compared to any other trainer), as the horses died quite frequently from aneurysms. I now wonder whether this accounted for the desire for privacy at the yard, and the criticisms and investigation aimed at him?

Any thoughts on this, anyone?
 
I do believe that's "allegedly", Kri.......!!!

There were Panorama programmes & all sorts a number of years back alleging that Pipe was taking blood out of his horses, oxygenating it & reintroducing it so that with the increased number of erythrocytes they were able to perform for longer under physical exertion as the anaerobic respiration was reduced in the muscles [due to the ability of the blood to carry large amounts of oxygen]. All completely against the rules, naturally - but it was never proved beyond rumour.
 
I'm pretty sure there's a rule which covers it specifically. Although strangely enough I'm sure it doesn't cover training at high altitude which essentially does the same thing but without all the messiness!!!
 
I'm so cross, I totally missed that programme, Shadz. The way this woman was going on about Pipey, how she knew how many horses were de-registered (because they were dead), was most adamant. I suppose I'd better cover Col and say 'allegedly', but it amazed me that anyone would be doing that stuff. Allegedly!
 
I went through a spell of several years believing Pipe was blood boosting in some way. Lasse Viren, the great Finnish distance runner of the 1970s, was famous for it when preparing for major championships and I'm sure others would have done it too.

However, the more people investigated Pipe the less they found and it was undoubtedly his innovative training methods allied to the kind of sports-science advances now common in so many other areas that was the foundation of his success.

Is Krizon's acquaintance suggesting Paul Nicholls does the same thing now that he is experiencing similar success?

As for AP's riding, those comments beggar belief. While most people would probably accept that there are more polished 'horsemen' out there, their jobs are not just about being horsemen. They are out there to win races and, quite simply, nobody does it the way AP does. I don't think you can do that without being a horseman.

It's a bit like saying Ginola was a total footballer. He was, but one top manager once said of him, "Yes, he'll win you a game but he won't win you a league." If AP were a footballer, he'd be the type that wins you leagues.
 
Originally posted by Desert Orchid@Apr 11 2007, 10:16 AM
I went through a spell of several years believing Pipe was blood boosting in some way. Lasse Viren, the great Finnish distance runner of the 1970s, was famous for it when preparing for major championships and I'm sure others would have done it too.

However, the more people investigated Pipe the less they found and it was undoubtedly his innovative training methods allied to the kind of sports-science advances now common in so many other areas that was the foundation of his success.

Is Krizon's acquaintance suggesting Paul Nicholls does the same thing now that he is experiencing similar success?

As for AP's riding, those comments beggar belief. While most people would probably accept that there are more polished 'horsemen' out there, their jobs are not just about being horsemen. They are out there to win races and, quite simply, nobody does it the way AP does. I don't think you can do that without being a horseman.

It's a bit like saying Ginola was a total footballer. He was, but one top manager once said of him, "Yes, he'll win you a game but he won't win you a league." If AP were a footballer, he'd be the type that wins you leagues.
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Well said.

Nicholls won't have the same problems as he is pretty much an industry insider. Pipe is the son of a bookie and a definite outsider. Most of the slander came from disaffected ex-staff and was eagerly latched on to by the old school who could not believe new methods could be so effective.

I hope some who have done it will confirm it but my belief is that race riding is down to the ability of the rider to communicate his own will to win to what is essentially a herd animal. AP does that better than anyone and not just with the whip.
 
AP is the best rider of bad horses that there ever was. He isnt far off the best on champions either.
 
Agreed . She plainly hasn't seen AP ride very often. Three rides as examples of numerous others come to mind - Well Chief in the Arkle , Killusty round Sandown and on Monday Butler's Cabin really only asked to race hard from the second last
 
It just shows how - away from the sometimes slight claustrophobia of the forum! - opinions are as divided on the outside as they are in here about certain high-profile people.

Archie, her main points against AP were nothing to do with being able to push horses to win. They were that he knew no finesse with a variety of horses, and that he rode inexperienced horses in the same often harsh way that one might push an older, wiser hand who was perhaps keeping something for himself. She said she thought he had no self-insight (e.g. as to his responsibility) when things went wrong.

The race whip's job is to inflict pain, and horses (like any sensible if slightly dim animal) run away from pain. Ergo, when your backside is being tanned, you aren't 'responding to the rider's urgings' - you are trying to run that bit faster from a source of pain. (Yes, yes, I know all the stuff about the whip there as a guide, too, but by the time a horse has suddenly decided to RO it's usually useless.)

Horses are socially herd animals, but racehorses are hothoused from the day they're born, so while they don't - as perhaps a rather brighter, caring dog companion might do - stop and stay by the side of their stricken riders following a fall, they wouldn't be getting their bottoms burnt in their natural state, either. We use the whip on horses to try to make them go faster, although when I see a distant 15th being punished, it's clearly an issue of ego first and reality second.

For my own part, I believe that McCoy has come on a long way since the infamous VALIRAMIX days (and someone will add GLORIA VICTIS, I've no doubt), and I do think he went through a sort of madness chasing championship after championship, as did Pipe, and I definitely believe that last year, Nicholls got swept along in the desperate rush for wins at almost any cost. I do believe that Nicholls has now come down to earth, and I'm hoping that Martin P will not interfere too badly with David Pipe's efforts to put his own stamp on the business now.

I don't entirely buy the theory of old-timers' jealousy of an incomer like Martin Pipe, though, on the basis of him not coming from old guard, any more than they've begrudged other 'outsiders' who've succeeded, such as Mick Channon. Some might've not appreciated having some of their old-time methods exposed as not able to consistently produce good results, but that's just evolution - everything changes, even racing, and it's usually a good idea to learn to keep up with it, not become a sour reactionary!
 
Originally posted by krizon@Apr 11 2007, 12:14 PM
Archie, her main points against AP were nothing to do with being able to push horses to win. They were that he knew no finesse with a variety of horses, and that he rode inexperienced horses in the same often harsh way that one might push an older, wiser hand who was perhaps keeping something for himself. She said she thought he had no self-insight (e.g. as to his responsibility) when things went wrong.
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As Ardross says, if that's what she thinks she hasn't watched him very much. I'm afraid that she comes across as someone trying to impress new colleagues.

I don't think you were in the country when the Pipe rubbish was at its height but it was very much a whispering campaign by people with an agenda. If you had access to any yard you'd meet someone who'd been told these stories but, somehow, you never seemed to meet anyone who originated them.
 
I have to admit to never having heard the nasties about Pipe from anyone with any connection to the man, archie. I don't like the bandwagon dissing of anyone unless there's some real substance to back up the criticisms, which, for example, there have been with one or two trainers. It seems curmudgeonly of other trainers to try to shun him when they might've learned from him. But you're hardly going to open up to others if you feel they're trying to destroy you.

All this apart, was Pipe actually an innovator, or was he borrowing already-established ideas from anywhere else? The USA, for example? What I'd be interested in is to what degree there IS a flow of ideas across the training board, or whether they tend to only swap thoughts with their friends. How do trainers stay abreast of better systems, equipment, therapies, etc.?
 
I could be wrong but I think that Pipe took his ideas from human athletics training using the equivalent of shuttles or repeated short sharp bursts of effort to reach the optimum fitness level.
Don't get me wrong. I've no problem with people expressing reservations about his training methods based on an apparently high attrition rate (although I'm not convinced that that was anything more than the large numbers he had in training). What I do dislike is the regurgitating of discredited and probably defamatory allegations on the other issue. I'm rather surprised that Arthur the Editor hasn't been involved by this stage.
 
The programme was years ago Kri -must've been around 10 years ago? It all pretty much falls into the realm of fiction now though as (as DO said) the more it was looked into, the less anyone found! Much as I've never been a fan of Pipe's training methods that "theory" is one which is hard to swallow, least of all as no evidence of it has ever been found.

Personally I'd agree that AP isn't the greatest of horsemen, there are better riding. However that doesn't stop him from being a great jockey, which he clearly is whether you like his style or not. Ardross, do you mean Darkness at Sandown rather than Killusty? That ride was superb & he has an amazing knack of lifting a horse over the line. That said, I wouldn't be rushing to jock him up on one of mine.
 
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