Leopardstown Tomorrow

My point is we all know how hard it is to make up ground on soft/heavy ground what's the point in holding the horse up given all the other likely pitfalls and on top of that the state of the ground?
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I take your point Martin but there was no sign today that front runners were favoured. In fact the likes of Glencove Marina,Physco,Footy Facts all came from behind today.

Wins Now will have other days, the most important thing was for him to learn a few things today and to get a clear round. When his chance was gone the jockey was easy enough on him.
 
Ok Gal I probably shouldn't get into such debates without having examples lined up. I'm sure if I thought about it I'd come up with a few and might again but ..to come at it from a different way...we all know that one fall or one damaging incident can affect a horse, some might say Beefy's fall in his first Gold Cup continued to bother him thereafter - we know there was the back problem anyway but confidence wise there was maybe more to it, who knows.

You look at the likes of Merdeka who had a few instances like that at the start of his chasing career and was never the same since. That's just one off the top of my head, I remember Over The Bar being a potentially promising sort who clouted a fence at Navan and never really came back either although he had his problems.

To go back to a horse I've got a bit of a soft one for at the moment and that's Thyne Again. Look at the race where he was eventually brought down...[by a horse who never got up] it wasn't just that incident but, as more of a hold up horse, he was hampered and nearly brought down on a number of occasions. The sheer size of the field brought with it those difficulties and if he'd fallen the wrong way then he may never have got up.

Accidents in racing can happen and you have horses like Stoneville or Tex Morgan who took the type of falls that killed them that could easily have happened in a four or five runner race and that's fair enough. But I do think that beginners chases in Ireland have been very atritional this past year or two and I believe that it is something of a risk to pitch delicate sorts in there. As we said, it depends on the type of horse.
 
Ride of the day must go to Philip Carberry on that horse of John Carrs. Too often jockeys are given credit for rides that most competent rider could do....but in this case the jockey really was the difference between winning and losing. Rode them all to sleep.
 
Ok Gal I probably shouldn't get into such debates without having examples lined up. I'm sure if I thought about it I'd come up with a few and might again but
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Thats fair enough, sometimes its a general perception that you can have though examples are not easy to come to mind at times.

we all know that one fall or one damaging incident can affect a horse, some might say Beefy's fall in his first Gold Cup continued to bother him thereafter - we know there was the back problem anyway but confidence wise there was maybe more to it, who knows.
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But its the fall that affected him...not running in big sized fields. If a horse falls then there is every chance it will affect him but I dont put the two of them together. Obviously there will be more fallers in a big sized field as with more runners there are more chances to fall. But I think thats different than saying they fell simply because it was a big field.

I actually dislike seeing a horse jump out in front, jump really well, never face a challenge on their debut. Granted it looks really good on paper but they learn nothing.

It could be argued Beef Or Salmon fell in his Gold Cup simply because he was never in a race with so many runners before and it was completely alien to him. Maybe when Doran's Pride was a novice in his Gold Cup he drew from his experience in a 16 runner field on his chasing debut.

The horses you named, particularly Merdeka look to me to be simply poor jumpers with little or no technique or jumping ability compared to a horse like Glencove Marina who looks an absolute natural.
 
Originally posted by Galileo@Jan 13 2008, 05:06 PM
Ride of the day must go to Philip Carberry on that horse of John Carrs.
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Motaraqeb

Wasn't this the horse that worked with Sublimity at Dundalk last week ?
 
Motaqareb , great ride, stole the race


Mister Top Notch
very impressive , something like 161+ on my figure, very good horse.
 
Gal, sorry you've misunderstood or i have badly explained by BOS reference. It's an example of a horse being affected by a fall that came to mind - it was nothing to do with the topic of novice chases or the issue at hand.
 
Willie said Sunday that he seemed more a stayer and had the pedigree to be one---coming back in 2 weeks for P J Moriarty 2.5mls novice chase which Florida Pearl won in 1998---onward and upward.
 
He beat a decent Grade 2 horse hollow on ground that did not suit. The form itself is nothing to write home about (but equally it shouldn’t be underestimated) but it’s the style with which he travelled(pulled the arms out of the jockey the whole way), the way he jumped and most importantly how impressed both Willie Mullins and Ruby Walsh are with him. Ruby has ridden the odd decent chaser recently so you’d imagine his standards are pretty high these days. It was clear on his interview with RTE that he thinks this horse is a star in the making.
 
The RP report says that "they went a proper gallop". If the final time was slow, did they go too fast?
 
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