Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe 2011

Shame Midday didn't run . She would have been second .

SYT was clearly overhyped and it was no surprise Snow Fairy reversed the form though he was not given the best of rides .

Danedream looked pretty dynamite in her two German G1 wins and came from left field but can hardly be seen as anything other than a terrific winner. Her performance is a bit like Dahlia running away with the KG in 1973 unexposed underrated filly blowing them all away.
 
Ardross said:
Shame Midday didn't run . She would have been second .

SYT was clearly overhyped and it was no surprise Snow Fairy reversed the form though he was not given the best of rides .

Danedream looked pretty dynamite in her two German G1 wins and came from left field but can hardly be seen as anything other than a terrific winner. Her performance is a bit like Dahlia running away with the KG in 1973 unexposed underrated filly blowing them all away.
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the thing about Danedream is that she didn't scramble home in those two previous races..she won in a canter..basically hidden ability from most of us..apart from the shrewd fookers on here:lol:
 
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Gareth Flynn said:
Unless you find some magic way to judge each individual horse's disadvantage due to their immaturity, there's simply no way to do it without treating them all the same.
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Wouldn't be that hard - use their birthdays and give an allowance based on how many months they have to go to maturity - which, I believe, anyway is 4.5 years.
So maybe wfa should take account of the true age range - up to 4.4 years.

Not that anyone will take that seriously though.
 
Soary Stars said:
Wouldn't be that hard - use their birthdays and give an allowance based on how many months they have to go to maturity - which, I believe, anyway is 4.5 years.
So maybe wfa should take account of the true age range - up to 4.4 years
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That might be more accurate, but you'd have to prove the correlation, it would still be a generalisation, and you'd still get large exceptions to it.
 
Less weight won't make a difference if the horses are poor. And Authorised if memory serves was the only decent 3yo in the year Dylan Thomas won.
 
Gamla Stan said:
reet hard, Speed ratings take into account the ground. For example, on my ratings, I calculate how much the ground has quickened or slowed down horses by points on my ratings scale and add or subtract this to the horse's rating to give it a final rating. Nearly all speed raters would do the same (unless they're mental) so if EC and Martin say it was exceptionally quick, it would have been. Nobody looks at the time at face value to evaluate it. I'll be rating the race up myself in the coming days when back in the UK.
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GS
I'm aware speed raters take the ground into account, also that they draw up their own going allowances (which have a direct effect on their final figure). The point I was making was that any end figure that didn't allow for inordinately fast ground may be in error.
The 2nd fastest race of the day (on RP standards) was the Foret, but again - according to the sectionals - this wasn't an all-out test at the distance, a point borne out by the 6f horse (Dream Ahead) beating the miler (Goldikova).
Given that, and the points I made earlier, I reiterate that it may be wrong to lionise the winner on speed figures alone, and while - on form - she's a very good horse, she has yet to prove a superstar.
 
Worth noting that the 7f course at Longchamp is more like 6.75f, and downhill, so even before taking the fast ground into account it will favour a speed horse.
 
Danedream put an amazing performance on sunday,
the time was very very good and the form looks rock solid,
my concern is how she will react after doing such an effort on so firm ground.

The only horse I have seen to mantein the form after such an effort is Frankel and even him (the best horse I have seen) was not himself in the St James Palace.


Danedream could have won the last 15 arcs bar peintre celebre and montjeu and maybe Sakhee.
 
Bar the Bull said:
Three of the last 18 Arc runnings have been won by older horses.

Of the last 11 champion European 12f 3yo's, only four have been kept in training as 4yo's.

I think the two of those statistics are related.
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Yes, agree, but again, please stop with all these facts...
 
In the QEII 3yo's get 4lbs

In the Arc they get 8lbs

That alone should illustrate what bullshit the current system is. A bit of extra distance should not make that much difference.
 
where are people getting the idea the ground was firm on Sunday?

the ground was well discussed beforehand and on Saturday Gosden said if they watered again it would be good to soft..it was clearly loose on top on Sunday and the times pointed to Good ground before the Arc

The fact that the course record was broke does not mean firm ground..it means the horses is pretty smart to break it on ground not suited to course records..its not like the first five broke the record
 
EC1 said:
where are people getting the idea the ground was firm on Sunday?

the ground was well discussed beforehand and on Saturday Gosden said if they watered again it would be good to soft..it was clearly loose on top on Sunday and the times pointed to Good ground before the Arc

The fact that the course record was broke does not mean firm ground..it means the horses is pretty smart to break it on ground not suited to course records..its not like the first five broke the record
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Haven't we had this before with Longchamp? Where the ground was loose on top but the times said the ground was faster than thought? The 2007 Moulin springs to mind.
 
Gareth Flynn said:
What are you basing that opinion on, exactly?
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I don't need to base it on anything. I'd like to see some justification for the difference in allowance. In a modern world with modern training methods I don't see why it should be taken as red that a miler doesn't need as much of an allowance as a middle distance horse.
 
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Gareth Flynn said:
Haven't we had this before with Longchamp? Where the ground was loose on top but the times said the ground was faster than thought? The 2007 Moulin springs to mind.
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but on Saturday it was edging towards easy ground..on Sunday there was no mention of fast ground by anyone ..it was quoted as good and it timed as good..now all of a sudden its like a road..because one horse ran incredibly fast
 
Hamm said:
This thread is becoming, for all the wrong reasons, forum gold material...
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agree..i can't really believe some stuff i'm reading from knowledgeable racing folk

but..some do believe that 3yo's are fully mature in September of their 3yo year..some don't realise that carrying 9.0 over a mile is easier than carrying 9.0 over 1.5 miles

i know for a fact that i can carry 2 stone quite comfy for x distance..but that it gets at bit harder at x+50%
 
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