Queen Elizabeth II Stakes

Galileo said:
Red Jazz half a length off them..
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Ran a blinder. Apparently one punter had a grand to win just before the off.

You have to feel sorry for Rip, ran his heart out again. Poet's Voice (who I didn't fancy) absolutely knocked your eye out on the TV, wonderful condition.
 
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I do not think running in the Irish Champion helped Rip Van Winkle today and it will be hard to keep him going til Breeders Cup time. Bit of a mess.
 
Euronymous said:
The proximity of the third horse suggests it was poor by Group 1 standards.
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It was always going to be sub-standard after Canford pulled out. Rip at his very best would have won this, he was lathered in sweat and looks like he's done enough, try as he did.

Having said that it seems Red Jazz like Poet's Voice have run the races of their lives.
 
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Galileo said:
I do not think running in the Irish Champion helped Rip Van Winkle today and it will be hard to keep him going til Breeders Cup time. Bit of a mess.
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I'm afraid that's how I see it too. On the other hand if he had nicked it today and held off Canford in the Sussex we'd be saying what a good season he's had. He's been a real good horse over all.
 
After the Juddmonte he should have wait for this. Fresher for this race and for the future - and it's not after timing!
 
Yes, I think you were right after all, Galileo, although I didn't see it at the time. I was one of the ones crying out for him to go to the Irish Champion.

Somehow I think Rip's entire career has been somewhat mismanaged - but he has been a very tricky horse to place just right. And really I'm still not sure what his optimum distance is - perhaps 9 furlongs (so many G1s in US at this distance but an oddity here). I think that the Irish Champion came too soon for him after his hard race in the International to say that 10 furlongs is a real stretch for him. Maybe if Ballydoyle hadn't run Cape Blanco in the IC everything would have played out very differently??????
 
I meant to add to my last post: I think Rip showed a lot of heart, guts, bravery, whatever you call it, to start coming back to Poet's Voice.

Also congratulations to the often-maligned Saeed bin Suroor for bringing Poet's Voice to such peak condition.

In another vein, I wonder what Aidan and Saeed were discussing when they watched the Fillies Mile together.
 
I hand-timed the last 3f and got ~38.2-3 seconds which suggests that the winner's estimated finishing speed was ~95% of his overall speed.

Difficult to draw any firm conclusions from that without any sort of standard to measure against but it would certainly seem to suggest that Air Chief Marshall set a generous (possibly overly generous?) gallop. It doesn't in itself, however, explain the Red Jazz's massively improved performance which seems to throw the form into question.

I'd be interested in getting Prufrock's take on how the sectionals stack up if Ascot is indeed one of the tracks he's working on.
 
Makfi's run made me wonder about this idea of equine memory - he was plainly nervous and unhappy at the start.

Was he remembering his bad experience there in June ?
 
It's much more than an 'idea', Ards. Naturally they memorise landscapes - if you think about it, that is how they learned to survive in ancient times. Certain landscapes represented good feeding grounds, others where they might be ambushed, others where there was water. Just like all animals, and us - we remember a place and the emotion we felt there. Horses see a place and remember the experience they had there, too. Unfortunately, they also very quickly memorise where the horsebox parks (horsebox = go home = eat nice hay) and exits are, hence the occasional tanking-off minus jockey!

Never underestimate a horse's reaction to a venue (landscape) where something unpleasant occurred. He'd have been swerving that by miles, given the choice. Not given the choice, be prepared for a negative reaction.
 
Ardross said:
Makfi's run made me wonder about this idea of equine memory - he was plainly nervous and unhappy at the start.

Was he remembering his bad experience there in June ?
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I reckon it's just the surface. Some horses go on it and others don't. Same reason I'll always be conservative in my estimation of harbinger who's best two performances came at Ascot.
 
Which surely makes Ascot rather unsuitable as a track for the prestige events - I do not remember horses not running well at Ascot in the days before the revamp.
 
Ardross said:
Which surely makes Ascot rather unsuitable as a track for the prestige events - I do not remember horses not running well at Ascot in the days before the revamp.
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The Racing surface yes, the course itself, maybe not... But Ascot only really comes into its own if you pay extra for the premier tickets. Otherwise it's just big and not really user friendly.

They should move this day each year and stop feeding the elitist Ascot bandwagon; York knock's spots off Ascot in my opinion. I've never been to Doncaster but that looks deserving of some more Group 1 action as well.

Someone said Sandown earlier but I reckon they need to spend some money - The facilities aren't great there imo.
 
Read somewhere that Makfi tried to crawl under the stalls; jockey said he'd never done anything like that before.
 
Hamm said:
I think this shows Ascot is not quite the lottery it appears..

http://betting.betfair.com/horse-ra...u-be-ascotted-at-the-betfair-week-220910.html
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I don't think handicap performances are the right data set as most of the argument is based on group form. I would argue the straight course anomaly is due to the draw bias as well.

There is probably insufficient data to make a reasonable assessment based on pattern class form but I would be interested if it was possible...... Pru? :whistle:
 
Handicap performances ARE the correct way of comparing all manner of measures in racing, as handicaps (in theory at least) normalise for differences in ability.

The "unpredictability factor" at courses in non-handicaps is likely to tell you at least as much about the nature of the races contested as about the nature of the course itself.

I agree about straight course variance being tied in with the effect of the draw. That is the point, isn't it?
 
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