Stormy Ireland

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HawkWing

At the Start
Joined
Mar 17, 2009
Messages
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Didnt look like she was ready to win a 30K, grade 2, a week ago. Hasn't been a good year for Jared Sullivan.
 
Isnt Fehily involved in his own racing club now? Maybe not mutually exclusive.

The two highest profile horses in the yard move from Mullins - Laurina retired, Stormy Ireland, failed in UK, sold and back with Mullins wins a grade 2.
 
Sullivan is an appalling judge - Conti and Zarkandar aside, for the amount he's spent he's done his b******ks. Quick to fall out with everyone he's had horses with.

If you had a decent looking set of predominantly hurdling mares and wanted them in the UK - you'd be sending them to Hendo. Nicholls MO is not hurdling mares and it never will be. He's done a good job for Malcolm Denmark with Next Destination after two and a half years off the track and he's now spent a few quid on new young recruits into the yard.

Laurina was an awful bleeder by the end with Willie. I can see the merit in changing scenery to try again but ultimately if it wasn't being fixed in Closutton, it wasn't going to happen elsewhere.

Duc has ran OK in my view - he's stuck in no mans land and has been ever since the Arkle. They should be trying to plot him down to 150 for next Spring. Real Steel has bled I believe on both his starts for Nicholls but a flat track, good ground, 3m should be up his street this week and he'd be the type of horse you'd expect the yard to do well with, so certainly some pressure there I'd say.
 
Just shows you, if you give Nicholls et al the ammunition and rich owners, they would be dominating rather than the Irish!! Oh wait, maybe not!!

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Kevin Blake made an interesting comparison of the Mulins and Nicholls gallops saying that the sand on Mullins gallops was a lot deeper than at Nicholls making them work harder at home.
 
Most keen followers of racing know that Mullins uses a 'deep sand' gallop for conditioning his horses and, as far as I know, Hendo installed one at his place a couple of seasons back. Happy to be corrected if that's inaccurate.

I can see why Blake is liked. He is as knowledgable as any other pundit and much less annoying than many. He gives the impression he knows plenty within the game. How much he actually knows I'm not sure but he is the type to appeal to a wide audience.

I unexpectedly enjoyed the ATR preview programme which I watched earlier today. Chapman was almost bearable and Kudos to John Hunt for keeping him largely in check.
 
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The Dickinsons are often credited with galloping horses uphill on the moors to get them fitter than most but I also saw an old film in which it was claimed Jim Dreaper galloped them uphill in the era of Arkle and Flyingbolt.

When See More Business won the Gold Cup Mick Fitz talked about how it had still been pulling when it got to the top of the hill at home.

M Pipe was often credited with introducing interval training, galloping them hard and fast uphill over short distances and repeating before they had a chance to fully get their breath back. That same old film about Dreaper suggested he had been doing that too!

I read somewhere that the 'deep sand' approach is an excellent way to get horses to regulate their breathing better in hard work. I'm pretty sure the item I read attributed this to the success of Mullins's stayers when they returned to the Flat. Having, in my youth, attempted to run the length of Aberdeen beach in the deeper part of the sand, I can tell you it is very hard work.

Jock Wallace, one time manager of Rangers and other sundry diddy teams, was notorious for taking the players to Gullane sand dunes to get them fit, running them repeatedly uphill in the deep sand. There were abundant stories by ex-players about how stomachs were emptied violently of their contents as a result but they all raved about how fit they were.
 
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