The Derby & Irish Derby 2009

Find it interesting that so many are happy to just on the "speed, mile, 10 furlong" bandwagon for this horse...when so many bleat on about protecting the 12 furlong and staying type horses in most other instances. The concern to improve his stallion CV is commendable on this forum's part!
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Not sure what you mean by that. Would you not agree the horse's best distance is probably 10f? If so, he'll have to run at that distance to define how good he is.

A scape, bruise or cough that wouldn't concern Willie Mullin's enough to to bother calling the vet in for one of his hurdlers, could be career threatening when considering £40m worth of horse flesh. It's a long time to the Irish Champion Stakes.
 
Gareth Flynn said:
I'm confused. Is pacemaking team tactics or not?



A legendary battle still fondly remembered 30 years later. Oh no! :)
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O'Brien has rarely run a pacemaker without planning it to favour his main runner, as we saw all too often in the last 2 years.

That race, great as it was, broke 2 horses.
 
Steve Redgrave once said 'no one remembers who came second' or something along those lines. Okay an overstatement probably, but if STS won the Eclipse, I don't think it really matters what he will have beaten. I think it would just show he is a versatile, very, very decent animal. Selfishly, I would like him to go there as it would probably be the last chance to see him in the flesh.
As an aside, I do also think that if any trainer runs mutliple entires in the hope that the running of more than one will help one of their others to win, that just seems to me that the thought is that none of them are good enough to win on their own merit.
 
Hasn't he already shown that he's a versatile, and very decent animal?

Which brings me on to the question - if he was retired today, how much would he fetch at stud? And how much more would he fetch with an all-aged 10f race under his belt?

Assuming that there's an upper limit that the market will bear (for a first season sire, at least), how close to that upper limit is he already based on his own pedigree, physical attributes, and race record to date?
 
He has to me and others, but some seem to think his win at Epsom is not genuine? If he won at 10 furlongs, I think that would help him even more at stud as there seems to be a preference amongst a lot of breeders to try and produce milers/ten furlong horses as opposed to 'stayers'.
Not sure there would be a lot of difference in monetary terms how much could be charged for him at stud if he did win at 10 in all honesty, but a) I think some would think it would enhance him as a stallion prospect if he could 'prove' himself at 10 and b) I'd like to see it!!!
 
I'd like to see it too, whether it's the Eclipse, Juddmonte, Irish Champion or whatever. I guess I just think we should be arguing this from the point of view of the sport, rather than his commercial prospects which already seem pretty much a lock.
 
Melendez said:
Not sure what you mean by that. Would you not agree the horse's best distance is probably 10f? If so, he'll have to run at that distance to define how good he is.

A scape, bruise or cough that wouldn't concern Willie Mullin's enough to to bother calling the vet in for one of his hurdlers, could be career threatening when considering £40m worth of horse flesh. It's a long time to the Irish Champion Stakes.
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Probably 10 furlongs? Yeah possibly....but that just goes to show the hole in the Epsom Derby form given how the race was run. To accept 10 furlong is his best distance admits that the 12 furlong test he faced the last day was anything but the test it should have been.

I am pretty sure one of the Ballydoyle colts is going to make a big jump for a strongly run Irish Derby, and it would be a shame if STS was not there to show he truely is the top staying three year old in training. Whats more if STS misses the Eclipse, he is likely to face the same horses in the Juddmonte and the Irish Champion, where as he is likely to miss the Arc granted any bit of rain. So just one inconclusive run over 12 furlongs to his name...

But like I said, the decision has virtually been made...Irish Derby if the ground is good or better.

Great thread by the way.
 
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Hang on

Does accepting that 10f is his best distance mean that there was also a hole in the gunieas form????
 
Possibly it isnt. Its a assumption given that thats the mean distance between the two victories. But sames assumptions surrounded Dancing Brave and he went on to win a competitive Arc of course

Fair point
 
Gareth Flynn said:
I'd like to see it too, whether it's the Eclipse, Juddmonte, Irish Champion or whatever. I guess I just think we should be arguing this from the point of view of the sport, rather than his commercial prospects which already seem pretty much a lock.
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Sorry if causing a misunderstanding;personally I would purely like to see it from a sporting point of view. I would also dearly love to see him go for the Irish Champion as well as a spectacle.
 
The Champions Stakes at Newmarket is surely a weaker grp 1 than the eclipse. In fact recent runnings of the eclipse have been pretty strong
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You're probably right, clive, that the Eclipse has stronger credentials than the Newmarket race. I was thinking more about York and Leopardstown.
 
Coming back to the conditions over the two days, My initial findings say the ground on Friday was very marginally quicker than on Saturday, with the possibility that it was more pronounced than that.

My provisional going allowance for Friday is -0.20s per furlong (faster than good). For Saturday it's -0.17s per furlong. The caveat is that it puts Rvier Captain on a very high rating - 6lbs higher than what is already quite a high RPR. If the RPR is a true measure of River Captain then I'd be looking to make the ground less fast on the Saturday by something in the region of 0.06s per furlong.

I don't usually try to make correlations between my time ratings and those of others on here who work on a 'lengths per mile' basis. But in very rough ball park figures, a pound would be either side of 0.01s per furlong depending on the distance of the race. So - very approximately speaking - 0.06spf equates to 48lbs at a mile, or a fraction over 21 lengths. Which makes the difference quite significant.

Not that we should really apply these figures to the Derby. The race was pedestrian to the point of being meaningless from a time angle.

The task was to work out how much difference there was in the conditions from the Friday to the Saturday to get a comparison with the Coronation Cup, which was also pedestrian.

The Oaks appears to have been true-run, though.

For people's information, though, my time rating for Ask was 89 (which you'd expect from a Class 4 handicapper) while I gave Sea The Stars 109 (inc wfa - a Listed time) for The Derby. As I said before, I would urge great caution about trying to compare the relative merits of the two winners based solely on time.
 
Sir Ivor was beaten by Royal Palace and Taj Dewan in the Eclipse - only a week after being beaten in the Irish Derby by Ribero . A race apparently run into a fearsome headwind and in which Lester on Ribero set off for home to run the finish out of Sir Ivor .

Impressively for a horse so badly stumped up and having been on the go since the Guineas - Sir Ivor came back to run second in his Arc prep and to Vaguely Noble in a very soft ground Arc which tested his stamina to the limit .

Rather than being over the top as one might think he then recovered his best form to thrash Taj Dewan in the Champion Stakes scarcely coming off the bit and then flew over to win a snow melt soggy Washington International - what a horse !

As for STS - he looked to be going away from them in the final half furlong despite being only nudged as the Ballydoyle battalions were flailing about with their whips . I would be very surprised indeed if he did not confirm the form at the Curragh .

I don't accept that 10f being your optimum means you don't stay 12f. I think 10f was Dancing Brave and Nashwan' s optimum
 
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My provisional going allowance for Friday is -0.20s per furlong (faster than good). For Saturday it's -0.17s per furlong. The caveat is that it puts Rvier Captain on a very high rating - 6lbs higher than what is already quite a high RPR. If the RPR is a true measure of River Captain then I'd be looking to make the ground less fast on the Saturday by something in the region of 0.06s per furlong.

I don't usually try to make correlations between my time ratings and those of others on here who work on a 'lengths per mile' basis. But in very rough ball park figures, a pound would be either side of 0.01s per furlong depending on the distance of the race. So - very approximately speaking - 0.06spf equates to 48lbs at a mile, or a fraction over 21 lengths. Which makes the difference quite significant

0.06 per furlong difference wouldn't equate to 48 lbs at a mile though:blink:..you would be talking about a 0.48 sec difference at a mile which is 7lbs only..3 lengths

I think its quite difficult to get a truly accurate GA on both those days DO tbh..there are a couple of races in there which seem very quick compared to the rest...Baldemar & Cloudy Star...after much head scratching..I called it quits...Saturday would be maybe just slightly quicker. Both days have mainly different distances as well which doesn't help...a decent 6 or 7f race on both days would have aided the cause.

I'll have another look at it tonight
 
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Hmmm, I wouldn't set too much store by the form of the races to be honest but here's my thinking...

My highest rating for Ask last season was 121, for Youmzain 124 and Look Here 121. I can't get my head around the idea of Youmzain being a 128 horse, as some would have him in the Arc. I don't think it was a great Arc, and I rated it through Ask on 121 but I'm not losing sight of Stoute's genius for getting horses to improve with age. Look Here was having here seasonal debut and the history of my ratings suggests it's hard for G1 horses to hit their peak first time out. On top of that, the pace rendered the race unsatisfactory, so I'm going low.

Ask 121, Youmzain 121, Look Here 118

The Oaks was also tough. Midday and High Heeled had ORs of just 105 and 100 respectively, Rainbow View had run badly before and the others were well beaten off. Sariska came in with an OR of 115 and was entitled to win but only just held on in a scrap. Sariska's time rating including wfa was 117. You need to take The Miniver Rose as running to her OR of 96 to get teh form higher than that but I think that's stretching the likelihood a wee bit. For the time being, I'm going with the time rating as a true measure of the first two.

Sarska 117, Midday 117, High Heeled 113

I mentioned my early thoughts on the Derby a few days ago. I'm inclined to rate the race via two or three routes, each of which comes out within a pound of each other - usually a fair pointer towards (but no guarantee of) reliability. Via Debussy's previous figure of 109, STS comes out at 124. Via Age Of Aquarius's OR of 109, STS comes out on 124 and via the Guineas, for which I had STS on 125, it's possible that's as much as he did on Saturday. Because of the unsatisfactory nature of the race, I feel compelled to stay low.

Sea The Stars 124 (but almost certainly capable of significantly better in a true run race over shorter), Fame And Glory 121 (almost certainly capable of significantly better in a true run race over the trip), Masterofthehorse 120.
 
Doesn't anyone think with how the race was run, making it difficult for horses coming from off the pace, that Masterofthehorse seems to be the best of the O'Brien horses?
 
EC1 said:
0.06 per furlong difference wouldn't equate to 48 lbs at a mile though:blink:..you would be talking about a 0.48 sec difference at a mile which is 7lbs only..3 lengths
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You're right now that I've looked at it again. The adjustment of 0.01s is my starting point and I usually end up changing it. I shouldn't have used it as a ball park figure. Still, 7lbs/3 lengths is a fair old difference, isn't it?
 
you were checking if I were awake :p

I've gone through both days..heads spinning..I've come up with 2lbs per mile slow for friday..and 9lb per mile fast for saturday..I was initally about +2 and +5...and I still wouldn't put my life on it

there isn't enough to get hold of on both days tbh..Friday is easier..Saturday has the first and last races that you can work from..thats it...the 2yo race was good as well but I don't like rlelying on those races for GA's.....also River Captain won by 5..so that race ain't straight forward
 
EC1 said:
also River Captain won by 5..so that race ain't straight forward
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I think that might just be very hot form. They were strung out at the end and the time was either fast or very fast. It was a valuable enough race that tends to work out well most years, It was also competitive both in terms of numbers and quality and the runner up was very heavily backed. Take the winner out and I think we'd be hailing the second as a very smart winner.
 
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