The Gold Cup 2010

I just hope either way this year's race resolves the debates.

I think the bet is Cooldine without the big two, and am tempted by him each way as well if the ground is approaching good.
 
Cooldine should be 8s for this. His trainer has surely been getting him to peak for the race all season. He's young, has the right profile and will love getting out of the bog like conditions he's race in thus far this season.
 
Euronymous said:
2007 is relevant as hell. What you had there was a race run at such a slow pace that a rogue like Turpin Green could finish within five or so lengths of the winner.

Kauto Star is now trading at around 1.8 - and at that price everything has to be in his favour - and it is not. Because two things will beat him at Cheltenham, soft ground or a fast run race. I don't think he can handle either at that course. He fell in the only Queen Mother he contested and on soft ground in 2008 he made a few notable errors on the first circuit jumping on ground he didn't like before Denman stuck the knife in.

2006 - Fast ground in the QM but a 2mile pace - fell
2007 - Dead but not soft ground and a slow pace - won
2008 - Soft ground and a fast pace - 2nd
2009 - Goodish ground and a slow pace - won.
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"Dead, but not soft".

How scientific, Euro. If I'd known you were going to produce such overwhelmingly compelling evidence, I'd obviously never have started the thread.

"2008 - Fast pace......2009 - Slow pace"

Again, powerful stuff. Almost hard to argue against.

No matter that the ground was given as Good-To-Soft both years, and that Kauto Star ran the comfortably quicker time in 2009. Why let that get in the way, when a subjective interpretation of "pace", can keep the fantasy propped-up for a while longer?

In fact, let's start pulling out stats about falls in 2m chases from four seasons ago, and use that as evidence Kauto Star is vulnerable to the kind of "fast pace" Denman set in 2008. We can give this straw-man as many arms as we like.

Listen, I started this thread as a bit of mischief, mainly to try and hook SteveM (no malice was intended, as I hope was obvious), but it has been interesting from one point of view.

The Denman fans are, imo, prone to just a little bit of shrieking at present - possibly down to the fact that 'their horse' looks a little more vulnerable after the Aon, than he did immediately after the Hennessy. When Denman was defeated last year, I'd say that 100% Kauto fans considered the horse was some way below his best, and that defeat was excusable. But the Denman fans are so entrenched in their interpretation of the 2008 race, that they cannot possibly countenance that KS didn't run up to his best in that race. To do so, would devalue the form they hold so dear.

So we end-up with statements like Kauto can't go on Soft, Kauto can't go off a fast pace etc - all of it based on a single performance behind Denman, and which lies contrary to the rest of Kauto's chasing career.

I don't know who will win a week on Friday. Both horses are absolutely out of the top-drawer, and whilst my heart says Kauto Star, I won't mind at all if Denman wins. If both horses run their race, I'll be well satisfied. And whilst I have no desire to do so, if we are looking to pick holes in either of them, I'd prefer to base it on something more substantial than the evidence above.
 
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Does anyone really know or have been able to quantify how good they actually are? Dumb question, obviously not!

Is it not possible that Denman beat Kauto when both horses were at their best in 2008, but Kauto has improved a few pounds since whereas Denman bar the Hennessy overall hasn't?

Therefore, easy to say Kauto wasn't at his best in 2008 if your using his future performances as an indicator for his proven ability at the actual time of the festival in 2008?
 
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Would it be possible that Denman is better at giving weight away to inferior horses?

His two best performances (if you take out the 2008 Gold Cup with Kauto running below form) have been when giving lumps of weight away in his two Hennessy victories. The horse is a big brute - he's built to carry weight.

Just a suggestion.
 
Irish Stamp said:
Would it be possible that Denman is better at giving weight away to inferior horses?

His two best performances (if you take out the 2008 Gold Cup with Kauto running below form) have been when giving lumps of weight away in his two Hennessy victories. The horse is a big brute - he's built to carry weight.

Just a suggestion.
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What's Denmans weight carrying displays got to do with how Kauto Star ran and/or was up to form in the 2008 gold cup please?

Is there an inextricable link, please share.
 
martin said:
What's Denmans weight carrying displays got to do with how Kauto Star ran and/or was up to form in the 2008 gold cup please?

Is there an inextricable link, please share.
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It has absolutely nothing to do with it Martin - but it does prove that when Kauto is at his best and Denman takes on horses that are as good as him that he has been defeated.

Would you not agree that Denman's best runs have been when giving away weight? They do seem to be what people laud him for - his amazing performances off 11-13+.
 
There was a very interesting thread on Betfair a few days ago. Assuming the times are correct, someone wanted to put to the test the theory that Denman has incredible mid-race pace and therefore timed him in the 2008 Gold Cup from the second last on the first circuit - where he took up the running - to the same point on the final circuit.

To complete this he took 2m 55s (approx). This compared with 3m for the same circuit recorded by the Grand Annual field a couple of races later.

Now we know that the Grand Annual is always run at a strong pace, so to put this into perspective, Denman completed the same amount of ground about 20l ahead of the specialist two milers.

Not forgetting that he had already run 1m 3f by the point that the clock starts.

Or that he was carrying 18lb more than the winner of the Grand Annual.

That's mighty strong stuff if you ask me.

The same poster also did a similar thing for the 2008 Aon vs the 2008 Game Spirit. Paddy Brennan said at the time that he had never travelled faster aboard a horse than he did on Ollie Magern down the back straight on the second circuit as that horse attempted to match strides with Denman. The times again were very strong.

Whatever the arguments over who is best now and the effects that the heart problems have had on Denman, don't do him the disservice of denying that he has been a magnificent chaser and an outstanding racehorse.
 
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Grasshopper said:
"2008 - Fast pace......2009 - Slow pace"

Again, powerful stuff. Almost hard to argue against.

No matter that the ground was given as Good-To-Soft both years, and that Kauto Star ran the comfortably quicker time in 2009.
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It doesn't matter what the ground was given as, we all know how inexact that science is. The ground was notably slower in 2008. And of course the actual time was faster in 2009, the race was run on faster ground and Denman's injection of pace meant the closing stages in 2008 were run at a slower pace, he was tying up with the effort he'd given whearas a year later KS had had a relative walk in the park.
 
halmahera said:
Whatever the arguments over who is best now and the effects that the heart problems have had on Denman, don't do him the disservice of denying that he has been a magnificent chaser and an outstanding racehorse.
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Spot on. I'm firmly in the Denman camp but I would never deny Kauto's place amongst the greats. Some Kauto fans have been putting up tosh like

betsmate said:
To hear them talked about in the same breath is an insult to the latter.
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and that is out of order.
 
Grasshopper said:
When Denman was defeated last year, I'd say that 100% Kauto fans considered the horse was some way below his best, and that defeat was excusable. But the Denman fans are so entrenched in their interpretation of the 2008 race, that they cannot possibly countenance that KS didn't run up to his best in that race. To do so, would devalue the form they hold so dear.
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Denman ran below par last year because he'd been on the sick list for a lot of the season.

Kauto Star ran below form because his normal fluid jumping went a little to pot leading to him making mistakes on the first circuit. Why was that? Because he couldn't handle jumping those fences, on that ground. This in turn led to him having no answer to Denman's surge of pace when they went round again.
 
It's an emotive subject and of course people will be firmly in one camp or another. But what makes both horses great is the quality of each other (if you get me). To dismiss Denman as a handicapper or Kauto Star as being a poor jumper takes the shine off the other's achievements.

Both horses of course have to be mentioned in the same breath; they are by some way the best two horses we've seen for many years.
 
Mischief-making grasshopper would have you believe that you are better extrapolating a view about one horse from another than forming a view about both horses in a wider context.

There is every chance that the similarity in margins between Denman and Neptune Collonges in the two races is little more than a coincidence.
 
halmahera said:
The same poster also did a similar thing for the 2008 Aon vs the 2008 Game Spirit. Paddy Brennan said at the time that he had never travelled faster aboard a horse than he did on Ollie Magern down the back straight on the second circuit as that horse attempted to match strides with Denman. The times again were very strong.
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Interesting stuff, halmahera.

I've gone back and done something similar for this year and had Aon and Game Spirit (which was run at a strong clip throughout) run in identical times (1.27.50) from the first in the back to the cross fence. I had the Aon being 2.52.60 from the first in the back to the line and the Game Spirit a very similar 2.52.50.

The precise accuracy of these times is up for debate given I did them on my mobile, but it does tend to lend substance to the idea that Denman really did put it to them in the Aon and, perhaps, if he was well short of his best may just have been feeling the pinch due to lack of fitness by the time he made the blunder at the fourth last.
 
trackside528 said:
I've gone back and done something similar for this year and had Aon and Game Spirit (which was run at a strong clip throughout) run in identical times (1.27.50) from the first in the back to the cross fence. I had the Aon being 2.52.60 from the first in the back to the line and the Game Spirit a very similar 2.52.50.
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... but it also means that Tricky Trickster is faster than Master Minded since TT gave Denman a good ten lengths start over that section of the race.

Is anyone suggesting Tricky Trickster will win the Gold Cup?
 
Surely sitting off the pace would have been an advantage giving how hard they went? On the contrary, it suggests that Niche Market emerges as the best horse on the day I would have thought.

Comparing the final times is surely deceptive anyway considering Master Minded was allowed to cruise up the run-in at little more than a hack.
 
trackside528 said:
Surely sitting off the pace would have been an advantage giving how hard they went? On the contrary, it suggests that Niche Market emerges as the best horse on the day I would have thought.
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I thought the argument was how fast they went from point A to point B, using the leading horse(s) as the indicator(s). If one race works out faster, then whatever came from behind must have run the fastest of all, since they were behind the others when the timing started yet ended up in front of them.
 
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