The Road To The 2018 Champion Chase

Might they send Douvan to Aintree for the Melling Chase - as a pointer to a later King George bid ?
 
Surprised at some of the comments on great field. I thought doctor phoneix would have beaten him had the rider given it any chance.

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Surprised at some of the comments on great field. I thought doctor phoneix would have beaten him had the rider given it any chance.

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More than likely the 2nd would have paid the price trying to lay up with the winner.
 
The only difference between Tommy Stack and Davy Russell is Tommy would have been beaten only a neck , not been off a yard and you would have sworn he was trying for his life.

Not really sure what this means? That Davy Russell wasn't really trying on Doctor Phoenix?

If so, I reckon you're a mile off.
 
Not really sure what this means? That Davy Russell wasn't really trying on Doctor Phoenix?

If so, I reckon you're a mile off.

I gotta be straight with you...You are looking through rose coloured glasses because you don't want to take anything away from Great Fields's performance.

Go and watch how Davy Russell rode the horse the time before and when he started to make his move.

He had a ton of horse behind him in this race and when the horse went to pass the 2 stragglers infront of him he took a pull. That was 4 out when he should have been going forward as he was way way out of his ground.


Despite that he never got behind the horse at all between 4 out and 3 out and gained only 4 lengths on 2 beaten horses and was near motionless.

You wouldn't have mistaken him for AP after 2 out that's for sure and I the little effort he did make was when the race was over.
 
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Doctoe Phoenix is rated mid-150s. What would be the motivation to run him down the field? It would hardly be to protect his mark, would it, given he’d basically be top-weight in whichever handicap he was entered in? They have no reason to mess about with him.

The race went exactly to form. The class horse put up an tremendous, front-running, bold-jumping performance, and the only other horse with genuine pretensions to class, ran on through inferior animals, to finish a clear, but readily-held, second. You could practically handicap it to the ounce from their current respective marks.

Some conspiracy-theories hold water. This one doesn’t. Run the race as many times as you like, and the result doesn’t change.
 
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What are you on these days? :blink:

What, exactly, is this comparison supposed to prove to me? That one ride was off, and the other was not? If that is the best you can come up with, then wafer-thin doesn't really seem an adequate enough description. And even if I gave you the benefit of the doubt, you have still to address the question of motivation - which is very clever of you, seeing that there isn't really an answer to it. Is your argument that Russell gave this a bent ride, or a bad ride? Either way, I think you're wrong.

GF would not have been beaten in another 100 yards. This is fantasist claptrap and/or pocket-talk, imo.

McGarvey had the race sewn-up, long before Russell got anywhere within striking distance - it was won way out in the country, because there's barely a 2-miler that can keep-up with the kind of pace Great Field can sustain. And GF picked-up more than adequately when shaken-up, considering he was asked to quicken from a common-canter, against a horse that was coming at him full-tilt. Winning margin in no way reflected GF's superiority.

Great Field is simply a better horse than Doctor Phoenix. You'll do yourself less mischief if you quickly get on-board with this fact, rather than spin half-baked conspiracy theories about DR. :)
 
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Great Field you can have 4/1 for the Punchestown Champion Chase

He doesn't quite jump well enough to be beating the big boys yet. Gets a bit too close to his fences at times which would find him out against top quality

It looks like Douvan 2/1 will not be running.

He'd be 1/4 to beat Min who is currently 5/4 if they thought he was running.

So either Min is going to be their only runner or they simply think Great Field would be out of his class if Min runs..
 
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