Trials Day

Admittedly, I only saw it on the TV, but it looked to me like Jonbon was shifting slightly to the right at a few fences down the side off thevtrack to the top off the hill. Anyone else think the same, or was it just a trick of the TV angle?
 
Having slept on it for 48 hours - and without any financial interest in the race anyway - I suspect Bowen was riding to orders in not letting Jonbon loose on the front. It was the kind of race in which they could afford to experiment with riding tactics ahead of the festival itself. If the upshot it that it reaffirms suspicions that the horse is best going a tad on the aggressive side then it's a defeat they can learn a lot from.

Bowen is developing as a jockey, just as Nico did when he was coming through the ranks, and this, after all, is just one race that he very nearly won.
 
I wouldn’t be knowledgeable enough to comment on whether the jumping errors were down to the jockey or the horse, but I do think he panicked slightly after the bad error and rode him too aggressively when sending him on entering the straight. I think he could have bided his time a little longer. I also think he was too slow to accept defeat on the run-in and gave the horse an unnecessarily hard race.
 
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