Cheers BM and Dessie 
If you want to sit down HS and back calculate an entire season of novice hurdles progress on flat tracks, right handed tracks, soft ground, stiff tracks, galloping tracks or whatever parameter you choose to impose to try and dispute the facts, and then track each and everyone through their career development noting any achievements they made in staying hurdles, negative or positive, be my guest!!! I'll frankly be amazed if you come to a significantly different conclusion (without trying to bend any objectivity by alighting on something you think offers you the best prospects based on known performance). The sample is supposed to be snapshot, and at 55 not any insignificant one. I only selected 2005 as it was pertinent to MWDS. If I'd taken the festive period at Kempton instead, i suspect you'd be the first to point out that I'd omitted Cheltenham?
As you suggested I don't know that much about viruses, and we'll see in time. I do know how I crudely spot a stable that's likely to be affected, and it isn't necessarily in the number of wins, but rather in the ratio of PU's to wins, or in very obvious cases PU'd as a percentage of runners. Over the Xmas period King's had 7 winners and 3 PU's, not normally the sort of ratio I'd associate with a virus. The explanation at this stage looks to have all the hallmarks of the desperation that people search for when making excuses for favourite horses (and that's a geenral observation). I suspect he'll have a quiet few weeks in January, many top stables do, it's certainly not unusual this time of year.
Incidentally, since when has Alan King, or any other trainer never made an error of judgement, a mistake, or taken a wrong course of action? If you're seriously suggesting that the man's so far above such things, then I fear you've fallen under some kind of spell which has led to the suspension of your critical faculties.
FWIW, would I have done things differently if I were he? I doubt it in truth. I think I might have been more alert to the possibility (i use the word possibility deliberately) that the horse doesn't stay a truly run 3 miles than he, as I'm sure he hasn't got the time to waste scribbling away on pieces of paper and number crunching speed ratings and then plotting patterns against different race types over 10 year plus periods. I'm equally sure that if confronted with the same possibility I'd have erred on the side he did too, choosing to dismiss the race as not being a going day, although the way he ran at Haydock did show all the signs of stamina doubts (much more so than anything he did at Kempton, which pointed to another explanation, which I think I've spelt out before)
If you'd read the thread correctly of course, you'd realise that what I'd said about King was not that he'd done his job incorrectly, but quite opposite.
He'd done his job correctly up to Haydock, and I believe he'd got the horse right (as indeed did he, if his public utterances are to be believed). Afterall, he'd have been following a tried and tested regime. Where I believe he went wrong, was in mis-diagnosing the cause of the Haydock flop, something he then compounded by commiting to a punishing regime which ran an obvious risk of over-cooking the horse. Something I believe happened, but was understandable.
If however you think Alan King is 100% bomb proof, then so be it. I'm sure he's got more humility than to suggest such a thing. experts in any field of work, periodically make mistakes.
