Railbird 2004–2019

UK

Forty-Two Years

Greg Wood reflects on Coolmore, Camelot, and the Triple Crown:

Racing has changed since Nijinsky won the Triple Crown and Magnier has probably done as much as anyone alive to change it. Nor is there anything that Camelot can do on Saturday afternoon to bring the old days back. But the fact that he is running in the St Leger at all shows that, even now, there are still precious moments in the billion-dollar business of international Flat racing when the money is secondary to the sport.

9/15/12 Addendum: Forty-three years. Encke outruns Camelot.

Posted in Racing on September 14, 2012 / Tagged Camelot, Coolmore, Encke, International, St. Leger, Triple Crown, UK

Rider’s Eye View

The late John Oaksey’s bittersweet account of the 1963 Grand National:

It was, I think, setting out on the second circuit that the thought of victory first entered my head. Carrickbeg had long since made the fences look and feel like hurdles and, after jumping the water well behind, he moved up outside his field turning away from the stands with a surge of power that warmed my heart.

At Becher’s second time round he made one of the few mistakes I remember, and for an awful moment his big brave head seemed to rest on the quarters of another horse stumbling in front of us. But then, somehow, we were clear, and at the Canal Turn, as Ayala blundered badly, Carrickbeg nipped inside him like a polo pony.

Now there were only a handful ahead, and as the fences flicked by we pulled them back, one by one, until four from home, when for the first and only time in this hectic, wonderful race, fate took a hand against us.

He was denied the win. “I know who you are,” a man said to him on the street years later, “you’re the b—– who got tired before his ‘oss“.

Posted in Readings on September 5, 2012 / Tagged Grand National, International, Jockeys, John Oaksey, Jumps, Turf Writers, UK

Odds and Ends

“IHA lives a life of comfort.” The Kentucky Derby winner at Big Red Farm (via).

Azeri, Ginger Punch, Lethal Heat, Moscow Burning, Stardom Bound … Kate Hunter on the Yoshida brothers’ starry broodmare band (PDF).

But the horse will tell us what he wants to do. “It’s an absolute crock. Frankel has been saying all year I can do what YOU want me to” (via).

It’s not about the surface. What Dullahan really wants is distance. Given his one-run style, this makes sense. It doesn’t raise his prospects in any of the three Breeders’ Cup races he might enter, though.

East vs. West, Sid Fernando, March 2012: “… it’s striking that even cheaper dirt tracks in the East have lower overall rates than most anything out West.” Hm.

Posted in Racing on September 1, 2012 / Tagged Breeding, Dullahan, Frankel, I'll Have Another, International, Japan, Track Surfaces, UK

Frankel to Champion Stakes

It’s odd, how the most likely news can be the most underwhelming.

This Frankel development feels a bit like the Mosses announcing Zenyatta would race in 2010, after she was given a retirement party post-Breeders’ Cup Classic win … and then outlining the same campaign she’d run in 2009.

Addendum: Speaking of Frankel, Zenyatta and what-could-have, Marcus Hersh tweets, “Paris would’ve been biggest racing moment since Zenyatta’s 2nd BC Classic.” Ascot is now wondering where everyone who wants tickets will sit.

Posted in Racing on August 31, 2012 / Tagged Champion Stakes, Champions Day, Frankel, International, UK

An International Triple Crown

Greg Wood commenting on his column re: the Arc or America dilemma:

For as long as Champions Day sits between Paris and America, it will force owners to send a horse to two out of three, and the benefit of extra time to recover means that will, in many cases, be the events on either side of Ascot.

It’s just stupid that they should need to choose at all. Put Champions Day in the right place and you have the makings of a modern Triple Crown, on offer to a horse that can win at Ascot, Longchamp and then in America. What an achievement that would be.

Indeed! It’s hard not to like a proposed schedule that makes the Breeders’ Cup the culmination of a top-tier international season, but there’s a disjunction between audiences that weakens the likelihood of such a set-up, even if the BHA succeeded in finessing the scheduling issues involved — the BC dirt races don’t stir Euro passion, and the turf races are secondary to Americans. On this side of the Atlantic, whether Champions Day is in September or October is all the same to many fans. On the other side, the question is why bother?

Posted in Racing on August 28, 2012 / Tagged Breeders' Cup, Champions Day, International, Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, UK