Gutted BDM was beat - my only bet today but was an exciting race to watch. Lostintranslation looks top notch alright and mixed it.. but BDM went down fighting.. King George line up could be very exciting..I wonder if the Irish will come over or whether they will bottle the challenge? Normally their potential challengers seem to duck out.
that Soaring Glory was so eyecatching and like you say the Nicholls horse ran a stormer after getting done for a few lengths as they quickened
Really? What makes you so certain. So far this season he s won twice in very small fields. The King George will be miles away from these two races. He was very impressive today but it really depends who lines up. I am not sure thst Kempton will suit but he definitely looks a worthy contender for the Cheltenham gold cup... I can see that race being right up his street...just don't think the king George would necessarily be a race to suit.
he jumps fence to fence and can be ridden however they need to, he showed today how good he is and last years KG winner came up well short in same race at same part of career.
King George is his main target and given his class at 2m4, he should have the edge over everything bar Cyrname, and he has to prove he cant do it away from Ascot and at 3 miles with a likely contested pace.
I agree very impressive but horse has never been round Kempton before so you cant be certain he will take to the track. He s a lovely horse to watch and looks so classy but just have a bit of a doubt over him handling Kempton. He s built like a bull and an old fashioned chaser but not sure myself about Kempton
What about Clan Des Obeaux? Last year's king George winner. I thought he ran a nice race at Down Royal. I wonder if cobden will choose Cyrname or CDO?
Hes solid, I made him fav before today but I was just waiting for the proof about Lostintranslation and we got it today, hes a classier horse than Clan Des Obeaux. Impossible for Cobden to get off Cyrname if he has the choice but id take CDO against Cyrname in a match at Kempton.
I didn't like the way Lostintranslation finished off the race today. At the moment I'd slightly favour Clan Des Obeaux in the King George
Who is proven at the track. Lostintranslation has never been to Kempton. He might not like it..to me a big burly chaser might not take too well to the tight turns of Kempton.
I thought he looked a bit iffy when under pressure at the business end today and the King George will be a much tougher race with a bigger field of horses proven at the track. I'm not saying Lostintranslation won't win at Kempton, not at all what I'm saying. But at the movement I'd have to fancy a horse that's been there and done it and hasn't really lost anything in defeat since.
err , he’s won at aintree , that’s a speed track , left handed but tight ,he’s also run well at sandown ,a right hand track ,i don’t think it will be any bother to a smooth traveller like him
Nigel Twiston-Davies felt fitness contributed to Bristol De Mai's defeat and said: "He ran an absolute blinder and probably just needed the race whereas the winner didn't. "He looked like he was going to win at the second-last but didn't get home, and the good ground was against us. He's been superb here and it's no disgrace. He'll be better for the run but having not won this, we probably won't go to Kempton now. I guess this is likely to mean that Footpad will run in the king George being in the same ownership.
I think Lostintranslation is going to be a good one in time. Before today I thought he was more of a Gold Cup horse than a King George contender but I am less sure now. Today's race was a bit odd, with Lostintranslation looking far enough off the pace in the early stages but as Frodon and Ballyoptic dropped right away, it looked like Lostintranslation was staying on the stronger of the two and would prevail quite decisively but he did not pull clear in the manner it seemed likely to be at one stage. I would have liked to have seen him coming right away from Bristol De Mai and it was a bit of a concern that he wasn't more decisive. I would have been against Lostintranslation for the King George before today because I didn't think pace was his strong suit, with Defi Du Seuil looking the faster horse in two successes over Lostintranslation, where the latter horse just seemed to lack the toe to get to the current Tingle Creek favourite. The one sure thing is that the Racing Post feel that Lostintranslation is the real deal, giving him a RPR of 177. That compares with his 0R of 161 coming in. On the face of it Lostintranslation had a lot on yesterday, given that Bristol De Mai was rated 170 and Frodon was rated 169, with the former being a different horse at Haydock. It said something in confidence terms that the Tizzard horse was 5/4 JF. Frodon surely showed that the Gold Cup is not going to be his target at Cheltenham. It must be time to accept his best trip lies at less than 3 miles and they should aim to maximise his win opportunities. The King George looks to have plenty of horses you would be happy to be against for various reasons. Some have been disappointing, others look past their sell by date and the likelihood of some of them missing the race is strong enough to warrant great caution. I have backed a few over the years who ended up going to the Lexus instead and that will probably happen again this year. When looking for the King George winner, the previous season's champion is always a wise starting point and Clan Des Obeaux is out to defend his crown this year. I didn't fancy him last season but he did the business in a race that ultimately panned out terribly going forward. Clan Des Obeaux won once afterwards but that was the sole success in 23 subsequent starts, a bit of a concern for such a high profile race. Lostintranslation looks to be on the up and appeals most for the King George, especially if the ground is testing. Cyrname looks a bad favourite to me. I did not buy into his Ascot Chase win at the time and his OR of 176 looks dodgy to me. That race has thrown up zero wins from the other contestants since and horses like Waiting Patiently and Politologue were both thumped behind Min later on and the former of the two Ascot Chase runners looks a shadow of horse some people felt would go to the very top.
Couldn’t agree more and it’s ruining NH racing, at the very top level, for large parts of the season. But it’s not the trainers, in the main, decreeing this policy it’s the owners and/or their management teams. The top owners in NH racing are all enormously rich individuals who just want success at the very pinnacle – even races just below this level don’t seem to appeal to them, anymore, with the instruction issued instead to prepare the horse for the end of term Festivals with just 2 or 3 ‘preps’ along the way. Scant regard is given to how the horse actually fares in these ‘preps’, as well, with the real aim of such runs being to bring the horse forward so that he peaks on the big day. It is scandalous, in some respects, that so many hugely talented horses only really have one major target all season. All these people seemingly want is to win races at the Cheltenham Festival and/or (to a slightly lesser degree apart from the Grand National) races at the Aintree or Punchestown Festivals. This has ruined the ‘division’ below these races - some which have been around for yonks and have very, very proud histories. And the media, in my view, don’t help seemingly making everything about the Festivals and little else. Nothing annoys me more than when a presenter asks winning connections, after they have won one of these races what the horses aim is at Cheltenham (and some of these are bally rich affairs, incidentally, worth more money than many Cheltenham Festival races). Why can’t you simply revel in what they have just achieved and review and analyse that performance?!? Reminds me of the age old story of when a shrewd yard won a big prize and the journo asked connections what his target was. Addressing him scornfully, and with plenty of derision, one voice responded, ‘That WAS the target, dear boy.’
