This is just from personal experience. When riding my present horse out on gallops in company he always seem to pull himself to the front and when he thinks he’s won pulls up but my old horse was always happy to bide his time to get going but would be staying on when the others were slowing. Victor ludorum just didn’t stay for me and probably didn’t like the ground. Poor ride from the jockey.
Part of racing that we can read different things into what we have seen. He won well enough on similar if not worse ground in the Lagardere in October. For my liking he was simply always doing too much off a slow pace. Lethal combination at that level. My only comment about the jockey was as I alluded to earlier, under the circumstances why not let him have his head rather than waste energy. Maybe Barzalona thought they were going quick enough, I wouldnt know as I dont know enough about the lad to know if he is a good judge of pace.
The jockey created his own problems expected a crawl and when he showed him daylight the horse lit up. I’ve seen worse. It looked an unusually good pace for France the winner didn’t quicken just lengthened it’s stride.
