Hukum and Westover with pukka Group 1 performances there. The next 3 are probably Group 2 horses who have won some soft Group 1s, the rest nowhere. Debatable whether Auguste Rodin should have run - Michael Tabor said he wouldn't like the ground pre-race and he wasn't backing him.
2.33, slow by over 4 seconds. It did look as though they were going a good pace, but I suppose the ground slowed them
He said he hadn't backed him yet. Probably didn't back him at all. What ground does he want for AR? He only won on soft/heavy as a 2yo but won the Derby on GF in a good time and won the Irish Derby on good ground. I would have thought good to soft would have been ideal
Rosallion, by Blue Point (IRE) out of a New Approach mare 20/1 for the 2000 Gns after thrashing that field by 4l. The top 3 look pretty solid though at this stage
When I looked at the Saturday cards on Friday, the going at Ascot was reportedly Soft (Good to Soft in places) and it was similarly easy at Newmarket and York. So I put my ITV7 on picking horses that wanted ease in the ground and like most other early players got done in when it had dried up considerably at all venues. I never had a bet because I did not even bother to look this morning; and the only winner I can honestly say that I might have missed was Alflaila at York (if I had gambled on his fitness), as I fancied Richard Fahey’s Pretty Crystal at Ascot (he gave it a good right up in his column). I had my doubts about the King George midweek when I saw that Aidan O’Brien had so many entered. That made me think that perhaps the maestro of Ballydoyle was coming to the same conclusion as me about the Classic generation so he had left some older horses in as cover. If he has a very good three year old then he usually runs it and a possible pacesetter. As it was in the race, Auguste Rodin ran like one of his sculptures and was not travelling from a long way out. King Of Steel did not manage to give his owners a back-to-back race double but at least he ran some sort of race to finish third. After running a shocker last year, Westover put in a great effort to make a race of it with Hukum but the six year old would not be denied. Yet again Emily Upjohn ran a stinker as she did last year and best of the Ballydoyle older brigade was Luxembourg in a remote fourth, having looked like their best chance of winning two out. The excuses computer will be hard at work tonight.
I am not sure that the “average per furlong” of race times is ever a meaningful statistic. That is why so much attention is paid to sectional times as many races are decided by slow early furlongs or fast ones in the middle of the race, which usually dictates how quick races are at the finish. I would like to think that the last furlong or so of the King George was run quite quickly (given the ground conditions) because two horses were battling hoof to hoof and giving their all. What I do think will be telling when somebody analyses the sectionals is that the race was actually quite quick after the first couple of furlongs because the two Ballydoyle runners cutting out the running (Point Lonsdale and Bolshoi Ballet) were effectively having a race of their own yet I concluded that Adam Kirby did actually want to be in the van but was overdoing it because of Sean Levey’s mount harassing him. That chart does show that after six, seven and eight furlongs the time of the King George was faster by a second than the shorter races with which the times are being compared.
Yep, that's why I made the chart QM. What I didn't know was if that meant they went off very fast, which could have taken the legs off some, or whether that was the expected pace of a G1 12f race. It just seemed to me that covering the first 6, 7 and 8f faster than the respective 6, 7 and 8f races was going some especially as the 6 and 7f races were on good ground (the 6f race was the fastest of the 2yos). The 8f race was fillies and mares on good to soft. The KG was on good to soft. It's a pity there weren't any Group 1 sprints to use for comparison
