For that we can read “The Leger is always a stupid race to run your horse in when it does not win because it did not stay, was over-the-top or had some physical impediment”. Glint Of Gold was the only foreign runner in the 1981 Derby Italiano – that was why he started at odds of 1/3. The rest of the field were local. British and French horses have won the race regularly since. In the 1982 Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud, the head runner-up was Lancastrian, an Irish-bred trained by David Smaga who had been third in 1981 and was runner-up in 1983, beaten further by Ian Balding’s Diamond Shoal (so must be better than Glint Of Gold?). The very top British and French horses never ventured to Italy and Germany because whilst the prize money was good there was good prize money and the prestige of beating better horses for races in their own countries. Glint Of Gold was not good enough to win any Group 1 races in Britain. As a four-year-old he won the John Porter Stakes (Group 3) and was beaten in the Jockey Club Stakes (Group 2) and the Hardwicke Stakes (Group 2) and was the beaten favourite in the Coronation Cup. Being beaten in a photo or by ten lengths is still not winning!
New Approach was ripped a new one by Henry on more than one occassion and almost came unstuck against all time stellar 0 time Grade One winner Tartan Bearer! Was good one day over 10f against that old arse chaser Twice Over I'll give him that but that hardly makes him an all time great
If we are talking bottom of the heap Derbys it will take a lot to get past Camelot's. Since Derby day the horses behind ran in 41 races in the UK and only one horse (Thought Worthy) managed to win a race. This was a small group 2 at York in which he beat a fellow Derby Day runner. It must be pointed out that Rugged cross won a small handicap in the US but more of note was Main Sequance who became a different horse in the US and ran in 6 races winning 5 of them, culminating in a Breeders cup triumph. He ran in 9 races in the UK post Derby Day however without winning. This was truly the worst Derby of modern times.
That was why O’Brien scored 10/10 on the “Listen Rishi” scale that year, talking up the best of a mediocre bunch; and why he avoided the older horses until being soundly beaten in the Arc. The tale that this also tells is what a terrible course it is at Epsom. Every year the Epsom Derby and the Epsom Oaks ruin more horses than they make. So many horses do not handle the track and get physically ruined. There are plenty of years where the also-rans in the two Epsom Classics fail to trouble the judge subsequently because the races are so early in the season that the participants are frequently barely three years old and often have little racecourse experience. This trend has been exacerbated in recent times by the tendency towards very light two-year-old campaigns for horses with middle distance pedigrees.
