Nathaniel withdrew from the Arc, because connections didn´t like the ground. That makes him the biggest coward of them all, not a great champion. How can Nathaniel be considered the best, when he ducked the mediocre bunch in the Arc, because he didn´t like the ground? Danedream has won on very soft, on good and on good to firm. That´s what worthy champions do. Danedream crushed most of them, because they couldn´t handle the heat of a truly run race. She doesn´t get her due, because of the public misconception that Shareta was a pacemaker, contrary to what her connections say. Another interpretation of the race would be that the Aga Khan knew that if Treasure Beach made this a true test of stamina for SYT, that it didn´t suit Sarafina, so she was truly the disguise. By keeping Sarafina tucked in way back and SYT always on her heels, he couldn´t overcome the gap created to the perceived pacemaker Shareta. And Snow Fairy simply ran well her race. But all these tactics were ruined by one little thing, that was supplemented and crushed everybody. Otherwise the Aga Khan pulled one of the greatest tricks in Arc history, countering the stiff pace tactics of Coolmore by sacrifiying the race favourite for the alleged pacemaking 66 to 1 shot.
greatpilsudski, I got the time from two sources: (1) Sundayâs Longchamp official race card. On the double page where the last fifteen Arc results are listed in the top right corner it gives the record times: Peintre Celebre 2:24.6 in 1997 and the 2:24.3 course record dated in 2005. I havenât got the racecard on me so I canât give you the actual French, but that was where I looked as soon as the race finished and I saw the time on the electronic clock opposite me at the track. (2) I looked up the course record time using a Google search with the year, distance and course and it came up with an article about Scorpion winning the 2005 Grand Prix de Paris in 2min 24.3sec, course record time (same time as above). He went on to win the St Leger. Ironic that he was beaten in the Irish Derby by Hurricane Run, who won that yearâs Arc. If you go to the Wikipedia Arc Entry, somebody has already updated it and put an asterisk for Race Record and an entry for Fastest winning time.
Yes quartermoon read that. It's possible it was wrong at time and then readjusted and the likes of Wikipedia didnt but what's also funny is that France galops website states that 2mins24.3 was done over a distance of 1m5f lol so they even stated the distance wrong !
Who claimed that Nathaniel was a great champion? You chose to ignore the conditionals in my original statement and nobody says that Nathaniel is necessarily a great champion, but if he beats a quality field in the Champion Stakes well (“impressively” that will qualify him as the best of the current middle distance horses. He may not show up for the Champion Stakes if the ground is not favourable so this may be an academic discussion. PatNat2, your first posting otherwise seems to be a tirade against the Aga Khan. Having backed Sarafina ante post, I am as disappointed as the next supporter at her poor showing as she had been trained for the race. I have no doubt that the Aga Khan allowed both his fillies to run on their merits and he is sporting enough that he will have congratulated the winning connections on their success. Shareta was 66/1 with the British bookies because a couple of the fillies that finished in front of her in the Prix Vermeille (Testosterone and facile winner Galikova) re-opposed, suggesting she was up against it. Also, given that Irish Derby and Secretariat Stakes winner Treasure Beach is a good horse in his own right, the notion that he was used as a pacemaker for So You Think does not really stack up.
greatpilsudski, the Grand Prix de Paris is definitely run over Arc course and distance, so if somebody at France Galop has miscalculated how many miles and furlongs are in 2400 metres perhaps I should drop them a line and point out that there are eight furlongs in a mile and that a mile is 1609 metres so generally we round that to 1600 metres being a metric mile. On Page 63 of the official France Galop race programme from Sunday it states: That translates as:
QM, on what I saw, Treasure Beach had to be a pace setter for probably So You Think and maybe to a lesser degree St Nicholas Abbey. I realise that it sounds a bit far fetched to claim an Irish Derby winner was sacrificed for the other two. But surely AOB understands the horse well enough to know that he was going to hit the wall after setting such a quick tempo. If the horse was sent out to run to it's merits, then it had to be the worst ride of the day.
Cyc, there is no way that I can buy that Treasure Beach ran as a pacemaker. If Aidan O’Brien had wanted a pacemaker, he could have left Seville in the race as he withdrew him at the second forfeit stage. Coolmore had also withdrawn two pacemakers at the first forfeit stage, presumably thinking that they wouldn’t get in the race. In the Secretariat Stakes at Arlington, Colm O’Donoghue said that he would have made the running that day if the runner-up Ziyarid, under Christophe Lemaire, had not gone quick enough. My reading of Sunday’s race would be that a conscious decision had been made to try and make all but O’Donoghue got it horrendously wrong and the beneficiary was the German filly.
To put it in two words, then “bad ride” it would be. If they had wanted to burn one of their three runners as a pacemaker, the obvious option would have been St Nicholas Abbey and they would have put up a more experienced jockey than the trainer’s son. The Arlington race was a mile and a quarter and although watching the video it doesn’t look like Treasure Beach went off like a scolded cat at Longchamp, the horse was clearly spent after a mile making me think that O’Donoghue misjudged the pace on dead ground.
Would a decent rider get it so wrong? I'm not saying that O'Donoghue out of the box, but he's a competent jockey riding for one of the biggest operations in the world. Surely a man of his experience knows how to rate a horse to get further than a mile.
O’Donoghue has worked at Ballydoyle for a long time but they have always had a retained jockey until this year so he has never really got many of the big rides. I am not saying that he is incompetent, but he may have gone off at a mile-and-a-quarter pace on ground that was slower than its previous race and in a race that was over further. Once St Nicholas Abbey passed him with about half a mile to go, he did just seem to go out like a light, which makes me think he went too quickly early on.
No matter how idiotic it was to send off an Irish Derby winner as a pacemaker, that was clearly what it was. It´s not like C O'Donoghue hasn´t ridden the horse before and the pre-race odds suggest as much.
Treasure Beach has been one of a number of horse's from Ballydoyle, who's careers have been held back to make way for SYT. Cape Blanco should have run in the POW at Ascot, and he should have been in the Eclipse and Irish Champion also, but AOB was protecting the reputation of SYT, so he wouldn't put the previous seasons best 10f horse up against him. For what it's worth I feel Cape Blanco would have beaten SYT over 10, but we will never get to find out now. Another one was Await The Dawn who has only been allowed one chance in G1 company this season, to avoid clashes with SYT and SNA. If you have a colt that has won the Irish Derby and has gone very close at Epsom, they should go to the Arc with a chance, so to run him as a pacemaker was criminal. If i was AOB I would have gone mob handed into the G1s, and given them all a fair chance of winning. Instead he sacrificed the others to make way for SYT and SNA, and neither have realy lived up to expectations
