The total shake up of the Arc betting after the Trials sees the front two both shorten with Love still 2/1 with Betway but generally 7/4 or 6/4 whilst Enable is best priced 5/2 in several places. The betting has a very strange look to it now as it does almost look like a match with Magical a best priced 14/1 but as short as 8/1; and Ghaiyyath also available at 14/1. After her lacklustre effort in the Vermeille, Raabihah is out to 16/1, the same price as the winner Tarnawa. For anyone that wants it, Sottsass and Mogul are 20/1 shots. Curiously Stradivarius is 16/1 after defeat by Anthony Van Dyck who is available at 25/1 with Hills. That may be because of existing liabilities rather than the opinion that both horses were being primed for three weeks time. The Prix Foy is a bit of a graveyard as an Arc Trial. Waldgeist was the last horse to do the double last year but it is more than thirty years since the previous time; and Subotica is the only horse in the last thirty years to be beaten in the Foy and win the Arc. Other than Raabihah and Sottsass, the next shortest priced French possible is In Swoop at 33/1 with Way To Paris and Port Guillaume out to 50/1. On an aside to the Arc, a mate of mine knows somebody connected with a filly that may be running in the Prix de l’Opera. Skybet are standout 33/1 about Ambition, trained by Xavier Thomas-Demeaulte, which was second in the Prix Jean Romanet last time. It looks an open race this year and it is not without a shout.
The arc has been a match race for months, Raabihahs form put her bang there with the like of Fancy Blue and co, decent fillies in their own right but a mile behind Love on all known form, if she was a proper Arc filly she would have won the Diane by 3 of 4 lengths. Love is about 10 pounds better than any other 3yo filly at 10f+ and you could probably argue shes miles ahead of the colts as well. The only thing that can beat Love is the ground, if its fast ground there is no way Enable gives her the weight, if its soft ground there is no way Love will beat Enable, she needs nice ground and Enable handles heavy comfortably, that ground versatility might just get her the 3rd Arc if the rain comes.
I said all along that The Grand Prix De Paris was the race where Pyledriver should have run. It was there waiting on a plate for him. 228,000 Euros and a free meal ticket into the Arc, all sitting there waiting to be collected. Instead, Muir ran him in the St Leger and the inevitable happened. Mogul was left to collect the Grand Prix De Paris and Pyledriver had pissed on him by four lengths at York and gave him 3 lbs that day in a men against boys performance. With the way the other Arc contenders performed over the weekend in a disastrous **** show, Pyledriver could have been sitting there as third favourite for the Arc at a single figure price. Instead he ran the guts out of the horse in the St Leger, when he had mused himself that the colt had gears and that those types tend not to stay in the St Leger. You often hear trainers talking about not getting the ammunition to compete but if you don't put yourself into the picture when you do have a contender with a realistic chance in one of the weakest Arcs ever, you are likely to remain in the background watching better trainers collecting the glory, the plaudits and the well bred horses for the following season. This was a straight-forward call, an easy pot over the the horse's proven trip, with a free entry to the biggest race of the season, or taking the horse over an unknown trip for the crappy Classic that has no CV appeal. Muir bigged it up about how much the Leger win could mean for the stable but he blew it big time. The owners could have been sitting there with big pot of money and an Arc dream that was alive and paid for, even if it was a dream they were unlikely to see come totally true but an Arc third would look like something on a horse's resume, whereas a Leger third holds all the appeal of an excrement butty. Elsewhere it was all too predictable. I had wondered if Serpentine was going to slip away to stud in a tactical withdrawal but they eventually ran him and as expected his 120 official rating that gave him a penalty kick in theory in the Grand Prix De Paris proved to be the load of nonsense some of us thought all along. That mark will need to be dropped, much as they hate to downgrade Classic form. Raabihah is a filly I feel that Jean-Claude Rouget has a hard-on for but nobody else in the world is even getting a "Semi" from watching her. The trainer seems besotted by her but the form isn't there at all. The unbeaten Tawkeel set a form line in the Saint-Alary that would have seen her collect the Prix Diane with a bit to spare and even if she would not have won the Arc, she should have had more in the bag than she has done this year and she could have lined up in the Arc with an each-way squeak. Instead Raabihah is getting the gigs and showing that she patently isn't up to it. Ghaiyyath was exposed in Ireland and there seems little point in running him in the race where he flopped last season. He's a one-dimensional horse with talent up to a point but nowhere near the ratings he has been receiving. Carlsberg don't do racehorses but if they did, Ghaiyyath probably wouldn't be the best horse in the world. Technically the Arc isn't a match. In a match both horses would be even money if they held the same chance on the book. What we do have is a three horse race and all things being equal it is Love 2/1, Enable 2/1 and The Rest 2/1. Where is the value of those three then? Love is 5 from 6 on Good ground, 1 from 1 on Good To Firm and has lost the three times she ran on anything softer than that. I feel proper soft ground leaves Enable little better than Evens for this weak Arc. In other Arc related matters the Prize for the biggest head up the ass rating from the Racing Post goes to Armory for getting 119 for his run in the Irish Champion. Utterly ridiculous. At this rate he is nearly as good as Serpentine
I'm not so sure this is a 2 horse race. Mogul posted an incredibly fast time which would surely have won most Arcs (not Danedream's). Has he just reached his potential in time for the Arc? Tarnawa seems to be improving. She had previously beaten Cayenne Pepper comfortably giving her 10lbs. And although Raabihah was very disappointing, she was given a terrible ride imo, left with far too much to do and ran on better than anything I wouldn't be writing off any of those at this point in time, if the ground is fast. I just hope it isn't; softer the better (but not heavy)
The Longchamp track is not the one it used to be, so I don't think we can compare times with old Arcs. Mogul got a thrashing from Pyledriver at York and he was getting 3 lbs into the bargain. He benefited from the French horse who was favourite running like a Handicapper and Serpentine running a million miles away from his 120 rating. Mainly, he benefited from William Muir not having the brains he was born with as he netted £37,000 for the owners with a Leger third, when they could have 227,000 Euros for winning in France. Jim Bowen's voice hauntingly cries, "I'm sorry boys but let's look at what you could have won, all that money, some bendy Bullies, an entry to the Arc and a speedboat" The Racing Post rated Serpentine 107 yesterday but that depends on whether we believe 114 for Mogul? Even if Mogul did run to 114, it's not enough to win an Arc and I would be more inclined to believe that a 110 figure won this year's Grand Prix De Paris. English King might have been better off running in the St Leger. His Lingfield form with Berkshire Rocco put him right there if he made any semblance of staying the trip but the Walker horse has gone backwards if anything since then. He was a further 5 lengths being Mogul compared to Goodwood and for me he has not built on his promising run in the Derby trial.
Mogul is very inconsistent, he ran much better in France than he did at York, no guarantee Pyledriver would have beaten him there. The Leger was the race for English King, he's obviously a 2m+ horse and very strange decision from Ed Walker to run in France. Mayswell geld him, put him away and start him over 2 miles next season.
Its actually quite amusing to remember back that a number of shrewdies on here actually thought Ed Walker could train a Derby winner.....
On the day of the Derby, if it was truly run race English King had as much chance of winning as any of them, he ran better than most on the day. I think they fell for the hype themselves and have been making excuses to keep trying to make him a middle distance horse instead of accepting he's a cup horse. The Lingfield trial was a pace collapse, Berkshire Rocco was up with the pace and English King was flattered by how easily he beat him after sitting off the pace.
ATR trying to analyse Serpentines run yesterday as a good one. For info - Strad/AVD ran the last 2f faster than Earthlight over the 7f.
Often on here you get snide comments from just a few people on German racing and racehorses. To think that the race record time for the Arc is held by a German-bred mare (Danedream in the 2011 Arc, a filly then of course). There is nothing wrong with German bloodstock, toughness and stamina being the main attributes of racehorses bred there. Danedream won the Italian Oaks in 2011, the Grosser Preis von Baden by six lengths, before easily beating an international field by five lengths in the Arc. In 2012 she became the first German-trained horse to win the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, beating an international field at Ascot. Also, in November 2011 she became the first German-trained horse to win a Cartier Racing Award. Info source: Wikipedia. Successful German stallions include Acetenango, Monsun, Big Shuffle. Monsun, in particular, was much sought after by breeders worldwide.
Times mean little due to the wide variation in ground and pace scenarios. Mogul wouldnt have won any Arc in history, was just fast ground and a good setup, means nothing. Look no further than the lingfield derby trial for times are irrelevant proof. If you ran 2 races on the same ground with the same tempo then the overall time would tell you a lot, but thats rarely if ever going to happen, they went about 10 seconds slower in the early part of the AVD race yesterday compared to Moguls.
There seems to be a lot of debate about the various performances in Ireland and France over the weekend and I suspect that there is going to be a consensus eventually. Over in Ireland, I did not see anybody put up a performance that would have me considering them as a potential Arc winner. In the big race, Ghaiyyath clearly did not run to his form and whilst not detracting from Magical’s winning effort her chances of beating Enable are entirely dependent on Gosden’s mare not running to her best form when she has clearly been trained with one race in mind. Whilst Mogul came good in the Grand Prix de Paris there was very little to like about the race as it was easy to crab every horse in the field before it even started but somebody had to win. The Prix Foy was run like a typical French race with a sprint in the straight that was only going to highlight why Stradivarius is a great staying champion using his turn of foot after a truly run two miles but is ineffective over shorter when others have that finishing kick rather than just galloping to the line like most stayers he faces. The main thing with the French trials is that the home team usually come to them having had most of the summer off and they are just there to get fit for three weeks later. That the home challenge was so weak this year is more an indication of the paucity of talent in the Classic generation in France as well as Britain and Ireland. Although I have been impressed by Love as she has spreadeagled her fields like Enable did three years ago, she may have beaten trees as the form of none of her victories has worked out. It is hard to escape from the fact of her poor win record on easy ground and if it comes up easy on the day, Enable just running the same race she has run the last couple of years ought to be good enough to win. Team Ballydoyle tactics on the day are the only thing I can see beating her.
Ghaiyyath ddin't run to form because Buick didn't set a fast enough pace. His win against Enable was flattering though. Even now, Enable is just getting in the right frame of mind and fit enough to do herself justice. So how ready was she when she gave Ghaiyyath a good race over 10f on fast ground? That gives Ghaiyyath no chance over 12f on softer ground
Ghaiyyath was gifted the eclipse on a plate and the form has been decimated with Japan, Dierdre, Magic Wand and Regal Reality all beaten further in lower status races. The Juddmonte rating of 130 was resting on Lord North who won a poor Prince Of Wales, I thought a run of about 117 would have been good enough to win that day at Ascot and his rating of 124 is way too high, Kameko finished a half length behind him at York and we know he is about a 118 horse at a best he was unlikely to produce at York given his campaign, they upgraded him to a 120 career best to fit this race but that looks false. Magical is a low 120s horses who was below par on the day, so none of the horses behind her could possibly have ran to 120+. Rose of Kildare had been rated 103 and she was beaten less that 8L. The Juddmonte was a career best for Ghaiyyath but it can only be rated 126, his other wins are overrated, and he needs to be gifted the race to achieve his best rating. He was mildly pressured for the lead in Ireland and finished 1 1/4 in front of the 110 horse Armory. Has to be a contender for the worst horse ever to be awarded 130 for a race, will be a disgrace if that isnt revised before the end of the season.
I think the racing public needed a hero, they were holding out for a hero 'till the end was in sight He had to be strong He had to be fast And he had to lead from the front and last
Ghaiyyaths win in the Juddmonte, where they gifted him 4L from the start and let him saunter round unchallenged, was rated the equal of Frankels Guineas, and better than anything Enable has ever done. Let that sink in.
