So was it a more horse racing crowd? I can’t believe all the stag chaps have relocated to Spain en masse with their white powder.
Absolutely. The winner already tells you that. 2025 Golden Ace Good-soft 3:56.12 2024 State Man Heavy 4:13.88 2023 Constitution Hill Soft 3:59.38 2022 Honeysuckle Good-soft 3:50.13 2021 Honeysuckle Soft 3:54.63 2020 Epatante Soft/Heavy 4:07.03 2019 Espoir D'Allen Soft 3:59.07 2018 Buveur D'Air Heavy 4:05.00 2017 Buveur D'Air Good-soft 3:51.00 2016 Annie Power Good-soft 3:45.1 2015 Faugheen Good-soft 3.50.09 At least 5 seconds slower than recent Champion Hurdles run on Good-soft
So what happened to Brighterdaysahead? I missed the racing today Could that be the best bred Champion Hurdle winner?
I don’t see it as a crap Champion Hurdle at all. You have to get over the obstacles to win in NH. CH and SM didn’t. No excuses. Brighterdaysahead was running on fumes before the last fence carnage. No excuses for her either. Well done to the owner of the winner for overruling the trainer and have the balls to line up. Hopefully there’s a sad yank in a bar in Cheltenham with his second rate Mares Grade 1 trophy wishing he had the balls to let his mare line up in the blue riband event.
They've got to run that Mares race in January. It's ridiculous to have it on the same day as the Champion Hurdle. In the good old days when horses were tough if you ran it on the Thursday (not that I'm for that), horses would have run in both. Serves Mullins right that his horse didn't win, he should have had the guts to run his other one in the big one. Lot of horses weren't getting home today. It's probably deader going than it appears.
But a fantastic race to watch, as was the earlier 2 mile chase and the Ultima. The Arkle was a terrific race. Four of the 5 runners led at some time. Majborough can't jump. The second was the best jumper in the field and nearly won it. And good old stamina won the day as they weren't getting up the hill too well. Myretown jumped his field into the ground. You can't have hurdlers who can't jump. Don't know if he's the best bred CH winner, probably. Persian War was pretty well-bred, so was Sea Pigeon..
Well that was an interesting 1st day to the festival wasnt it...!! How many races were won and lost by their jumping, which is what the game is all about, if you cant get over to the other side you will always be up against it... I think Majborough will turn out to be a decent horse in the end, how he stayed on his feet after ploughing through the last two and still got up close to just miss out on winning it is beyond me. Don't forget he's still only 5 so has plenty of time to iron out those jumps yet... KDP won with a bit in hand but not as much as Lossiemouth who was simply a class above her division. And as for the Champion Hurdle, well it can only be described as carnage...!! We know Conny Hill can get close to clipping the hurdles, but he didnt get half way up the hurdle did he. I never got the Brighterdaysahead challenge to CH so falling back as she did didnt surprise me, but i think the majority of us forgot about State Man, well until he fell at the last that is...!! Here's to another great days racing with day 2 fast approaching...
