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Captain's Blog - 26th August 2010

To all those of you who have called horses names in the past questioning their attitude and will to win I refer you to page 6 of today’s Racing Post where Lee Mottershead has written a piece about the so called dodge-pot and at last amid a sea of madness when it comes to slating jockeys and calling horses names we have some common sense and the truth behind the myth that is the dodge-pot.

In essence the article tells us that most horses who seem to stop when under pressure or put their heads in the air when getting to the front or hang in the closing stages are actually doing so as a direct result of a physical problem and not because they have suddenly decided that they do not want to win. I have been banging this particular drum now for a long time and am delighted that this point has been addressed in our trade paper. Hands up all those who have slated the chaser What a Friend for his head in the air antics when under pressure, well time to hang your heads in shame because he has been putting his head in the air to try and get some air, when he was fighting with Denman in the Henessey over the last two fences he was struggling to breathe, that makes him a hero for what he did not a dog!

I have written on this subject many times and will not bang on about it here again, but I would like to add one thing. Horses that have had a physical problem solved by a wind operation or the like may still exhibit their old characteristics in a race because they are anticipating the onset of pain or a lack of oxygen. What a Friend has had a wind operation to help him breathe, but he does not know that is what has happened, he just knows that he cannot breathe in a finish and will still put his head up in the air anticipating a problem, the problem may well have gone but the instinctive response to it may well remain.

I am out and about this morning running a few errands and at the same time avoiding having to help hanging some doors at McNae towers with the handyman who is still doing his stuff. This means I have stopped at a Wi-Fi friendly coffee bar to type this and will then be visiting Sainsbury's. The coffee bar is a nice bolt hole in my village and I am tempted to sit tight for an hour or so, but my Godson’s 1st birthday looms large on the horizon and I need to get his card written and in the post very soon. His birthday is on Saturday so I am already walking a fine line given our postal system. Perhaps just one more coffee and then I will be off before all the lunchtime mob descend.

There has been much written and said about the recent Ebor meeting at York. I have no particular problem with this years meeting but we must surely recognise that the state of the ground if not necessarily influencing the results of some of the big races certainly did mitigate against the chances of some horses. On the final day the horses were kicking up lots of sand indeed there was a sandy type kickback in a number of the races, I put it to you therefore that it was not such a suprise that a horse with form on the Dundalk all weather track indeed a horse who holds the course record over 5 furlongs on that polytrack surface should win the Nunthorpe. Sole Power may have been 100/1 and that was a fair price given his turf form, but we were racing on sand and turf which is right up his polytrack street.

Right second coffee ordered, battery on computer at deaths door. See you tomorrow.

Today’s Selections

5:00 Lingfield – Beaubrav (each way 15/2 Sky Bet )