Classics Betting Update, News, Opinion

A lot will become clearer when Serpentine and a few others have their subsequent runs.

 

Nothing worse than the runs.

 

Grendel, no one is forced to read your posts so dont bother yer arse.

 

What does "don't bother yer arse" mean Joe_z?

Can't say I've heard that expression before

 

It means do not let it annoy you.

 

If you were to bother yer arse you would have to rise from where you were sitting and move.

 

Ah right. Might use that one

 

Didn't see that one. That's 2 different meanings. I prefer this one in Grendel's case

 

Ive never ridden a horse so i may be talking rubbish but yesterday the pilot on Victor Laborum lost the Derby over there at the start. So slow away. Surely you get your horse revved up so it breaks properly, it wasnt a class 5 at Southwell. So many jockeys are asleep at the wheel too often imo, especially NH starts.
I think English King is the best 3yr old colt looking at the Derby sectionals.

 

I have to pick up on that one Mall. English King isnt in the top five three year olds this season and in my view will not be there when the season is over.

 

Actually stick what i meant was from the Derby runners over 12f i would be with him if they ran again at Epsom or wherever.

 

So would I, although to be honest I would be slightly afraid of Serpentine. He quickened off a slow pace and made it impossible to catch him. What we don't know is if he had gone just fractionally faster could he have still kicked and clocked an even faster time. He has obviously improved over 12f and is bred to do so. It will be very interesting to see what he does next.

 

Serpentine must have been working really well at home. With about 5 furlongs to go in the Derby, Donnacha O'Brien told those with him that the horse wouldn't be caught.

 

Simon Rowlands of Timeform and ATR is one of the few who know how to interpret sectionals properly and his analysis concluded that both the Oaks and the Derby were run at strong early paces, roughly 5 or 6 lengths faster than par. The difference was that Love was sitting well off the pace while Serpentine was setting the pace. Coming into the home straight Serpentine was 8 lengths ahead of par and Love was 5 lengths behind par at that stage meaning that Serpentine was 13 lengths up on the filly in relative terms at that stage of the race but with two furlongs left to travel she has caught up and Serpentine is only narrowly ahead on the clock. Serpentine tires most in the final furlong and that is where the filly would have claimed him and won by two and a bit lengths based on their final times for the race.

Rowlands's conclusion was that Serpentine ran a lopsided race but had already got it in the bag by the time he started to pay for how fast he went early.Thoroughbred Daily News are misleading their readers in saying the Derby was won off a slow pace.

Looking forward, Serpentine would have next to no chance of lasting the Leger trip if he went off at the pace he did in the Derby.

 

The sectional timings show that Serpentine was 6 lengths faster than average in the early stages of the race. If the others had gone faster to try to burn him out they would have had to go at an almighty lick and there is no way they would have lasted home. Serpentine himself got tired, especially in the final furlong based on the sections he clocked and had anything been going faster than him early then they would have tired to an even greater degree.

As far as a modest crop goes, they are a modest crop. I would say English King should probably have finished second after what wasn't Frankie's finest hour but I could only really have rated him 115.

Serpentine has improved in huge chunks and could be a rapidly improving colt. From run to run so far he has gone up 21, 25 and 21 lbs with the latter two being in a very short space of time. He did run as a 2YO but was only 10th of 11 runners and rated 54 at that stage. To all intents and purposes his entire career has been at 3YO and it would be madness to suggest that managing to beat one horse home in his 2YO career has made the difference in him winning this year's Derby.

Some of us believed that this year's Derby winner would come from the shadows because what we had seen looked mediocre. I don't know why some people seem to take offence when you mention mediocrity but it seems inevitable that feathers will be rustled when the M-word is mentioned.

Going forward it us going to be impossible for Serpentine to maintain his 20 lb chunks of improvement, simply because he would need to be rated 141 after his next race in order to do so. Recent good winner of the Derby Golden Horn won at Epsom with a 127 rating from the RPRs and won the Arc four months later with exactly the same rating for the Arc run. To be cautiously optimistic you might predict a possibility of Serpentine reaching 125 and with that in mind I am surprised to see Timeform award Serpentine 124p because with that figure I would expect that you would need to be reasonably confident that a horse could hit 130, or very close to it next time it ran. I may well be wrong of course but given the type of year we have had and the way the Derby was run, I would be surprised if a future 130 horse was the winner. It does remain possible of course and someone once told me "Never say die until a dead horse kicks you" Mind you I never worked out quite how that saying made any sense.

 

As much as I like watching major races won by tear away front runners, I find myself short on confidence when it comes to repeat efforts, unless of course the horse is an out and out champion. I will watch Serpentine with great interest in the future, hoping he can build an exciting and bold career of front running brilliance. Nothing like a brave horse that defies them to run him to ground.

 

Not bitter Ron, just cold analysis.

I notice Ed Chamberlain pretty much agreed with my concerns about the Derby and Coolmore domination and he recently said:-

”I think it was a great ride on Saturday, I think Aidan O’Brien is the greatest trainer we’ll ever see, it’s extraordinary what he does, but I do worry long-term for the Derby, I really do,” he said on this week’s Sporting Life Racing Podcast.

“You have other trainers walking around saying ‘what can we do? How can we compete with his guy and this sire, Galileo?’

“He’s now won it eight times, with a son of Galileo again and you look elsewhere. John Gosden only ran Worthily because of the owner, George Strawbridge. He, Gosden, came out in the press this week and said there’s the danger of the Derby turning into a race for National Hunt sires.

I notice John Gosden was quoted within that statement.

Further concern came elsewhere:-

Cornelius Lysaght admits he too struggles to see an end to the current domination.

“The Coolmore support of the Derby with Aidan O’Brien over the last 20 years has been absolutely crucial to its survival but also puts it in a certain amount of danger,” he added.

“And that’s because of Galileo I suppose, this extraordinary, prolific stallion, and they have the lion’s share of those horses. As I say it’s a great irony that the support of Coolmore is both positive and to some extent negative too.

“Thinking further down the line now Donnacha O’Brien is training Classic winners along with Joseph, and it’s all part of the same extended operation, you have to hope others can exploit any potential mistakes in the future because otherwise it’s going to be quite dull.

I had voiced the same concerns in the build up to this year's Derby. It's not just horses who are going on to be sires of future Champions but Champion trainers becoming sires of future Champion trainers. There will be a pedigree chart for future trainers where we will be looking back to see where Aidan O'Brien sits in their pedigree. If you could sell yearling trainers Aidan O'Brien's ball bag would need to be insured for £50 million

 

Looking at the St Leger, Love is 5/1 but won't be running. The trainer says the Yorkshire Oaks is next and then the Arc after that.

I noticed Ed Walker bemoaning the lack of pace in the Derby. The sectionals prove he is wrong in his thinking. There was plenty of pace but English King's jockey was sitting far too far off that pace.

 

I understood that the sectionals proved him to be correct (ref the sectionals Nass posted). The early pace was slow and when Serpentine slipped into another gear whilst so far in front it left the rest with an impossible task. All the jockeys were sitting too far off the pace because they were too dumb to realise it wasn't a fast early pace, assumed the leader would come back to the field and were too busy watching the moves on the other fancied horses.

The race was a disaster because one jockey out thought all the others. At the moment we don't know if the winner would have won however the race was run. The KG and/or the Arc will reveal more

 

there was no pace in the Derby effectively, the only horse going a decent pace was completely ignored by the rest of the field who crawled round and finished on a conveyor belt, Khalifa Sat was basically the pace in the race and he won from the other Obrien rag who tracked him the full way

most farcical Derby you will ever see, utterly false race, no chance in a million years the first 3 finishers are the 3 best in the race, youd be lucky if any of the top 3 turn out to be in the top 3 from the race