Is there a chance we get a Footpad Arkle type pace scenario where jocks get carried away. Going to be fascinating to watch.
All comers, all grounds, all beaten!
This perfect mix of poetry and destruction.
Based on times from 2 out Honeysuckle would have been beaten fully 8 lengths in last year Champion taking the trip into consideration 2m4f shee may have gotton a bit closer but it's blatantly obvious she neither has the pace or the speed to beat Epatante..4 second slowe on average last year makes that pretty clear....Ruby tells us on one breath Goshens race was a non event then tells us about his tremendous pace....seen so many horses clock good ties when racing alone so he is harder to judge.......but IMO none of them have the class to beat JP's....what could happen is something like Aspire Tower get ignored and steals the race from the top of the hill but I cant see Goshen or Honeysuckle living with Eapatante
Last edited by Tanlic; 26th February 2021 at 11:42 AM.
Formely Fist of Fury
you are probably right but the big 3 watching each other who knows.....contempt sneaks in to races way too often thinking that can win ignore it
Last edited by Tanlic; 26th February 2021 at 11:55 AM.
Formely Fist of Fury
If you can, try and find the interview Ruby Walsh did on Might Bite's RSA. He rode Bellshill. He talked about how confident he was that he was going to win early in the race because Might Bite had gone off so fast he reckoned there was no way on this earth MB could keep going. He closed to withing around 12 lengths of MB three out only to see him run away from him again. He said he couldn't believe what he had just witnessed.
It's impossible to know how this race is going to pan out.
If the forward-going horses stay efficient they won't be caught. As Ruby suggested last night, if they go very fast there has to be a chance on or two of them (he was talking Honeysuckle and Goshen effectively) won't stop. If they all stop, though, something will pick them up.
Illegitimi non carborundum
Yeah. There are two types of strong pace really. Not So Sleepy and For Pleasure taking them out, trying to conserve energy when they can through smooth jumping or clever jockeyship perhaps, with hold up horses waiting for them to inevitably fall back and pick them off through 'class'. And having front runners who want a stiff test of stamina and whose interests are NOT best served by slowing the pace down. Those hold up horses need to go after them.
On last years Champion Hurdle, there was about 100 yards coming down the hill where I thought Le Patriote could do a Norton's Coin. There is a chance that it was an awful race won by a good horse.
Last edited by HawkWing; 26th February 2021 at 12:46 PM.
Nah; Goshen makes all, and Jamie laughs at those trying to lay up with him.
barjon (26th February 2021)
Let's bear in mind, as you say, they have run 4 furlongs more up to whatever point in the race you want to call it from. Coming off the bend in the Champion, only two horses are not being driven...Epatante...fairly swinging away, the other is Petit Mouchoir. In the Mare's race, they start racing slightly earlier, and it's Blakemore who starts to test Benie's stamina and races from that point, the two of them drawing right away.
If you think about what she did in the Leopardstown race, where Petit Mouchoir is leading until halfway between the 3rd land 2nd last, then Honeysuckle opens up and turns on the taps, making it stamina from there on in..Petit comes under pressure immediately and can't stay with her, he tails off. He hadn't done any more than he did in front in the Champion, but Honeysuckle did him over 40L, Epatante a mere 11L. And the finishers that came after her couldn't close the gap. Their speed was negated by her pace....We have talked enough about the tactics to know that this is going to be about pace, and for most of them, their top speed run is going to start before the second last. I think Honeysuckle has proved she has pace Tanlic!
Edit: She's 4 seconds faster than Drop The Anchor (joint Fav for the County) giving him a stone!!!
Last edited by Maxbet; 26th February 2021 at 1:26 PM.
Blakemore, who is an excellent judge of pace, is riding a horse that can be ridden with waiting tactic's, or as we have seen many times, from the front. She has a simple task of following Goshen, sitting off him at whatever pace she feels isn't going to compromise her race, pressuring him if she feels his Jockey has gone too fast, test him for the same reason. I feel she can ride the perfect race and if it falls short of victory, then we have probably seen a monster.
The Mare's race last year was 4 seconds below standard slower than the Champion HDL, 3 seconds slower than the Supreme...but they ran 4 furlongs more. Break the 2 miles into 4 parts, that's an average of 4 seconds per half mile slow...break the Mare's race into 5 parts, they're 4 seconds per half mile slow and they did more work!
Last edited by Maxbet; 26th February 2021 at 1:52 PM.
Outsider (26th February 2021)
No answer to the question, though?
I'm supposed to give an answer to an 'If'....Honeysuckle is not without pace...fact
edit: what if the ground is running fast, will he be as effective?
Wasn't Goshen withdrawn on several occasions because of the ground..He has been known to scope badly when the ground has a G in it...
Last edited by Maxbet; 26th February 2021 at 4:38 PM.
It's odds-on g/s ground, and I ain't about to join a slanging match.
She certainly didn't show exceptional pace in the mares,,,,,there was no real pace which the commentator actually remarked on...she was more dependant on finishing speed that day and was slow in comparisson to Eparatnte..fully 2 seconds slower from 3 out and 2 out.......that is slow in anyones book.
Formely Fist of Fury
Abacadabras and Goshen are the bets in this for me. Ill be very surpised if at least one/both don’t finish in the first 2.
Re Goshen..racing alone from 2 out his sectional time from the 2nd last to the last was nothing out of the ordinary no matter how it may have looked.....same as Tiger Roll and Pentland Hills a flat 39 seconds....looked much faster but an illusion
Formely Fist of Fury