Plenty more big money handicaps coming up next year. After a few dissapointing runs during the ‘summer break’, (he might even get turned over at tens on again!) and everyone writing the horse off as having "gone downhill", he’ll pop in at decent odds next winter when the prize money is right.
An ingenious plan, other than the fact that as a 167-rated horse there are precisely no handicap chases open to him during the British summer (he won’t get into the Summer Plate, Perth Gold Cup, Lord Mildmay Cup or similar now he’s above 145 / 150 (as applicable)), and only the Galway Plate in Ireland.
It defies credibility that he would be dropped even a quarter of the 27lb he improved from Perth last summer if putting in just the one ostensibly laboured performance in that Irish contest. Phil Smith may be many things, but he’s not that itchy-fingered.
at least I have the gaul to hold my position on it,
Well that will explain why we haven’t seen Asterix on our screens for a while.
Why do you think the horse was entered in the unwinnable race of the two, as opposed to the Ryanair?
In the bounden belief that, given possibly soft enough going and rivals that looked eminently fallable before the race, the race was anything other than unwinnable.
TB couldn’t have beaten Master Minded in the most optimistic of dreams.
TB couldn’t have foreseen Master Minded pull out a performance like that in the most pessimistic of nightmares.
Arguably few of us could.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.