I must be reading it wrong then..
I would ask you to give examples of top class animals who you think went to Epsom via the 2,000 Guineas and ended up "burnt out"?
Without even thinking about it Sir Henry Cecil’s Wollow who went off fav fits that bill perfectly and as they say once bitten twice shy.
Wollow didn’t "burn out". Cecil concedes "Wollow was really a miler, and was never beaten over that distance". He came back in the Eclipse and was awarded the race on the disqualification of Trepan who was found to have traces of theobromine in his blood. Writing in 1983 Cecil asserted that older horses are favoured by races like the Eclipse at that time of year (which is why he regretted the decision to run Reference Point in the race 11 years later) and doesn’t believe Wollow would have won anyway.
Wollow then won the Sussex Stakes, and when stepped back up in trip was also victorious in the Benson and Hedges Gold Cup gaining his revenge on Trepan, and denying the classy stayer Crow. Hardly the performances of a horse who was “burnt out”.
His defeat in the Champion Stake was attributed to being over the top and unsuited by the rain softened ground.
Cecil concluded that they were probably guilty of “trying to put what would have been the main races of his four-year-old career into his three-year-old campaign.
I really don’t know where you are coming from here……..Frankel was a complete fire cracker as a 3 year old and needed no help from Tom Queally to take off as he liked
I disagree. If you watch the start of the 2,000 Guineas Queally can be seen low in the saddle and pushing his mount for the first 10 strides or so, after which the horse is clearly set alight. Compare that with the St James’s Palace Stakes where he allowed his mount to settle form the off. However as soon as he got low again and pushed (just after the 6f pole) Frankel is was set alight. Surely if Frankel was “a head case” Queally would have been seen trying to restrain him, and the horse throwing his head about completely refusing to settle.
Cast your mind back to June 2011 and think where Frankel was while the brilliant Pour Moi was winning the Derby. A week later Frankel, who took of like a rocket 3 furlongs out was scraping home against the mediocre Zoffany.
As mentioned above, Frankel only “took off like a rocket” when Queally decided the pacemaker was in danger of going beyond recall, and it was more like 5.5f from home, certainly not 3f.
I’m sorry but or anyone to even think they know better than such an experienced trainer, who is hands on and knows the horse like the back of his hand is beyond me.
I am not saying I know better than Henry Cecil, I simply suggested that the riding style could have been be as much to do with the visual impression of Frankel being too headstrong to stay 12f as the horse’s temperament. I have put forward the examples of horses like Tudor Minstrel and latterly Wollow, who were given the opportunity to try to win the Derby, failed but were still able to win at the highest level during the remainder of their 3-y-o campaigns.