Poor Cheltenham for the Irish

masterK

I've just been reading Alan Sweetmans column on the Sporting Life site and that got me thinking about why it was such a disappointing year at Cheltenham for Irish trained horses.

There are several reasons, firstly we didn't have the strength in depth in the championship races with the exception of the Champion hurdle as we've had in previous seasons, only Newmill in the Queen mother was a realistic contenter, we'd nothing in the Ryanair or World hurdle and almost nothing in the Gold Cup. The lack of star novice performances doesn't bode well for next year.

I also feel the BHB handicapper has had a major part to play, Pedrobob was our only handicap winner. Most Irish horses were forced to race off a mark of between 7-10 lb more than they would of at home. The succession of Irish good things mopping up big handicaps in the UK over the last couple of years clearly shows that Irish handicap ratings are a tad generous, however I think the BHB handicapper has overreacted to these ratings and unduly punished Irish Horses.

ziggy

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Morgans

I think the list of injuries/absentees had plenty to do with it. We dont have the same numbers of decent class animals as the british - althought we do punch above our weight (winning plenty of prizes with our good horses)

This year we (the irish challenge) was missing

War of Attrition
Kicking King
In Compliance
Golden Cross (would have gone very close I think)
Clopf
Glenfinn Captain
Schindlers Hunt
Young Desperado (an outsider I know)
Nicanor
Accordion Etoile
Travino
Jazz Messenger
Harchibald
Mac's Joy
Nickname
Central House (not good enough in any case but if Dempsey can get involved...)
Footy Facts.... a long shot for the 3m

We have won 3 sun alliance chases in the last 30 years (rule supreme, florida pearl, and antartic bay) FOr some reason we dont do well in the race - one possible reason is that 3m chases on heavy ground in huge fields often dont lend well to the development. Snowy Morning was of course kept at shorter and smaller fields until the big day.

We did win the Supreme, have decent strength in depth in the staying hurdle division with Black harry, Hairy molly, Catch me, Aran Concerto.

7 out of the first 8 home in the bumper. I think its just a blip to be honest.

knighted

handicaps -irish versus english

irish horses run off a true mark -english horses are artificially inflated

about three years ago they tried to rectify this by increaseing irish ratings by 15 lbs to try unify things -for example an irish horse running off 81 was then increased to 96 -we rose all our horses -prior to this english horses coming over here had to have there handicap marks adjusted to come in line with us -after the adjustment it worked well for a while but the english handicapper gradually allotted better marks to there horses to make it appear they have a better class of horse than what they actually have -at the moment take a 120 rated english horse and a 120 rated irish horse and u could gaurantee the irish one wins -so english handicappers now seem to be allotting the irish horse 10 pounds more than their irish mark

the irish and english handicappers dont talk anymore -i wonder why lol

its not an exact science handicapping but they really should have it unified to stop the mayhem and madness

this was a simplified explanation

redzerdrog

I think we all knew this year wasnt going to be great especially with the amount of horses missing thru injury. I had a nice bet on there being 5 irish winners @10/1