IT doesn’t feel that long since the Irish Derby was a seminal date on the Irish sports calendar, not just the horse racing calendar.
The top trainers and horses came from England and France, to take on the best in Ireland in the Curragh. Now it’s left to the best in Ireland to take on each other. Actually, that could be considered a generous view with Aidan O’Brien packing the field with horses in recent years.
Yes, it remains a Classic, but what about the prestige? Now, the Irish Derby is glanced over in favour of the Coral Eclipse in Sandown — a Group One race that has been enhanced by about the same degree that the Irish Derby has been diminished. They are fixed a week apart and for me the scheduling is too close.
If you are an English trainer and have real chance of scoring a significant Group One victory then you are going to hold out for the Eclipse, not trek all the way to Ireland to take on Aidan O’Brien, John Ox and Dermot Weld on their own patch.
The absence of any real international competition has diminished this race which cannot be considered an international event anymore, more an Irish championship.
Maybe there’s a problem with the timetable, maybe there’s just too much racing, or maybe it’s a combination of all of the above. Whatever the factors, it would be great to see the return of this race to its past stellar billing.
Staying with the Flat, I got caught out on the Mark Walford-trained Flexible Flyer in Thirsk last week. The horse was fitted with a hood and blinkers and the instructions were to keep them on, in the stalls, until the last second before the starter called the break.
All was going to plan, but on the starter’s orders, the hood got caught in the horse’s ears and by the time we broke we were about 10 lengths off the pace. Left with too much to do, Flexible Flyer did manage to make up a lot of ground and definitely would have finished in the first three had there not been the incident with the hood. Keep an eye out for him the next day.
It was that kind of week. The following day I was called into a Stewards Enquiry at Lingfield after Richard Hughes’ mount, Passionate Affair, made to come up the inside. This led to a domino effect as horses were pushed off their racing line. That’s one thing with the flat, there’s a lot more enquiries because the races are shorter and the horses packed more closely together.
This week’s selections:
£10 win Night Of Thunder, the Coral Eclipse, 3.50 Sandown, Saturday
