Across the pond

[HB1994]

BC Juvenile Fillies Turf runner-up Mother Earth won the 1000 Guineas for Coolmore.

[BaroqueAgain1]

Palace Pier 'went whoosh' for Frankie Dettori in the Lockinge Stakes.
https://www.racingpost.com/news/race-re ... win/489983

[tachyon]

Palace Pier 'went whoosh' for Frankie Dettori in the Lockinge Stakes.
https://www.racingpost.com/news/race-re ... win/489983

Yay for Palace Pier!!
Kingman sired G1 winners two weeks in a row!!

[HB1994]

St Mark’s Basilica and longshot Coeursamba won the French 2000 and 1000 Guineas, respectively.

[Starine]

St Mark’s Basilica and longshot Coeursamba won the French 2000 and 1000 Guineas, respectively.

Nice to see the ill-fated The Wow Signal get a group I winner.

[HB1994]

1 -2 for Jim Bolger in the Irish 2000 Guineas: Mac Swiney over Poetic Flare.

Poetic Flare ran in all three Guineas, winning the British version.

[TurfLover]

Absolute masterclass by Mr Bolger in the Irish 2000 Guineas. 1-2 with Mac Swiney and Poetic Flare.
Bred them, trained them and his wife owns them - sired by his graduates New Approach and Dawn Approach.
What a way to win the race for the first time!

[TurfLover]

After the French 2000 I was surprised to see Poetic Flare heading to the Curragh but never doubt the Irish genius! Three more strides and he might have done it. And they were both well clear of the others.
And Mac Swiney is potentially off to Epsom, looks like he got a pretty good prep there, if a bit of a late one. Very pleased for my old favourite New Approach <3
Disappointing in the rest of field, just got to hope the ground didn't take too much out of the Bolger pair.

And again, what a breeder, Mr Bolger is.
Mac Swiney - by his Derby winner New Approach and out of a homebred mare (out of a homebred) by his champion juvenile Teo Filo (homebred out of a homebred).
Poetic Flare - by his 2000 Guineas winner Dawn Approach (homebred out of a homebred out of a homebred and sired by New Approach) and out of a homebred out of a homebred.
Absolutely remarkable - breeding "proper" horses and a humble man to boot. Remember reading an interview by him about Galileo's second or third season at stud (when he started to decrease in popularity) and he was kicking himself because he had fields full of Galileos.
Guess it worked out quite well

[Northport]

Earlier in the week, Jim Bolger was extremely confident that Poetic Flare would win the Guineas, and that Mac Swiney simply needed a run before the Derby and would hopefully hit the board.

With that in mind, all week I was debating actually opening a betting account just to put a couple bucks on Mac Swiney for the Derby, I think he could really have a chance there. Though his odds have taken a tumble in the last couple hours.

Moving forward, I really like him and Van Gogh for the Derby. It’s a bit wild how poorly the first stringers from Ballydoyle have performed in the English and Irish 2,000 Guineas.

[HB1994]

Back to the usual at the Curragh as AOB finishes 1-2 in the Irish 1000 Guineas with Empress Josephine and Joan of Arc. Not saying the ground was a bog, but the winning time for 8f was 1:47.92.

[WaquoitNBroadBrush]

Back to the usual at the Curragh as AOB finishes 1-2 in the Irish 1000 Guineas with Empress Josephine and Joan of Arc. Not saying the ground was a bog, but the winning time for 8f was 1:47.92.

I was playing the UK races on Friday and cashed an exacta ticket on a 7f race at Haydock that went in 1:45 and change! ("18 seconds slow," was the Racing Post note on the time.) Haydock is uphill to the finish, and you'd have thought the poor fillies involved were competing in a pull at a county fair rather than a race. The on-course commentator referred to it as a "grim struggle" during the running!

[Northport]

Back to the usual at the Curragh as AOB finishes 1-2 in the Irish 1000 Guineas with Empress Josephine and Joan of Arc. Not saying the ground was a bog, but the winning time for 8f was 1:47.92.

I was playing the UK races on Friday and cashed an exacta ticket on a 7f race at Haydock that went in 1:45 and change! ("18 seconds slow," was the Racing Post note on the time.) Haydock is uphill to the finish, and you'd have thought the poor fillies involved were competing in a pull at a county fair rather than a race. The on-course commentator referred to it as a "grim struggle" during the running!

Haydock is notoriously one of the worst when it comes to wet conditions. Tracks like Ascot or the Curragh have good drainage, but Haydock is often referred to as a bog after it rains. It makes the jumps races there during the Winter extra attritional ... leading to heavy going specialists like Bristol De Mai ruling the major races there.

[CorridorZ75]

I think Van Gogh is just a heavy-going specialist as his win in France was also over a bog. This race also points out how ridiculous it was naming Van Gogh the top two year old last year via the Cartier Awards. However, Coolomore wanted a champ AP colt in Europe and so they got one.

[Mylute]

Tokyo Gold (Kendargent) won the G2 Derby Italiano for his Japanese connections.

[Starine]

Tokyo Gold (Kendargent) won the G2 Derby Italiano for his Japanese connections.

I really like his pedigree, with names like Kendor, Linamix, Dalakhani and Lomitas. He will be an appealing outcross to Sunday Silence-lined mares when he retires to stud.

Double Classic success for Demuro brothers as Tokyo Gold wins Italian Derby
https://www.racingpost.com/bloodstock/b ... rby/491494

[HB1994]

Another G1 winner for Wootton Bassett: Incarville won the Prix Saint-Alary for 3yo fillies at Longchamp today.

[Mylute]

Where can I look at posted workouts for the UK?

[KatieD]

Where can I look at posted workouts for the UK?

We don’t really have them. Here in the UK, horses aren’t trained on racecourses but at specialist training centres like Newmarket, Lambourn, Epsom (details here: https://jockeyclubestates.co.uk/ ) and Malton, or on private estates.
They’re not trained on tracks and work times aren’t publically posted; in fact, they’re often closely guarded secrets.
The ability to follow a horse’s development in training is very different here.

Sometimes trainers will take horses for a racecourse gallop (with permission of a racecourse) in preparation for a big race, or a seasonal return. They’ll work alongside a galloping companion and several trainers stoically refuse to identify said companions! It’s often said to ‘give them a day out’ because it very much isn’t the routine here and because they get fired up to be at the course, is perceived to get them fitter than simply training at home.

Some of our most famous training centres, aside from Newmarket, Lambourn and Epsom (which are run by the Jockey Club) are Malton (in North Yorkshire) and Middleham (also Yorkshire, up in the Yorkshire Dales). There are also famous private yards like Seven Barrows (home of National Hunt trainer Nicky Henderson, and named after 7 ancient burial mounds), Ditcheat (where champion NH trainer Paul Nichols trains - his gallops run up and down hills around his landlord’s dairy farm!) and Manton Park (now home to Martin Meade).

You can go watch horses train at Newmarket and it is an incredible thing to witness - the whole town revolves around racehorses. There’s a fabulous Twitter and Instagram account called Life of Bean which documents the daily adventures of a (flat) racehorse trained in Newmarket called Caribbean Spring and his ‘small humans’. It’ll give you a real flavour for how horses over here are trained.

Hope this helps.

[HB1994]

I second the Life of Bean recommendation. It’s a great account.

[WaquoitNBroadBrush]

Where can I look at posted workouts for the UK?

We don’t really have them. Here in the UK, horses aren’t trained on racecourses but at specialist training centres like Newmarket, Lambourn, Epsom (details here: https://jockeyclubestates.co.uk/ ) and Malton, or on private estates.
They’re not trained on tracks and work times aren’t publically posted; in fact, they’re often closely guarded secrets.
The ability to follow a horse’s development in training is very different here.

That's why I find the connections of the horses the thing I look at first while trying to handicap English and Irish maiden races, both for 2yos and 3yos. Then breeding, then ... pretty much everything I hear on the RacingTVi feed and everything I can absorb from Timeform and other analysis. The results, I find, are not like American results at all, where pretty much anybody can have a baby win a race, and frequently at long odds. There, it seems, that baby's got to be from one of less than a dozen outstanding trainers of young horses, even the ones that surprise at a price.

The glacial Haydock race I posted about earlier was an example. Radio Caroline won at 12-1 and is from Mick Channon's stable. Channon doesn't train many of international reputation, but gets a lot out of those sent to him, especially early in their careers. She's by Sixties Icon, whose progeny want longer, and since she was moving up from 5f to 7f off a nonthreatening debut at 25-1, that interested me greatly. While Timeform didn't seem very optimistic about her, the TV commentators noted positive movement in the on-course and off-course markets. Of course, all this data sometimes only leads to a poor run or, more frequently, a frustrating third or fourth behind two or three short prices. But I really enjoy the challenge of coming up with a winner when I have hardly anything to go on in the published PPs, and it feels a lot better to be right than it does getting on the Chad Brown or Wesley Ward bandwagon here in the States.