starts! stop it!, the potter comes good & and why betting is bad for you (or Me).

​Galopin Des Champs will win his third Gold Cup today. What else needs to be said, especially when every tipster in the Racing Post is of the same mindset?

I admire people who shoot from the hip. Sometimes Michael O’Leary is off target with his thoughts, this past week he has been hitting the bulls-eye. He was right to give it a go with Brighterdaysahead and we all learned new knowledge from his bold decision.
He is also spot-on with his thoughts on the performance of the B.H.A. starters at this year’s Festival. ‘Appalling’ hardly goes far enough to describe fiasco after fiasco. How hard can it be to start a horse race? It does not seem that difficult in Ireland or France. It tells you the official procedure is pants when the intervention of Mick Fitzgerald telling jockeys that it was another two-minutes before start-time openly displayed a flaw in the system. Jockeys do not wear watches; if the starter or his/her assistant do not convey this relevant information to the participants, how are they to know how much time there is to find the position they want? As far as they it might be thirty-seconds to start-time.
As Jamie Snowden said, as I said yesterday, what is the point of the tape when races are started from so far away the starter would need a loudhailer to convey his instructions to the jockeys?
The problem is compounded by Jockey Club Estates officials having the attitude of ‘they know best’ and for it taking far too long for it to sink in that they might be wrong. Ask the jockeys for advice on what needs to change in order to achieve fair starts for all. Starters are too protected, with no public sanctions applied to them when they are at fault.

Yes, I was thrilled to see Rachael Blackmore displaying her skills in the saddle once more, with it hard to determine which of her two winning rides yesterday was the best. Although my thought that it was about time Mystical (not mysterious as I mistyped yesterday, even if mysterious is becoming a possible description of his complete loss of form) Power found his mojo again, my heart pounded with joy as Bob Ollinger reminded us how good he might have become if it were not for whatever went wrong with him as a younger horse. And his owner’s emotion as he told everyone what Bob means to him is clear evidence for the doubters that the people who own these these beautiful horses are in the sport for the sheer love of the horse. When a man describes a horse as his ‘third child’ how can you not warm to him?
But the horse I was most taken with yesterday was Caldwell Potter. As I said after Windsor, he jumps like a bunny and is a galloper. I hope by the end of the season Paul Nicholls can find a 3-mile novice chase for Caldwell Potter, then he can go into next season with a plan that is all about staying chases, and you never know, he might even evolve into a Gold Cup horse.

The problem I have when I have cash on a horse, or even simply publicly nominate a horse I expect to win, is that I lose focus, with my eye always  drawn to ‘my horse’ even when it clearly has no chance, as for the most part this week, of winning. I do not possess the A.I. levels of concentration Ruby Walsh was surely born with, a man who is seemingly able to watch and analyse six horses galloping and jumping at a speed I rarely go above when driving and after one re-run point out the mistakes or brilliance of three or four jockeys. I am sure those who earn a salary from tipping horses would achieve better results if they did not back their own selections. Objectivity goes out the window when the fate of your selection is intertwined with the not-so-small matter of getting the bills paid this month.

Brilliant Cheltenham thus far; let us pray Galopin Des Champs brings it to a fitting climax this afternoon. But let me remind you; he will not make history today by winning a third Gold Cup. He will be equalling, I will not belittle him by saying ‘only’, the achievements of three other horses and will remain 2-short of the five Cheltenham Gold Cups won by Golden Miller. Do not sully the achievement by determining his victory ‘historic’.