two legers on one day, really!

​Last Sunday was undoubtedly a brilliant day of racing. But why was there no comment, negative or positive, on the scheduling of two St.Legers on the same day, let alone within the same hour. Yes, it is a valid argument that as one is restricted to 3-year-olds and the other open to older horses in effect they do not in reality clash to any extent. Yet the English St.Leger is in serious decline, with the class of horse running in the race hardly acceptable for the final leg of the Triple Crown, the fifth of five classics. The classier St.Leger last Sunday was indubitably the Irish version, which is another argument that cannot be denied.
I have long argued that if the Eclipse were to be restricted to 3-year-olds and upgraded to the fifth classic, the season would be better balanced, with the Sandown race quite possibly the definitive 3-year-old race of the season, with, perhaps, the winners of both Guineas, Derby and Oaks, candidates for entry. Whereas the Doncaster St.Leger is more of a consolation race, with the winner rarely going on to greater successes the following season.
A classic season that takes in 2 races of a mile, 2 mile-and-a-half races and one over 1 mile 2-furlongs, would be far more appropriate to horse racing of today than the present arrangement of 4 classics run by the first week of June, with the St.Leger a tail-end Charlie in September.
Instead of allowing the Doncaster St.Leger to become less and less relevant as the decades slip by, when once it was the natural staging post for Derby winners, with the winner destined for the following season’s Ascot Gold Cup, why wouldn’t the B.H.A. and Doncaster show some ambition by upgrading it to an alternative to the Arc, though over a rather longer trip? Yes, this requires my radical proposal to reinvent the Eclipse as a classic race to be agreed upon and for a sponsor willing to invest a whole heap of prize money to ensure the new race got off the ground, with a date in the calendar that doesn’t fall on the same day as Irish Champions Weekend. And why shouldn’t British racing have a brand-new international horse race? Every other racing province around the world continually invents new races with the purpose of enticing foreign invaders to their shores and to improve their ‘brand’.
Eldar Eldarov was a perfectly satisfactory winner at Doncaster and we can but hope he becomes a serious challenger to Kyprios next season. I suspect, though, especially with Trueshan putting in a rare poor run in the Doncaster Cup and Stradivarius getting older by the day, that Kyprios, barring accidents, will rule supreme in the stayers division for as long as Coolmore want to campaign him.

Lester Piggott was quite rightly lauded as one of the best flat jockeys of all-time, if not the best. But why isn’t Ryan Moore appraised in a similar fashion? I am sure in time, when Ryan bows out, William Buick and Tom Marquand will be heralded as two of the best in the world. But at the moment we are blessed with race-riding masterclasses on a weekly basis by Ryan.
On any given day I will claim Frankie Dettori is the best I have ever seen – I always hated Lester’s riding technique and how hard he could be on a horse – while on any other given day I will claim Ryan Moore as the best I have seen. One thing I am sure of is that Ryan is by far the more consistent of the two, making fewer, if any, mistakes than Frankie, with his work ethic also far in excess of Frankie’s, though the Corsican may exert more energy in the gym than Moore. Time better spent, I would think, riding as many horses on the track than he allows himself at present.
Finally, as an example of how far in arrears British racing is when it comes to prize money, at Sha Tin last Sunday there were two handicaps worth £187,000, won by Silvestre de Sousa, by the way, and another worth £142,000. There wasn’t a race at the meeting worth less than £43,000 to the winner. On the debit side, there wasn’t a race over more than a mile and there was only one at the distance, the rest being 5, 6 and 7-furlongs.