A gaggle of Racing Post experts, plus Richard Hoiles, are featured in today's newspaper giving out their views on the performance of Constitution River in the French Derby and not surprisingly their collective opinions range from gushing with praise to dripping with caution. Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion and whether you think them right or wrong one must respect their point of view. The time for evaluation, who was wrong, who was right, will be at the end of the season, not five-minutes after one race, even if it was the French Derby.
Incidentally, from a typing perspective, and this may only represent a limitation of my skill with a keyboard (or lack of education - or the diminshing of my mental capacity) but the word Constitution troubles me, finding it a hard word to consistently spell correctly. When the other Constitution went away for his summer holidays, I thought I too would have a holiday from the corrections I always seem to make when discussing last jumps season and his fall from grace as a hurdler to his rise from the ashes as a flat horse. This may be why I am having trouble loving Constitution River, hoping he will not become Coolmore's next great horse. What would be the odds for us to have two great horses running at the same time with the word Constitution in their names? 100/1, perhaps!
For your information, Graeme Rodway's opinion chimed closest to mine in that we were both a little disappointed by Constitution River, Rodway expected more, while I did not know what to expect from a colt a long way from being the finished article. Richard Hoiles thought more of the masterplan that allowed Constitution River to win than he did of the winner, which I think is fair comment. What we all need to do now is to allow the horse to do the talking on the racecourse and not have ordinarily sensible men and women hailing Constitution River as one of the best horses, even the best in some cases, to come out of Ballydoyle since Istabraq. Time will tell.
Former Champion Chase winner Captain Guinness has retired at the age of eleven. A horse who always deserved a Grade 1 got his Grade 1 when all the luck went his way for a change. I hope he receives his reward with a long and happy retirement. Another of Henry de Bromhead's veterans, Ballyadam, is reinventing himself as a flat horse, winning a handicap recently, though not so impressively as to get him into the Ascot Stakes in a few weeks. Perhaps the Queen Alexandria will be considered a suitable alternative. That is some fete, by the way, to win a handicap with an eleven-year-old flat maiden and some insight from the trainer to think it possible.
If you double the prize money for a race, would you not be disappointed to get the same number and the same quality of horse you had in previous years? If you double the prize-money, are you not entitled to double the fun, double the excitement? I am not saying the Coronation Cup is not worthy of a cash injection. I have said for many a long year that the Coronation Cup should be part of a 12-furlong triple crown for older horses and the prize money for the race this year is what I envisaged it should be. And you would be right to ask where are the Group 1 older horses that would ensure a dozen or more runners? But it is a question you should be asking Epsom or the B.H.A. and not me. They must be aware that the horses are not around to make the Coronation Cup a better race than it is this year or the year before. To my way of thinking the half-million Coolmore has given to the race would have provided a more useful and more widespread service if it had been allocated to Epsom to increase prize-money throughout their racing season. I just hope all seven declared take their place as for all my moaning it looks a race to savour. But that does not undervalue my point that it would doubtless have had the same horses if the prize-money had stayed at the mark it was last year.