Diamond Necklace has proved by winning two French classics that she is a true Group 1 filly, perhaps the best of her sex in the whole of Europe. Yet be honest, what did she beat in the Nassau Stakes yesterday? The second, a Group 1 winner in France two-seasons ago, is a good mare but not a great mare. She might need softer ground to be at her very best, though she is never going to give weight and a beating to a top-class 3-year-old, is she? Sea The Fire is a good mare but a long way short of top-class while the other two were never going to get competitive, with one looking over-tried and the second O'Brien filly not run on her merits, pacemakers never are.
Although 'the lads' are famously happy to run their best horses against each other, what do you think the chances are that Constitution River and Diamond Necklace will take each other on at York or ever? I would bet my best pair of socks on Ryan Moore argueing with the skill of a New York lawyer against such a move. But the only way to achieve a fair perspective on which of the two is the best over 10-furlongs is for the two of them to meet on the racecourse, with York by far the fairest course for such a titanic battle.
No one on live t.v. would even hint at it yesterday but if Diamond Necklace had not turned-up, the Nassau would have been one of the poorest Group 1's for many a long year.
The decision-making of racecourse stewards continues to annoy me. After the savagery of Sandown and the leniency of York, the lack of discretion displayed by the Goodwood stewards to George Wood was another example of going too far. Ciarrai Abu is, as all now know, a 'character', not nasty, I should think, just a bit of a showman, a horse that likes to have fun. In the parade ring he found enjoyment in trying to kick the rails separating him from the spectators. On the way to the start he wanted to determine the stickability of his rider. George Wood has a reputation for being a good horseman, someone a trainer will turn to when they have a horse in need of 'expert handling'. Ciarrai Abu found Wood to be wanting, unable to stay put during a short exhibition of rodeo antics. He is a young horse with a ticket for Australia, a place where humans judged to be needing correction went in the past. During the race to someone sat in his comfortable armchair I was of the opinion that he behaved with a degree of professionalism. It was when he hit the front that he displayed to the stewards his greenness. He cruised into the lead only to become giddy at the sight of all that open space in front of him. Wood corrected his first attempt at galloping sideways, though lost the verdict when the horse doubled his determination to swerve around a bit. He caused no interference; no horse, other than the horse that fell quite indepentedly of the winner, was in any way unlucky because of the antics of Ciarrai Abu. Yet, despite all he had to deal with throughout his first ride on the horse, the stewards awarded Woods with a 3-day ban for failing to correct the sideways flight of the horse. How many times during a season do you see a horse swerve one way or the other and the jockey not receive a ban? If these stewards were to officiate every day of the week, within weeks there would not be enough professional jockeys for the number of race-meetings we have daily.
Here is a question that only one of our top owners could provide the answer to: if a trainer with a small number of horses under their command were to be given one of these million-quid yearlings, could they train it to the same high degree as a Gosden, Balding or Varian? So many of the yearlings bought at public auction for high six-figure or even 7-figure numbers fail miserably on the racecourse. Yet these powerful and influential owners never think to give a smaller trainer, someone away from Newmarket or Lambourn, the opportunity, even simply to satisfy curiosity, to shoot for the stars. Katie Scott is a typical example. She received great praise yesterday for Naana's Shadow, taking her from low-class beginnings to an entry in a Group 1. She has 21-horses under her care, with two of them now rated above 100. Surely, one of the top owners in this country has a horse they believe to be underachieving, perhaps in need of the individual care only a smaller stable can provide. What would they have to lose by thinking outside of the box and sending it to someone like Katie Scott?