Simon Rowlands / Simon Rowlands / 07 September 2010 / 3 Comments Free £25 Bet View Market

Simon Rowlands explains what we can learn from Cape Blanco's winning performance at Leopardstown. Meanwhile, a jockey substitution highlights the need for a new a law and race distances get shorter at Haydock.

I had intended moving on from sectionals this week but simply could not pass over an opportunity to remark upon those from Leopardstown at the weekend.

When a horse makes all and is unchallenged, as Cape Blanco was in the Irish Champion Stakes, it is natural to wonder whether they have been flattered. Such speculation was certainly in evidence on the Betfair Forum after Saturday's race. I even read somewhere that the winner had "quickened off a slow pace".

Not so.

The history books will show that Cape Blanco ran the mile-and-a-quarter of Leopardstown's outer track 0.01 sec faster than had Sea The Stars on slightly softer going 12 months before. But the near-identical times were achieved in hugely different fashions.

Cape Blanco got to the two-furlong marker about 2.6 sec quicker than had Sea The Stars, from which it follows that he ran the final quarter-of-a-mile in the same sort of time longer. That equates to nearly 15 lengths at the speeds the horses were travelling and is a huge difference over such a short distance.

Not only did Cape Blanco run the closing stages markedly slower than Sea The Stars, he ran it slower than all the other winners on Saturday's card, which included two-year-old races and handicaps. And he did this because he had set such a searching pace earlier on.

Cape Blanco's finishing speed was little more than 90% of his average speed, when something like 98% would have been optimum given the state of the ground, and it says something for him that his overall time was respectable.

Among the excuses made for Rip Van Winkle, who never got in a blow in second, was that he was unable to quicken late on the rain-softened ground. That is nonsense. He did not need to quicken, just to slow less. But he couldn't.

You get pace profiles like this over jumps from time to time, but seldom on the Flat unless the ground is genuinely deep. When a horse goes as hard up front as did Cape Blanco, he either has to be ignored or he takes those who chase him out of their comfort zones also.

There are reasons to believe that most or all of those behind Cape Blanco were a bit below their best, but that might be in no small part because of how the race was run. Cape Blanco was best equipped to cope and ended up doing to them something like what Harbinger had done to him the time before at Ascot.

Doubts about the form of the beaten horses should not blind onlookers to the quality of performance put up by the winners in either instance.
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The last week has been a newsworthy one away from the bigger races also.
We had an apparent no-hoper in Am I Blue landing a big gamble at Hereford, following a late jockey change from conditional Dean Coleman to top rider Richard Johnson which has still not been convincingly explained.

The upshot must surely be that a rule will be brought in requiring that any such jockey substitutions be like for like. And questions simply have to be asked of not just the horse's connections but the Hereford stewards, who failed to refer the matter on. Fortunately, someone at BHA headquarters was sufficiently on the ball to do their job for them.

Speaking of things that are long overdue, there was also news that a rule will soon be introduced in the UK limiting the amount of overweight allowed to be carried. This was asked for in a letter published in The Sporting Life in 1985.

I know, as I - fresh-faced and naively hopeful of prompt action - wrote the letter. Still, 25 years on, it's probably a case of "better late than never".

But perhaps the most egregious abdication of responsibility of all came from clerk of the course Kirkland Tellwright, who decided to trim 65 to 70 metres off the advertised distances of races started on the round course at Haydock on Saturday.
The changes were "displayed on the track" and passed on to the BHA, but racing's own trade paper - and I am guessing you as well as I - knew nothing of this until course records implausibly started to fall on softish ground.

If Tellwright does not realise that this is simply not good enough then he should be replaced by someone who does.

Tags: Cape Blanco, horseracing betting, Leopardstown, Simon Rowlands, St Leger betting