What do San Diego, Italian red wines, Bahrain and psychology all have in common?
TPD spent last week strongly engaged with these global themes not least due to my time in Southern California for the 2024 Breeders’ Cup.
There is a saying that farmers eventually look like their animals while a strong case could be made that the jockeys in the Breeders’ Cup Classic rode according to their owners ramblings.
The build-up and the intensity of the Classic is unrivalled. Does this seep into the otherwise cool heads of the professional pilots – no one lives under a rock these days.
When outsider Mixto charges to the lead with an opening furlong of 12.47s the race becomes binary. If you stay with this leader you can’t win the race. The fact that Fierceness and Forever Young came 2nd and 3rd is utterly remarkable since they did indeed follow the madness at the head of the race. Sierra Leone did his usual thing of starting slowly but this time he won the race with a run out speed a full 7% faster than Fierceness in second.
Was Fierceness’s jockey, John Velazquez, out to prove that City of Troy wouldn’t cope with true dirt gate speed? Did Ryusei Sakai think he was riding Pegasus? All kudos to Flavien Prat but I do think that the placed horses are beyond brilliant to finish where they did under the circumstances.
While all this was happening, we also launched our tracking and data services in the Kingdom of Bahrain.
And finally…I struggle to keep up with the National Hunt game given the global flat racing we service (a Group 1 every Saturday somewhere!) but I do keep an eye out for Kim Bailey’s runners given I started my racehorse ownership with him when I was 21 (which was very strong beer for an impoverished student).
Chianti Classico won again for his regal connections and we need to love this horse given it flew the UK flag against the Irish onslaught at Cheltenham this year. TPD and ATR’s jumping fluency measures will save you time! I glanced at his jumping fluency then watched the race replay (6 minutes of your life you won’t get back) and the 1s summary that he jumped well but not as well as the 2nd and 3rd are bang on. He won well so clearly stays longer than a US election… https://www.attheraces.com/racecard/Ascot/02-November-2024/1545
