Tapestry losses merely a loan
One’s gut instinct is that the daughter of Galileo will eventually prove the best horse in this high-class field and is a real filly for the future.
Little went right for Tapestry through the race and her chance was certainly compromised when Kiyoshi bumped her with a little less than a furlong to run.
Jamie Spencer was aboard Kiyoshi and he deserved all of the four-day suspension handed down to him by the stewards.
By now it was too late for Joseph O’Brien to rectify matters on Tapestry and the winner, Rizeena, floating across in front of Tapestry near the line was no help either.
Before the Moyglare, Joseph was interviewed on At The Races and intimated that his partner was still raw and more of a horse for next season.
There seems little doubt now he called that right, because she gave every impression would come on a bundle for the experience.
If Aidan O’Brien decides to run her again this campaign then we will have to batter into Tapestry to get back Sunday’s losses-and the rest!
The other thing to note from the Moyglare is that Dermot Weld’s Carla Bianca is a virtual certainty to win, sooner rather than later.
She finished fourth and was essentially well beaten, some four and a quarter lengths adrift of Rizeena.
But she had Perhaps, rated 104, and Wonderfully, 105, behind in fifth and six places respectively and that is some form to carry into a mere maiden.
The other horse to very much catch the eye at the Curragh was Aidan O’Brien’s Great White Eagle in a Group 3.
The bare evidence of a two-length defeat of Remember You is nothing to be getting overly excited about, but he had a bad draw and had to challenge widest of all.
It is also worth recording that when Great White Eagle made a winning debut at Naas, Remember You was third.
The fact that Remember You beat everything else at the Curragh would indicate the overall form of Great White Eagle is rather solid.
AT Killarney nine days ago, Andy Oliver’s Jazz Girl put up a fine front-running display to win a valuable handicap.
Oliver, who clearly knows the time of day, then decided his five-year-old mare should reappear at Roscommon on Monday night last.
She was running under a 5lbs penalty and, because the new ratings aren’t known until around Monday at lunchtime, no one writing about the race, or simply studying it, had any idea what the handicapper’s opinion of that Killarney performance was going to be.
At lunchtime, we discovered he wasn’t too excited or anything like that and his assessment was that 5lbs, exactly the same as the mandatory penalty Jazz Girl carried at Roscommon, was sufficient.
For those of us who were fancying her big time that evening it was mildly disappointing, although, you could argue, perfectly understandable.
But, undaunted, we ploughed on and Jazz Girl bolted in, at the extraordinary price of 4-1.
By Tuesday at lunchtime the handicapper had a fresh look at what was in front of him and this time there was to be no mercy.
His decision was to give Jazz girl another 10lbs, so she has now gone up 15lbs in total since Killarney. See if we care!
While on the subject of Jazz Girl, I thought Connor King was quite superb on her. We all have a responsibility to the 17-year-old not to blow him up too much and, obviously, the real test will be when his 5lbs claim, and then his 3lbs, disappears.
But you can only cross the bridge as you go and this was yet another example of his burgeoning talent.
Jazz Girl was badly drawn and so many jockeys, far senior to him, would have attempted to encourage her to power out of the gates.
You often see jockeys in the stalls moving on their horse, trying to get the proverbial flier. More often then not, it is the wrong thing to do.
But King sat motionless on Jazz Girl, who had to lead as quickly as possible, and allowed her to come out naturally. She obliged, was soon in front and the rest was just poetry and motion.
Have you heard about the horse that came back from the dead? His name is Captain Ahab.
If you are a subscriber to the Irish Form Book — if not, you really should be, if making a profit punting is important — then have a look at last year’s version.
Look up Captain Ahab’s name and you will see written next to it ‘dead’. And, prior to Roscommon on Monday night, there was no reason to think otherwise.
After all, he hadn’t been seen since finishing 11th in the maiden hurdle won by Like Your Style at Fairyhouse in February of 2012.
But, remarkably, the Captain did a Lazarus and appeared in the maiden won by Murphy’s Delight.
He went off the 66-1 outsider of the six-horse field and wasn’t disgraced in grabbing fourth spot. Could he complete the fairytale and actually prove good enough to win a little race?
THERE was a bank holiday In Britain recently and one of the many race meetings that day, at Cartmel, attracted an attendance of almost 20,000.
Keeping that in mind, I especially liked this email sent to the Racing Post this week. It said: “I wonder whether all the race-goers, who enjoy Cartmel so much, have reached the next stage of evolution and don’t need to eat and drink or use the toilet?’
