Golden Horn rules supreme

What a tremendous result it was for British horseracing with GOLDEN HORN – bred at Newmarket - taking the Prix De L’Arc De Triomphe in emphatic style under a brilliant ride from Frankie Dettori.

As I wrote last week, in GOLDEN HORN we had a 3yo colt who was a cut-above the ordinary and who should have been going in Sunday’s race unbeaten.  The wide draw (14) wasn’t encouraging, but the horse had the class to overcome that and in Frankie Dettori, who is enjoying a renaissance of his own this season, he had a jockey capable of steering him to victory.

The form of the race looks outstanding, with last year’s runner-up Flintshire, filling the same spot; and the best of the French-trained 3yo colts New Bay taking 3^rd place, just ahead of last year’s winner Treve. It would be tremendous if GOLDEN HORN stayed in training as a 4yo, but that isn’t really possible in this day and age.  Realistically, the only reason wonder horse FRANKEL was kept in training as a 4yo was to demonstrate that he was capable of maintaining his form at 10-furlongs and wasn’t just a top-class miler.

The plan was to issue a blog on Sunday, not just because of the meeting at Longchamp but also because there was a runner from my alert list who I thought was just about nailed on to win.  That horse was SIMPLY NED, who was running at Kelso in a race he’d won last season.  He was back to the same rating of OR157 yesterday, and I had hoped that the presence of Croco Bay (who put in an exceptional performance when winning at Ascot last November on soft ground, and followed that up with a good 3^rd at Cheltenham at the Festival last March) to whom SIMPLY NED was giving 6lb, would ensure we obtained 9/4 and qualify for a blog selection.  However, that was not the case and although the opening odds on SIMPY NED were 7/4 they never went longer.  Long-term readers of the blog will know that I do not advise wagers over the jumps at odds under 9/4, that is as low as I’m prepared to accept.  It means we will miss some winners like SIMPLY NED, who won very comfortably and probably should have started odds-on, but you have to build-in to your risk assessment the possibility of your selection being brought-down or otherwise impeded and prevented from winning by the actions of another horse.