BOY did I want Goshen to win for Jamie Moore at the weekend – it wasn’t to be but where there are losers, there are winners in this game.
So who or what has made it to my latest Good Bad Ugly column? Let’s find out…
Good
It’s time for Aidan Coleman to take centre stage in the only column that really matters.
I thought Coleman was beautiful – yes beautiful – on Epatante when he landed the Fighting Fifth at Newcastle and we saw another side of his skills on Song for Someone in the International Hurdle at Cheltenham.
Song for Someone saw off Silver Streak but a nose, but he really deserved the success as everything was against him being down in trip and with hurdles left out.
The Tom Symonds-trained five-year-old battled really hard under a firm Coleman drive.
It’s easy to forget that Coleman only recently came back from serious injury, but he’s already made his mark with Epatante, Song for Someone and Paisley Park, who ran a cracker in defeat at Newbury.
There are quiet jockeys – Paul Townend for instance! – who are a little wild off the track, but Coleman just goes about his business without any great razzmatazz, albeit he can give you a decent interview should you need one.
In many ways I would say he’s the go to rider if you have a decent spare, and that’s a fine position to be in for jumps racing.
It remains to be seen whether JP McManus ever has another retained rider in the UK, but Coleman would be giving Jonjo O’Neill Jnr – the young pretender – a good run for his money in a race for the job. A decent man that Coleman.
I have to give a mention to Michael Winters here, one of the true characters of Irish racing who I have had much fun with over the years in Ireland when Attheraces used to show the Irish racing.
There was absolute chaos one day in Galway when Rebel Fitz landed the big hurdle.
On Friday Winters noticed me on track at Cheltenham and tried to sell me a couple of young horses. Not once did he mention his good thing at 16-1 the next day in Chatham Street Lad in the Caspian Caviar Gold Cup.
If he had I might be an owner right now! But you see that’s Winters through and through – as canny as a canny thing.
Bad
Sun. I love the sun, it makes me happy. But boy is it becoming a pain in jumps racing.
There is absolutely no obvious solution for the current issue, which is seeing (or not seeing!) more obstacles being left out than ever for low sun.
A jumps race without obstacles is not a jumps race, and makes a mockery of the game.
I say there is no solution, but surely if there is a way forward then special sun reflecting goggles has to be the answer.
And for fear of social media going mad, how about for both horses and riders?
It might sound crazy, but actually if you think about it is it? I put it out there for you to mock!
Ugly
Oh my, Goshen you were a flop in the International Hurdle. For reasons stated in my Sun column on Saturday, I have probably never wanted a horse to win so much as I did Goshen.
But, of course, horse racing is a sport where dreams rarely come true, which is why it’s so cool when they do.
So now we must hope Goshen bounces back.
They say Goshen had a fibrillating heart, but whether that stopped him I have no idea.
I had one watching but I still managed to walk to the car! Jamie Moore suggested to me that Goshen did not like being amongst horses. That he needs daylight.
That’s exactly of course what he got in the Triumph Hurdle, mainly because he was so much better than the rest.
Let’s hope he returns one day to show us what he can really do…
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