Minding winning at Newmarket© Photo Healy Racing
There are obvious commercial reasons for Minding not to run in the Epsom Derby. But there’s no actual racing reason why she couldn’t become the first filly in a century to win racing’s ‘blue riband.’ From a purely racing point of view all that’s required is a willingness to stray from the beaten path, one of the game’s many ‘Cosan Deargs,’ which in this case suggests a filly taking on colts in a classic to be a bridge too far. It isn’t.
Just as hoods were rarely if ever seen until Henry Cecil decided to stick one on Noble Mission — and quickly became ubiquitous as a result - all that’s required is someone to take a successful sideways step away from the norm’.
The odds would be against Minding running in the Derby even if her owners weren’t the world’s biggest bloodstock operation. Bypassing what looks a relatively straight-forward Oaks assignment requires a certain fortitude from any owner, never mind that it runs counter to every instinct that created the Coolmore empire.
Pinning their Derby hopes on a filly would effectively be a full page advertisement shouting that they haven’t a three year old classic colt worth a damn which hardly makes business sense.
But in a year when no colt to date has put a stamp on the Derby picture, both the impression Minding made at Newmarket, and the ‘with a run’ odds most bookmakers are still offering, still make it intriguing to ponder what an outstanding filly might do against the boys in the classic that matters most.
It’s not that it can’t be done, rather that nobody’s tired to do it in quite a while.
That fact that both Balanchine (1994) and Salsabil (1990) beat subsequent King George winning colts in the Irish Derby within a comparatively short time frame indicates how trends cluster, making it basically a question of fashion. So although Cape Verdi failed at Epsom in 1998, that doesn’t logically mean a top filly can’t beat the males in a classic.
In America Rachel Alexandra beat Mine That Bird in the 2009 Preakness. Two years previously Rags To Riches beat the outstanding Curlin in a memorable Belmont clash.
No one’s cribbing about the allowance fillies get, or the time of year they get it in, so taking the commercial side out of it, and the little matter of the Oaks being there too, there’s little logical justification for the fairer sex not being worth a shot against the boys. All of which is an interesting theoretical exercise that in all likelihood will turn out to be academic.
Still, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, someone’s going to veer off the path with a filly and score big-time.
What’s also now academic is how the 2,000 Guineas winner Galileo Gold would have got on in the Derby. The decision to take him out of the Epsom equation was decisive and basically taken on the basis of a DNA test which threw up a result that said running over a mile and a half would be a waste of time. So that’s definite then.
Except of course it isn’t. Fact isn’t the same thing as truth and the truth of whether or not Galileo Gold can stay a mile and a half can’t be definitively known until he actually runs the trip. The likelihood is, as it is with the majority of Guineas winners, that he won’t stay. But there hasn’t been a test invented yet which makes redundant that nagging ‘what if’ question which comes after a challenge is ducked.
Which leads us to the ‘what if’ should Thursday’s Dante not throw up a decisive winner. Midterm is the obvious candidate to put his stamp on the Derby picture but the form of his Sandown success hasn’t exactly been franked since.
So as things stand the temptation to categorise this Derby crop as an ordinary one is hard to argue with, although the dangers of such presumption are dangerous considering how the same was said last year - and indeed many other years - until Golden Horn proved himself exceptional.
Moonlight Magic has plenty going for him but the stark form line from his Derrinstown success is that he beat his pacemaker by less than three lengths, the same pacemaker hockeyed to the tune of nine lengths by The Gurkha in a Navan maiden.
That would suggest The Gurkha is a legitimate Derby player but those adept at reading Aidan O’Brien’s utterances reckon a mile and a half won’t wind up being The Gurkha’s cup of tea. But what if...
Most of us have heard and read enough about Irish racing’s appeals system to last us a very long time indeed. Some of the commentary has required a strong stomach but there are a number of points that merit mention even if making them is mostly a futile exercise.
One is that racecourse enquiries are conducted by a stipe who helps steer amateur stewards through the tortuous rules. But when it comes to appeals, it is left to amateurs to fend for themselves. That’s illogical.
Now there is a sense that such a lack of logic suits some of the amateurs rather well, a touch of keeping working proles in their place. But it still doesn’t make any sense.
Another is that in the Noble Emperor and Definite Earl appeals, much was made of how both horses were awarded career high handicap marks on the back of the races that landed them in trouble in the first places. Yet the handicapper wasn’t present at either appeal. Why?
Conclusions were inevitably drawn from those higher marks but without the input of the person who calculated them they can hardly be described as definitive, or at least as definitive as any subjective opinion can be. Maybe the handicapper reckons he might have calculated even higher with different rides. But we don’t know because he wasn’t there to be asked.
Another element to both appeals was the production of betting slips which were presented to the appeals panel. They weren’t made public but appear to have been briefly examined by the Referrals Committee and presumably taken on board in their decision.
Shouldn’t such betting information be examined much more forensically, maybe even placed in the context of overall betting patterns on a particular race across any number of platforms? Is pulling a copy of a docket like some rabbit from a hat really good enough in this digital day and age?
