IT’s that time of year when it feels like the weekends are 24/7 racing. ParisLongchamp, Ascot, Melbourne Cup… action down under first thing in the morning, top juveniles in the afternoon, the emerging jumping recruits every few days, leading into British Champions’ day and the Breeders’ Cup.
There can’t be a better named horse to come on the scene than the now Henry de Bromhead-trained Matin Midi Et Soir, who features in many of the endless horses to follow lists, because it does feel like a morning, noon and night racing study is needed with the focus on the build up to the jumps season.
You can’t go on social media without being confronted with numerous comments the likes of:
”LIVE NOW: My 12 horses to follow for the 2025/26 jumps season.”
“OUR JUMPS PREVIEW SHOW is live now!”
“BREAKING NEWS: Willie Mullins now has the favourite for every graded novice and open race at the 2026 Cheltenham Festival.”
Yes, that’s the point, so much of it is predictable.
Recent debates included whether Davy Crockett is better than Love Me Tender. But will either of them start at short odds for the Supreme?
And the Racing Post has not even put out their October Guide to the Jumps Season yet!
There’s even a humorous spate of comments suggesting we have not seen the best of Constitution Hill, or that Inothewayurthinkin wasn’t campaigned to best effect last season.
Is it a good thing there is so much interest? Is it ridiculous to be getting excited or staking on horses in October, when we don’t know how good they are, when we don’t know if they can jump, when we don’t know if they will stay fit and sound for the Festival, and when we don’t know what race they might run in.
Davy Crockett, we heard this week, has already suffered a setback and maybe missing until January.
Willie Mullins says Kopek Des Bordes is a “really exciting prospect to go chasing with.” Ah right, we figured that out ourselves. Hopefully he takes to it better than Ballyburn did.
Beware being sucked in by the phrases “Anything he does over hurdles is a bonus” or “he’s crying out for a fence”, which invariably lead to said horse jumping like a duck on debut.
Willie Mullins won 21 of the Irish Grade 1 races last season, but surprisingly only two of them came before Christmas. Never forget, the stable is a slow burner.
He won 13 of the Grade 1 races in Britian, but Kopek Des Bordes was the first of his Grade 1 winners of the season at Cheltenham in March, it being the 14th Grade 1 of the British jumps season.
But even I was sucked in by jumping buzz this week. There was a change in the tree colourings on the drive to Closutton on Wednesday, though the temperature showed 15 degrees. “It’s not jumping time yet,” I thought but then… .
A stableyard filled with Galopin Des Champs, State Man, Fact To File, Lossiemouth, Gaelic Warrior, Majborough….and that’s only the multiple Grade 1 winners. It was enough to persuade a change in the outlook!
Delacroix, yes, you were good, but you are last week’s news! Ombudsman? See you next year, no?
It was enough to have you looking up those King George prices. Champ Kiely is 50/1?
What about Rocky’s Diamond at 25s for the Brown Advisory? Ballybow is 66/1!
If you can’t beat them, join them!
IT was quite a journey, and a real satisfactory one for purists, going though the decades to trace that the Arc de Triomphe winner Urban Sea gave birth to Sea The Stars who also won the Arc who now has sired Daryz to also win the great race.
Similarily, what were the odds that the only foal sired by George Washington, Date With Destiny, would produce a likely Group 1 winner as she might do today with Distant Storm in the Dewhurst. It must have been a million to one.
ON the subject of breeding, genetics are not my strong point but you couldn’t help being amused that the bay Galileo mare Together Forever produced a bay colt - City Of Troy - from the bright chesnut sire Justify. But when sent to Dubawi (who does get chesnuts although his best progeny are bays like himself) the two bays produced the chesnut filly Together Now, second last week at the Curragh.