Field Of Gold, Los Angeles, More Thunder – Horses don’t win for lots of reasons and I’ll always say it as I see it

ON Monday there was yet another article in horse racing’s trade newspaper calling on TV pundits to call out more so-called bad rides.

The hypocrisy is quite something.

PAField Of Gold has looked sensational since his 2000 Guineas defeat[/caption]

It comes on the back of ITV’s Johnny Murtagh very much questioning the ride of subsequent Royal Ascot winner Havana Hurricane in a juvenile race at Epsom on Derby Day. Oh well.

This kind of article is what is called clickbait. You write something you know people will like without putting much thought into the topic.

It’s ‘lowest common denominator journalism’.

In some ways I’m doing the same here!

I know people will loath what I’m penning and will just say I’m typical of the problem. You just have to smile.

I am, though, in a pretty good position to discuss the topic.

It’s rare I analyse rides in great depth in my current roles. But ten years ago it was just about all I did.

Then, almost all my work was studio-based – rather than reporting and interviewing – and every day my job was to dissect races.

This latest article in the trade paper once again harked back to Field Of Gold and the 2000 Guineas.

And it compared racing analysis with that in football.

At the essence of why these articles are merely clickbait is the writer is basically saying: “I think so and so was a bad ride so you should as well. And if you don’t you are wrong.”

What, of course, everyone should actually want is a TV presenter who says what they believe, rather than what someone thinks they should believe.

It all goes further than that, however, and the root issue is: What is a bad ride?

Is a bad ride simply one that most feel should have won, for instance? Of course not.

Horses don’t win for lots of reasons. A rider can just be unlucky, time their run a second or a few strides too late or miss the break. Are they bad rides?

In footballing terms, calling out every horse who should have done better would be like saying every pass that doesn’t go direct to another player is a bad pass.

A football commentator would spend 90 minutes stating the same thing over and over.

In this case it was Field Of Gold again.

A defeat which can be explained for many totally sensible reasons for all that another day the horse would clearly have won.

Oddly, the writer said nothing about White Birch in the Tattersalls Gold Cup, or Los Angeles in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes, or More Thunder in the Wokingham.

Or the countless other losers I could mention.

Were they all bad rides, or unlucky?

Or did they suffer defeat due to something else?

Should a TV presenter have gone mad about those as well?

And why hasn’t the trade paper written article after article about them?

After all, it’s that publication that is calling for more to be said. It seems to pick its targets very carefully.

If a footballer scores a penalty – top left-hand corner – that is impossible to save, we would surely all agree it’s a good penalty?

In contrast, if a goalkeeper stands still and the penalty taker just scoops it into their hands, I would presume we would all agree that was a bad penalty?

But, in the first scenario, at what stage as that ball gets closer to the fingertips of a goalkeeper does it become a bad penalty?

There are many degrees along the scale from good to bad with plenty of reasoning in between.

As a pundit I have always just said what I see.

That’s what I think all pundits should do.

And if that is not what social media or certain journalists agree with, then so be it.

But that’s being real to a viewer. It’s many times more honest than just reacting to what the masses feel.

For me a truly bad ride is one where a horse never seems to have been put into a race.

One where a jockey drops their hands for a place.

One where a rider clearly goes off too fast.

And yes, sometimes, when a horse should have won that didn’t – and I can’t think of any reasons why what happened took place.

Not every losing ride on a horse that probably should have won is a bad ride.

If that’s what you want from TV pundits then good luck to you.