THIS year’s Cheltenham Festival saw Walk In The Park dominate the sires listing, landing the Gold Cup and probably unlucky not to have Jonbon win the Champion Chase as well.

The 2015 Derby winner Golden Horn made a dramatic appearance, siring the winners of the Champion Hurdle and Triumph from only five runners

With Kayf Tara and Westerner (deceased and retired) also among the leading Festival sires, and Doctor Dino, (two winners and State Man unlucky), a well proven sire, there was no new arrival in the sire scene and no mad rush to get a new breakthrough French sire to Ireland as was the case in recent years with Blue Bresil and Martinborough. The ‘beat the French by buying the French’ method took a break.

British breeder Jayne McGivern who stands Golden Horn said on a recent Nick Luck Podcast, that the sire was a “victim of ridiculous fashion among breeders who want speedy two-year-olds because they are more marketable, and that is to the detriment of breeding in the UK if you don’t have big, tough, middle distance horses ….that are proving themselves over jumps because they stay, they fight and they don’t give up.”

“If you don’t try to breed that horse, the quality bloodstock will be diluted, you can’t breed sprinter-on-sprinter, you need toughness and longevity in them as well,” she added a view on the wider breeding landscape.

Fitted the jumps bill

It was worth a look back to this pre ‘go to France’ era, and the sires that fitted the jumps bill then. Can we blame Sadler’s Wells for all this turn around!

That great sire fitted the bill in every way in that he got top class jumpers (Istabraq, Synchronised, Pridwell) and his sons fitted that mould of tough, classy middle-distance horses and they too got top quality jumpers. At least five of his sons appeared in the top 10 sires from 2010 to 2016. King’s Theatre, Oscar, Milan, Kayf Tara and Old Vic were regulars with the top jumping horses.

The likes of Presenting and Westerner also fitted that solid, middle-distance horse profile. Most of that type are gone out of fashion for breeders on the flat, or have been sold abroad.

One would have thought a breeder would prefer to have seen the sire they used actually run regularly on the track, performing to a decent level. Who would have predicted Martinborough would be a sought-after NH sire. Was Blue Bresil’s racing career inspiring?

Too many of the better middle-distance horses in receny times were produced by Coolmore sires and neither Galileo nor Montjeu horses (yes, Walk In The Park has emerged) seemed to have the same aptitude for jumps. Hurricane Fly was the exception to the latter but it was initially used as a negative against him in his Champion Hurdle bid.

With NH sires taking so long to get established, horses like Golden Horn could become that top dual-purpose sire that was good for both games. And with the newer, tough middle distance performers like Poet’s Word and Crystal Ocean coming on board over the next five or so years, the need for the regular importing of new sires might lessen.

IT was a bit amusing, if it wasn’t so serious, reading the reports from Dundalk last Friday where three different suspensions were handed out to riders, one coming from an unfortunate fall and death of the horse.

From the early years, the big issue at Dundalk had been interference up the straight and there was a long campaign for a cutaway rail to push horses out into the middle and stop riders all sticking to the far rail. Now it seems they all come over off the bend and the stand’s side rail is becoming congested. Maybe we need a cut-away rail on the outside of the track!

SUCH is the modern cult of abbreviations on social media posts, it’s now time to get used to the letters TLIW in the discussions for the big flat Group 1s. And that’s just after some of us had just got used to picking up on who BDA was!

Is TLIW the new COT? That’s City Of Troy in case you have forgotten!

It came as a surprise this week to hear that The Lion In Winter, the impressive York winner would not be ready for the 2000 Guineas. Given his pedigree by Sea The Stars out of a Lope De Vega mare, you would have thought that a Group 1 win at a mile might have been the first mission.

Expanded and The Lion In Winter were given the same 118 rating in the World Rankings, without either winning above Group 3 level at two.

While the Ballydoyle juvenile fillies were strong last season, there seems to be no leading 1000 Guineas contender either. Even predicting the actual 2000 Guineas favourite seems a tricky task at this stage.

THERE has been a lot of debate over whether the Grand National is losing its appeal, to both racing fans and perhaps to the general public. The peak viewing figures for last year’s big event on ITV were 6.1 million, not to be sniffed at in this age of on-demand streaming. But it was well down on the figure from 2019 when it was the highest over the last seven years on ITV at 9.6 million.

From a racing fan view, last year’s race with 34 runners where 21 finished, four failed to finish due to jumping errors alone (all unseated), it felt a little flat. This year, the field just doesn’t seem to offer the random betting angles that it once did.

Of the likely field, only four horses (I Am Maximus, Minella Indo, Coko Beach and Vanillier) have been placed in the race before, which seems an odd state of affairs.

No more Aintree specialists, no more backing the same horse a few years in a row because you knew he would get round and likely make the first five. For someone whose first engagement with racing came from the traditional small each-way bet on the National, this year just has a bit of a flat feel. Hopefully it may still get a ‘story’ horse to gain public attention, to ensure it still remains the showcase race of the jumps season.