Ever notice how pedigree experts can explain a success so as to make it seem inevitable – after the event. It’s a flim-flam in many ways, designed to disguise a more mundane reality which is that talent is mostly a genetic crap-shoot. But listen to enough of these experts over the next couple of weeks and you will wind up wondering what Dawn Approach is doing in the Derby at all. (more…)

Just as a Guineas winner is often dismissed as having too much speed to last the Derby, there is a school of belief that Flemenstar’s spectacular return to action over two miles at Navan indicates he can’t possibly possess the stamina required to win a Cheltenham Gold Cup: to which one can only reply that if his stamina was already proven, he’d be too slow for steeplechasing’s blue-riband! (more…)