Focus On The Flat: Guineas fallout as Shoemark shunned

Written by: Adam Smith

With the season's first Classics in the books and plenty of fallout having followed, our resident expert Adam Smith (@Smido11) has plenty to discuss in his latest Focus On The Flat column.

Court rules the roost in action-packed 2,000 Guineas

Ruling Court made it three wins in four years in the 2000 Guineas for Charlie Appleby with a powerful display up the Rowley Mile – and William Buick was proven right in the process.

The Godolphin number one opted for his mount over last year’s champion two-year-old Shadow Of Light. The market reacted accordingly, and that turned out to be a shrewd move.

The two in blue hit the front a furlong out and from that point on there was only one winner, given that Ruling Court wants further than a mile and Shadow Of Light might want less than a mile in time.  

The Derby now beckons for the winner. With a former winner High Chaparral on his dam side and by Triple Crown winner Justify, I’d expect him to stay the trip and a rematch with The Lion In Winter awaits at Epsom on the first Saturday in June.

Shadow Of Light ran with a lot of credit to be third. The vibes were so strong for his stablemate in the lead up to the race that the two time Group one winning juvenile became somewhat of a forgotten horse in the days before the 2000 Guineas.

Talk of the St James’s Palace over the round mile at the Royal meeting will give connections another opportunity to find out if he stays a mile well enough to operate at the top table this year. Personally, I’d drop him to the six furlong Commonwealth Cup if I was in charge of the team in blue.

Shoemark shunned after Gold woes

Let me start by saying, I’m no jockey expert. I’ve never touched a horse in my life, never mind sat on one.

To be honest, the jockey doing the riding wouldn’t feature among the top five of my priorities when deciding whether to back a horse or not. Wrongly or rightly, I don’t put much stock into the rider of the horses I back.

My thinking is 5% (maybe less) of them are difference makers in a positive light. 5% are crap. And the other 90% are much of a muchness, making little to no difference on their charge's prospects.

The ITV mob would have you think people like me can’t comment on jockeys, as we aren’t or have never been one. They’d also call every single training performance a great one. Complete nonsense.

Uniquely in British sport, horse racing (if we consider greyhounds to be effectively dead) sees the people that bet on the sport directly fund it. So if ever there was a sport where it’s ‘fans’ can critique the participants, horse racing is exactly that.

So, Field Of Gold was a fast finishing second and probably the most talked about horse of the weekend. It was clearly a poor ride. Even to a self-proclaimed non jockey expert like me. As every single other jockey was getting their horse organised for the final effort going into The Dip, Kieran Shoemark was sitting pretty on Field Of Gold.

The race got away from him. He was too late in asking the horse for full effort. Bad ride. It happens. Move on.

Twitter went off as usual. But let’s be honest, taking to Twitter to call a bad ride a bad ride is absolutely not “abuse”.

You’d do well to find another sport where there is virtually no criticism at all by leading pundits and commentators towards its participants. Much like the reply from boxers whenever they are critiqued – 'have you ever boxed?'.

Where is the Roy Keane or Gary Neville of the racing media? There isn’t one. Perhaps it's about time we found one.

John Gosden, who still has never won the 2000 Guineas, was clearly not happy with the ride on Field Of Gold in the immediate aftermath and by Wednesday morning, Shoemark had been removed as the stable number one jockey.

To be honest, the Gosdens need one of the 5% for their horses – and Shoemark is not one of those.

The storm has inevitably reignited on Twitter today. But does it really matter? Will it make a difference? He’ll still ride for the Gosdens, they’ll just use a policy of ‘best available’.

Plus, there is a load of owners in the Gosden stable that have retained riders anyway. Godolphin horses for Buick. Imad Alsagar horses for Hollie Doyle. Wathnan horses for James Doyle, etc.

Storm. Tea cup.

Flower blooms in underwhelming 1,000 Guineas

On Sunday, it was the turn of the ladies in the 1000 Guineas where the long time favourite (and very well supported on the day) Desert Flower made it a Godolphin Guineas double.

Bounced out, settled, travelled and put the race to bed. She’s now unbeaten in five and could dominate the fillies mile division this year if she wanted to, mainly because she’s clearly very good – but also because there isn’t much depth in the division at all.

Desert Flower won well, yet I’m not convinced by a single horse who she beat on the day. Flight ran fantastically well to be second for Ollie Sangster (and our man SD who tipped her) but she was 28/1 and had only won a maiden in five starts last year.

And we are yet to mention Aidan O’Brien.

Expanded was drafted in late for the 2000 Guineas when Twain defected and I questioned if Expanded would be tuned up for the race. He wasn’t.

O’Brien admitted on Monday “My fault, he wasn’t prepared properly. I’d imagine he’ll leave that well behind him.”

I predicted what would happen with Lake Victoria weeks ago, too. Not quite ready for the race, she’ll come on for that, nice start to the season. And I could hardly believe the comments in the Racing Post on the day.

"They changed the Athasi Stakes at the Curragh from seven furlongs to a mile this year and if it had stayed over seven furlongs, we would have ran there instead of the Guineas," O'Brien said. "We just felt that if she had to run over a mile on her reappearance we may as well run her in the Guineas. She's the sort of filly that comes very quick when you ask her to come in her work, but she will come forward a lot for the run."

Why is no one calling this out? These are Classics, not warm up races.

Expanded was 5/1 third favourite for the 2000, Lake Victoria 9/4 second fav for the 1000 – we are not talking about no hopers here. If you don’t have horses fit enough to run and do themselves justice, don’t run them.

 

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