October
JanuaryWhat a farce
“What a race! What a sport! What a horse!” crowed the caller after Arrogate jogged to the line eased down to win the Pegasus World Cup last weekend.
The line smacked of having been dreamt up in advance.
Mind you, so did Greg Miles’s “The champion becomes a legend,” in the 2005 Melbourne Cup. But that was different. The difference was that Miles wouldn’t have used that line if Makybe Diva hadn’t won the race.
In this case, “What a race!” had been rendered obsolete by what was one of the most boring contests ever staged for a multi-million-dollar purse.
If the caller had had his eyes open, he might have noticed before the field had gone halfway that Arrogate had shouldered California Chrome aside and that the latter was struggling to keep up.
Given that California Chrome was the only credible opponent to Arrogate, the race was effectively over with more than 1000 metres to go.
If that’s the future of horse racing, we’re in a lot of trouble.
To add insult to tedium, the caller and subsequent analysts insisted that there was now “no doubt” Arrogate was the best horse in the world.
Well, there’s no doubt he’s better than second-placed Shaman Ghost, a winner of six from 14, and third-placed Neolithic, who’d won a maiden and an allowance race from seven starts going in.
What we don’t know is whether Arrogate would have any hope of beating Almanzor or Winx, for example, on turf — a surface that seems to throw up far more competitive racing at the top level than the sort of tripe dished up in Florida last weekend.
Cremorne (Vic)