There haven’t been too many runners lately with Cloughmore connections and it’s also fair to say that those which have faced the starter haven’t exactly been overburdened with good fortune.
However, today it all changed. Nashville, confidently ridden by Jonathan Riddell, tracked the leaders in a slowly run Group 1 1600 event, hit the front soon after turning for home and then accelerated away for a comprehensive victory.
Clearly, the change of tactics to have the son of Darci Brahma much closer to the speed paid off significantly. Now that he doesn’t have to tail off in his races, it will no doubt make planning his future racing career an awful lot more straightforward for his owners.
The ease with which he dealt to several Group 1 winners raises the question of how good he is. It’s always somewhat ridiculous to make predictions of this sort but I can say that if you saw today’s race you wouldn’t be at all surprised if more Group 1 victories were in store.
Finally, I know I’ve written about this before but you’d have to be worried about the quality of our stayers. Apart from Mark Oulaghan’s Who Shot Thebarman, the current draft appear to be of very modest quality. Our breeding industry have achieved something which once would have been thought impossible – the destruction of the niche market which underpinned our profitability.
