SEA THE STARS

I’m not going to get into the whole ‘is he the best horse ever?’ debate as I think it’s impossible to compare the generations in horse-racing and ultimately most peoples decision comes down to personal choice. Walter Swinburn says Shergar, Pat Eddery Dancing Brave, Geoff Lewis Mill Reef, Peter O’Sullivan Sea Bird and I’m sure Lester Piggott would say Nijinsky (unless the money was right in which case he’d say whichever horse you wanted him to say). You only have to look at the jumps to see how this works as there are still plenty of people out there who think Desert Orchid was a better horse than Arkle, yeah right!

What I will say is that Sea The Stars is an exceptional horse and we have been very lucky to see such an amazing animal race throughout this flat season. This type of horse comes along so rarely that it would be pointless to get bogged down in discussing where he stands in history instead let’s appreciate him for what he is/was - a truly brilliant horse who had everything you’d want in a thoroughbred…class, pace, stamina, gears and guts a plenty.

I’ll let the numbers and statistics do the talking in a moment but I’d like to offer an apology of sorts to Mick Kinane who I have been less than complimentary to on this Blog over the past 18 months. He rode a super cool race under incredible pressure and brought STS to challenge at exactly the right time. Despite all the other jockeys trying their best to keep him boxed in he never panicked and gave STS a text book ride. I shudder to think what kind of mess Jamie Spencer would have gotten into from the same position. (Youmzain would have won the Arc and STS finishes 5th, full of running behind the leaders, with Spencer stood up in the irons no doubt. He’d then blame everyone else and take no responsibility for the defeat). Mick Kinane at his finest and while his past misdemeanours won’t be entirely forgotten I’m prepared to cut him a little more slack. We’ll just have to hope that connections don’t run him at the Breeders Cup as Mick Kinane’s biggest cock-ups have generally occurred at this meeting.

Stats for Sea The Stars….

- 9 runs 8 wins including 6 Group 1 victories
- A 3yo career of 6 runs at Group 1 level. He ran and won in every month from May to October.
- He won over £4.4 million in prize-money
- His biggest margin of victory was the 2 1/2 lengths he won the Irish Champion Stakes by.
- He won his 8 races by a combined total of 12 3/4 lengths
- The biggest price he was sent off was 8/1 in the 2000 Guineas. 1/4 was the shortest in York’s International Stakes
- The mighty Ballydoyle stable have run 12 different horses 22 times to try and defeat him as a 3yo.
- STS has beaten 63 horses this year
- You would have made a profit of 12.9pts backing him in every run as a 3yo
- The 3 horses that finished in front of him on his debut have since run 16 times between them, winning 4 times and £196,000 in win prizemoney

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DERREN BROWN

What a load of rubbish this series has been. It’s difficult to take him seriously anymore and after last Friday’s show I think it’s obvious, despite Brown’s claim to the contrary, that he does in fact use ’stooges’. I can’t  imagine anyone not noticing £5000 has gone missing from their bank account!

Anyway the upshot of it all was that the ball landed in Black 8 and all those left in the £100 to a Grand challenge who correctly guessed Black are through to Round 4. More details to follow…….

I’ll be back tomorrow with a round-up of last weekends action..

Good luck,
Gavin.