I’ve said the same about goodwood ( not keen on goodwood) on another thread tonight.i have a few trips booked later in the year for racing over there just hoping it’s back to normal.

tuesday 4th august 1981, the 7.10pm was the sean graham handicap hurdle , 2k , winner ; track scout , trained by  andrew geraghty, ridden by d o'gorman  , ...p mullins , presumably paddy , trained the 2nd . according to my racecard ridden by anthony mullins .

mjk , i've not read earlier posts that much on the thread so apologies for repeats ..but phoenix park was despised by a large number of irish racegoers who considered it a rich man's plaything of the sangster/ magnier/ vincent  o'brien rich monopoly . how things have  changed ! lol.

I said to foxy in an earlier post that it ended up as most of the people being there to be seen, and not punting.

Watched El Gran Senor win the Dewhurst and the 2000 Guineas; Pat Eddery rode him like a motorbike.
Nobody then thought that Saddlers Wells would prove the superior sire.
But history may be repeating itself with Frankel and Nathaniel?

He wasn't stout enough.

I know he won the Irish Derby afterwards but he was really a miler I reckon, and about the most the most exciting miler I ever saw. (Frankel was great but more a case of wind him up and let him go at that distance).

Lester would have got him home.

Foxy if you go onto the ATR site under racing legends Pat Eddery says he pulled up in front in that Derby . They learned their lesson and held him up till last second in Irish Derby...

Foxy - I think this is the best description of it.

The Derby result which left O'Brien stunned
In 1984, Vincent O'Brien had won the 2,000 Guineas with the brilliant El Gran Senor, who went on to take his chance in the Derby as an odds-on favourite with a valuation of $80 million - in those heady days of ludicrously overinflated stallion fees - on his head if he could bring home another Classic.

Unfortunately, after one of the most exciting Derbys of modern times, El Gran Senor challenged full of running under a confident Pat Eddery and held a distinct lead only to find the gritty Secreto (trained by Vincent's son David) too tough a proposition in the dying strides. O'Brien's star went under by a short head and his stud value crashed.

A stunned O'Brien, torn between delight for his Derby-winning son and dejection about his Derby-losing colt, was standing on the Epsom lawn with Robert Sangster and the other connections when Lester Piggott, who had finished fifth in the Derby aboard second favourite Alphabatim, strode past him on his way back to the weighing room.

Without checking his stride, without missing a beat, Piggott turned to O'Brien and Sangster, muttered: "Missing me?" out of the side of his mouth and was gone.

I remember the 12f flat races when it used to happen as well WR

and Eddery took a breeding right in The Señor instead of Sadlers Wells just to compound matters for him.

Think it was his free breeding right and chose the wrong one. I'm sure we would have made the same choice.

I recall Brough Scott interviewing VOB and Sangster straight after the race and they both looked stunned even though it was bitter sweet for VOB as his son had just trained the winner!

A bit harsh that elisjohn. AOB is always classy in defeat and comes on to talk as does Tabor. We never see Magnier in victory or defeat these days. Whilst their PR has never been great I think it's improving. Only time I saw AOB look and sound a bit miffed was after Pink Dogwood got beat in the Oaks. I think there was some justification in that.

AOB said one of the nicest things I've ever read about the nature of competition and I cannot locate it because I don't know the words exactly but the sense of it was: "When one of ours is beaten and I see the winning connections celebrating, I am happy for them. We all have to live."