de Bromhead what is really going on, why are they winning like this

Always happened in racing, go back to Vincent O'brien, Tom Draper, Fred Winter, Michael Dickinson, Martin Pipe, P Nicholls, W Mullins etc, suddenly one trainer appears to have horses at an advantage over others, an odd phenomenon but they were able to find an edge to get their horses fitter and stronger than others could at the time, whether some or all were using unethical enhancements has yet to be proved.

Nothing new about magic carrots -just hard to find

Good things happen to good people.

Wasn't Obrien done for using cobalt?
And he trained out of ballydoyle as well..
No connection between the 2 of course

de Bromhead's obvious magic carrot is he has the top jockey in Ireland riding for him. Ruby's retired; Davy might as well have done; Rachael's the best. Magic carrot number two is that big owners like JP, Gigginstown, Robcour and Cheveley Park send him top horses. The third one is simple probability: there are only three or four big yards in Ireland so it is natural for clusters of wins to occur (as @stewarts rise has already said).

an excellent trainer who now has the tools
to do the job.

Nicky was king in 2012...Turniphead before that...but simply the top owners send their horses to Ireland...Nicky's still competitive but his best horses are owned by JP and Donnelly,both of whom are linked to the top Irish yards...some of the handicap winners,now thats another question...but probably the UK handicapper is over-rating the form of all British races

know all 12 Apr 21 11:15 

he seems embarrassed when interviewed or is that the way he is
he dosent seem to be surprised they are winning easily and not really ex(c)ited
----------------

Well - I would far rather have that approach and  attitude  - than ...

Trainers gobbing off about how great they (think they) are - or - the likes of George Margarson  living in Dreamland.

brilliant trainer who seems a gent

Heard it mentioned he does a lot of dressage stuff with his horses. Not sure how or if that helps.

If something was being done differently, if that is what is being implied , the horses would likely be massive gambles, and that doesn't
appear to be the case here.

A more intriguing question is what on earth has happened to the English yards? It's nothing to do with the big owners - the 2 biggest owners, by some way the biggest owners, had just 2 winners between them at Cheltenham and JPs was trained in England and Gigginstown's came in the cross country. English yards are getting decimated by viruses. You could count on the fingers of one hand the number of yards who can claim to have had a good season even by English standards. What's happened to Tizzard, Hobbs, Twiston-Davis, King, Fry, Marston, Newland, Longsden, Pipe, Jonjo etc etc. The Grand National just about summed it up - only 3 of the 22 UK runners actually finished the race. You can't blame owners, or carrots, for that.

very pleased to see de bromhead at the top spot . remember about 5/6   years ago he lost all the potts / sizing horses at once . never complained and one was sizing john. never met him but seems a likeable bloke and he has certainly got the tools now to do the job thats for sure .

Absolutely Attrocious strike rate last 3 weeks on the Domestic front Rachael no better , seems its the Big Meetings they are interested in

Anyone betting the others  will be doing their brains ,Must be two different stables

de Bromhead has been an outstanding trainer of 2 mile chasers for years. He's also one of the best at teaching novice chasers to jump. The change is that he now has the ammunition across other divisions as well.

casemoney,

So you'll be making a fortune laying them then ?

casemoney, most stables have a mixture of good, moderate and poor horses and they all have to run sometime. When you run out of excuses for not running the slow ones, you have to show your hand and this time of year is when they run. Skelton yesterday was a good example although that was more to do with over-racing them. A lot of his are looking like they need a rest.

skelton is in the post today saying that its normal that you get periods were someone seems to get alot of the good horses for a period of time but that the handicap system needs looking at as its obvious that its unfair

@firstimevisor is right imo. Most of the "explanations" for Irish dominance could have applied at any time, not just now, and often do not fit the facts of what happened in 2021, when the Irish winners were mostly not hyper-expensive horses owned by billionaires or confined to two or three yards.

I still have not completely given up on my Irish bubble theory from another thread but as @firstimevisor says, the home team may have been hit by a low-level virus for most of the season. It fits the facts, not just at Cheltenham but below par performances all season from the Tizzards, Hobbs, even Nicky Henderson who did train two winners at Cheltenham.

The different handicapping systems, or at least different handicaps on either side of the Irish Sea. Yes, it's real (and imo Phil Smith messed up the handicap system) but we've known about it for years which is why Irish horses are adjusted (or hammered, depending on your point of view) when racing in Britain. It's not new, and in any case does not explain why Ireland dominated the non-handicap, championship races as well. And British-trained horses did win two of the handicaps at the Festival.

Imo the jockey's also a huge factor in this. She plays the percentages, usually prominent and rarely wide.

Compare that to the top 3 (statistically) over here. Would you see any of them as a plus if you backed them?

She obviously has the horses to ride this way and no riders of McCoy, Walsh level around seems to be allowing her to take advantage.

outside of the festivals not to be prominent in ireland would mean sitting behind a dozen 300 to 1 shots who are a distance behind before they reach the 2nd , race position/tactics in ireland in novice,maiden races boils down to who,s going to lead and who follows between 4/5 yards on 1st 5 in betting

There are questions to ask about handicap marks but please bear in mind these facts:
1.Graded races and particularly Grade 1 races are unaffected by handicap marks or penalties so in those races, nothing would change.
2. Most GB handicappers were beaten by 20 lengths or more and it is highly unlikely that the handicap was that far wrong.
3. Aintree brought things closer to balance as so many high class GB horses missed Cheltenham for Aintree. You would have to ask the trainers why.
4. The quality of novice hurdlers in GB this season was at an all time low. For Pleasure was the first GB trained horse home in the Supreme and he is rated 141! Only the fall of Blue Lord allowed him to finish third.

A key problem with the handicapping system for jumps horses is that a horse is rated in its supposed "best" performance, irrespective of the course, distance, conditions, etc. It may be more representative if the horse were handicapped on, say, its third best performance in the rating period. That would reduce the effect of skewed handicap marks obtained in extreme conditions (e.g., very heavy ground leading to exaggerated winning distances). That's also a fairer way of rating top horses historically as it favours horses who were consistently excellent over those who produced one freak performance that earned an anomalously high rating.

It’s also clear there has been a handicap creep in all ratings in GB over the last 10-15 years (look at what the best novices were rated then compared with what they are rated now). There should be an across the board ratings revision of GB horses, down by 7-10 lbs. What’s peculiar is why the Anglo-Irish ratings don’t sort this out – presumably they are intended to normalise the end of season ratings between the two jurisdictions, but they clearly do no such thing.

How many GB horses would have won with 7lb less to carry?

That misses the point Sage - over-rating of GB handicappers is just one aspect of the Irish dominance, by no means the whole picture. There is also better bloodstock, quite possibly better jockeys, apparently better training methods, and so on.

[Of course if the ratings of all GB horses are cut, fewer get in the handicaps at Cheltenham - Langer Dan might have won with 7 lb less, but he wouldn't have got in the race].

But the handicap ratings should meaningful so we can compare GB-trained horses with Irish-trained horses, and so we can compare current horses with horses from at least the recent past.

Of course we want them to be comparable but if one country has them all healthy while the other has most of them sick, how can you handicap them?

if the bha think its the handicapping ffs some of theses irish winners could win with a stone more its f a to do with handicapping of the british horses, jesus

U.K. trainers should manage to win some races today at Cheltenham.

You could get a job with Timeform,Nogoody!

Are you accusing me of being an aftertimer ?