Taking An Infinity

Poor Blacklister continued his run of 'close but no cigar' runs, coming second at Lingfield Park by a neck; he'll almost certainly run at Chelmsford on the 28th now as a result. The unluckiest horse in training? Probably. Fingers crossed for him, though - he deserves a win.

Meanwhile, we had the usual JRA disaster, but even worse than my already low expectations - and by quite some margin! Basically, Infinity was last, because the only reason there was two horses behind it was due to a dreadful accident. Infinity cannot even use this mishap as an excuse, as it was as good as pulled up on the back straight, while the accident happened on the final corner. Iwata says the horse simply wasn't interested, and a run of that quality (over ten seconds behind the winner) brings into question whether it has been trained at all... Whatever, it was probably the worst run I've ever seen, making Beat The Boarder look good! I remember - with tears welling up in my eyes - seeing a horse with a badly broken leg running towards the post at TCK. It was so fired up and full of fighting spirit, the poor thing just kept going, and I felt a strange mixture of heartfelt sadness and deep admiration for this beautiful beast, who I wish I could have given a retirement home to. The only reason I'm bringing it up is that that horse was faster than Infinity Love, even with three good legs instead of four. And while my humour is notoriously black at times, that is not a joke!!

Ultimately, though, there is an underlying problem that needs to be addressed if JRA is to improve - there are not enough races. It is typical of the JRA lot to put a turf racer on dirt, knowing it has no chance (the two are completely different disciplines, like asking Bolt win a marathon), simply because there are so few turf races available - one miss first time out, and basically you may as well forget any chances of the horse developing a proper career. So, Infinity will now doubtless go for a long holiday (having finished so far back, there will be no choice in the matter, even if there were more races on the calendar), with no real training or mental development for months, and come back still not knowing what a race is. It will then doubtless be entered in a totally unsuitable race, and more time and money will be wasted before the inevitable. From what I've seen, it would be better - and quicker - to retire the horse now, rather than wait for a series of results (probably one extra race if the past repeats itself) that will do nothing except damage the reputation of Falbrav and further diminish the funds of shareholders. So far, all today has done is prove a lot of my theories once and for all, and the sooner my JRA era is over the better. Complete and utter bollocks!

After an object lesson in the quaint subtlety of the English language, all we can do now is look forward to Shine Tiara at Kawasaki on Tuesday, who will hopefully be joined by A Touch Of Sparkle on the same day in far-away Ireland. Who knows, by then we might even have received an excuse from today's trainer on what happened this morning?

PS. The Irish meeting has been abandoned due to a waterlogged track.