Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Will Gosden get Crack at Arc? STEAMING
IF ONLY I could have my time again. Who among us hasn’t ever longed to turn back the clock?
And I wonder whether John Gosden, despite the riches garnered at Royal Ascot this week, mused along similar lines with regard to Cracksman’s three-year-old campaign.
Gosden (right), apt to remind the racing public that the colt was a work in progress — the equine equivalent of a gangly teenager — stressed the need to look after Cracksman during the season.
Accordingly the son of Frankel was kept away from the Prix de l’arc de Triomphe at Chantilly in October — which the Clarehaven stable won with Enable — and took in the ‘easier’ option of the Champion Stakes at Ascot.
The way the plan came together would have had the A Team’s Hannibal Smith flushing with pride — Cracksman scored by seven lengths from Poet’s Word.
Or at least, that was the first part of the plan. Colonel Smith wouldn’t be so happy with the way the second part — to go to Longchamp for the 2018 Arc — is coming along.
Physically, the four-year-old Cracksman is a handsome, mature athlete. Mentally, he must be giving even the self-assured and eloquent Gosden sleepless nights.
When he scraped home at odds of 2-7 in the Coronation Cup at Epsom, connections told of how the colt resented the course — the racecourse at which he had finished a length third in the Derby.
Things got worse in the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes, in which Cracksman looked bone idle allowing Poet’s Word to find nine and a quarter lengths from Ascot last October to claim the Wednesday feature for recordbreaker Sir Michael Stoute.
Who could blame Gosden if, privately, he regrets the cautious policy of avoiding France? Cracksman’s flesh may be willing – or working – but the spirit looks weak. A worrying state of affairs and one that only a master trainer like Gosden can remedy.
I’M sure I wasn’t the only one aghast watching BBC Breakfast sports bulletin yesterday morning. No mention of Frankie Dettori’s sixth Gold Cup on Ladies’ Day, but an extended feature on the dance craze ‘flossing’.
What a load of flossers.