GRAND NATIONAL 2013

bonny said:
Thanks .....I was right but Cptrayes is the fountain of all knowledge !
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I'll agree with you that cpt can be an irritating old bag, and I've certainly had my run-ins with her, but her opinions are of worth, they are entitled to consideration, and to dismiss her, out of hand, because you don't agree with her, is crass, and wrong.

There are some idiots on here, but cptrayes isn't one of them.

Alec.
 
I didn't dismiss her, I said she was the fountain of all knowledge........


although maybe not on heart failure in racehorses !!
 
bonny said:
I didn't dismiss her, I said she was the fountain of all knowledge........


although maybe not on heart failure in racehorses !!
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OK, neither am I, so I'll give in to that! ;):D

Actually, a horse when it suffers a heart attack, probably isn't the same as, say a human. A ruptured heart-part is generally fatal, and in truth, when my end comes, that'll do for me! ;)

Alec.
 
Actually bonny, it's always worth paying attention to what cptrayes says. She usually speaks a lot of sense, and has probably forgotten what many of us have yet to learn when it comes to horses.
 
EKW said:
National horse in the making?!?

In all seriousness the day I met him I couldn't stop laughing! The previous horse that Jane had sent us from America was a stunningly pretty grey with supermodel legs! We picked Tap up from Ayr in January in a stableyard full of stripped, clipped racefit horses and there, in the corner travellers box was quite literally a ginger square! He was so fat you could barely tell his head from his back end, his coat could rival a shetlands and his mane was just wild! He's stripped down well :D
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Congrats! He ran a blinder, CC wasn't for beating today.

We were over the moon with a running on 3rd in the last...at 33-1 too. Bring on the Topham tomorrow.
 
She doesn't know much about racing, as she herself says....
All I said is that horses don't have heart attacks the same as people do .....and that's a fact !
 
bonny said:
She doesn't know much about racing, as she herself says....
All I said is that horses don't have heart attacks the same as people do .....and that's a fact !
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OK lets argue over the semantics of the word 'attack' then.

Horses do not suffer from coronary heart disease like humans do.

Horses do suffer from a number of other conditions which result in a relatively slow death from heart failure (minutes) that everyone I know would describe as a heart attack. Your statement that heart failure in horses is always due to rupture was incorrect.

I have personally experienced one case of rupture and seen two cases of 'heart attack', and the way the horse dies is completely different.


Given my known dislike of NH racing deaths I was pretty astonished by being got at by two people after saying that this death was not caused by racing :D
 
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Children! Children! Put the wooden spoons down! This thread isn't about who is right and who is wrong, it's about the runners, riders and press failures of the 2013 National meeting.

Oh and Tap and Hammy Hamster who won the last :D
 
Well, to digress from the debate, why not have a look at the Daily Mail coverage of the "fashion". I know I really, really shouldn't, but my first stop for information on major race days in the UK is, indeed the Daily Mail.

It's quite odd; I visit the UK a lot and generally the vast majority of people seem quite normal to me. But NOT through the lense of the Mail photographers!
 
happyhunter123 said:
Very sorry to hear of the loss of Battlefront, but it annoys the hell out of me that people are making such as fuss of it simply because it's Aintree and it's the National meeting. Look at what all of the papers are focusing on-this, instead of some of the great racing we had today.
Supposing a horse had had a heart attack at, say, Lingfield AW last week, would anyone much care? Would the course and the circumstances be scrutinised by press and public? No. It's ridiculous.
I'm still saddened by it, as I am with every casualty, but the press are making too much of a thing about it.
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It annoys me too that the press and public concentrate on just this one race, although they do it for understandable reasons.

Speaking personally, if there was a thread about Lingfield AW and the subject of fatalities came up in the same way, I would have posted about it in the same way - assuming I read the thread, of course. Ditto if it was a general thread about racing fatalities. For me, the fact that it's the GN is totally irrelevant, although I recognize it is much more in the public eye. (However, it isn't the public who are reading this, is it? Probably just as well!) However, I certainly do care, whether it's a big name race or not.
 
cptrayes said:
I have also seen two horses have heart attacks and they staggered and kicked and were quite obviously alive and in considerable pain and distress for a long time before dying.
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There is or was a video on Youtube (shot by spectators a tad ghoulishly imo) of a racehorse collapsing on the course and lying breathing for what seems like an age until the vet arrived, though I think it was only a minute. I couldn't tell if the horse was in pain or distress, but it looked like it was still breathing. I would like to know if this was an aortic rupture or a different kind of 'cardiac incident'. Given how suddenly the went down suggests the first to me - but then ventricular fibrillation, assuming that occurs in horses too, would have a similarly sudden effect.
 
Having seen very close at first hand, a horse that has gone down with a rupture/heart attack post race they do 'appear' from a distance to still be breathing, but they are usually gone by the time they hit the ground, I would suggest this would be the case yesterday.
 
MurphysMinder said:
Oh gawd, does that mean more sensationalist crap from Jeremy Vine!
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Undoubtedly ....

ETA, - I googled to see if there was a way to comment and it seems to be someone else -

Jane Garvey sits in for Jeremy, presenting news, views and live guests.

FIRST BROADCAST: 12 Apr 2013
 
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Delighted that everybody is home safe and not the debacle of last year. However I don't think the GN can still be deemed the greatest steeplechase. As Barry Geraghty confirmed what I thought I was watching, horses were taking serious liberites with fences and getting away with it. Knew when I walked the course before last years National that the course was a shadow of it's former self. From now on true tests of horses jumping ability will be confined to Cheltenham (even those fences have been softened), the GN will be the preserve of ultimate stayers (the course will continue to be made artifically good to soft at best) with not too much weight, their jumping ability will not be a priority.
 
The fences are a shadow of their former self. There were horses at the back jumping what were basically hurdle height fences once all of the flumf had been brushed off. It didn't take much jumping.

I kind of feel a bit deflated after this years National. I know I will probably get shot down in flames for this but there was no carnage.
It just made it another race. As much as I admire the Smiths and love Ryan the horses owner buys horses specifically for the race every year rather than bring one up through the ranks - though it has paid off this time! And I also don't like the guy that looks after the winner but that's personal lol!

Glad they all came home safe.
 
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