Put simply: “Fortune favours those in the first half of the field.”
Which brings us to Saturday’s Eagle Technology Avondale Guineas, Willydoit and Masa Hashizume.
If you didn’t see the race I’ll make this simple. Hashizume went back from a wide draw on the hot favourite and didn’t move until it was apparently too late and they finished 10th.
Lots of punters lost money and Willydoit went from looking unbeatable in the $1.25million Trackside NZ Derby on March 8 to a mystery horse neither punters nor bookies know how to assess.
This is, of course, all Hashizume’s fault. I know this because everybody tells me it is so.
They may be right. The immensely likeable young man on his first day back from injury maybe should have taken off earlier, particularly when stablemate Interplanetary moved mid-race because of the ridiculously slow tempo.
If Willydoit had taken off earlier he would have won, right?
No.
He would have finished closer but he wouldn’t have won.
The writing was on Willy’s wall before the Guineas when he paraded looking light, not super skinny, but like it was Derby Day already and not the lead-up.
Co-trainer Shaun Clotworthy admits as much.
“It has been hard to keep the condition on him, it is a battle getting the work and racing the need in them to win a Derby,” he told the Herald.
“He still looks sometimes like he is a year away from really being what he is going to be.
“Even now, after the race, we will give him a few easy days off and we are still working out whether to gallop him this Saturday or not.”
Willydoit wouldn’t be the first horse walking a Derby tightrope and falling off it but if you forget their starting prices and simply look at the race Willydoit underperformed.
Unless they get checked, horses are rarely just unlucky if they finish 10th. That means there were nine horses in the race Willydoit didn’t run past.
He made almost no ground on the winner Thedoctoroflove in the home straight. He more or less had the same distance behind him at the post as he was at the 400m.
So if Hashizume had taken off earlier, spent petrol and gotten to Thedoctoroflove’s hind quarters starting the last 400m, he probably would have finished there.
Don’t believe it? They ran exactly the same last 200m (11.47 seconds) and while Willydoit’s final 400m was 0.17 of second quicker that was after doing no work until the 600m.
Had he gone faster in the middle stages, he probably would have come home slower. Try it next time you go for a run.
Every 200m sectional of third-placed Oceana Dream’s last 800m was faster than Willydoit’s so if Willy had been sitting right on the Dream’s back the result still would have been a nightmare for punters.
So what do we have now?
A horse we all thought was a superstar staying 3-year-old (guilty as charged) is going into a Derby with us all confused and flustered.
Would Willydoit have won if he had been in the first half of the field on Saturday.? Probably not.
But then punters could be angry with the horse rather the Hashizume, who ironically won Race 2 on Saturday by riding Tomodachi out of her comfort zone three wide on the speed from the 600m in a race she would have lost otherwise.
Chance, after all, favours those in the first half of the field.
Clotworthy and his owners have a decision to make, one made more difficult because Clotworthy adores Hashizume and is the loyal type.
The sharks are circling, the agents of some big-name jockeys chasing the Derby ride.
Will Hashizume stay on? Maybe not.
Can Willydoit still win the Derby? Yes he can, but his $4 quote is now far more realistic.
Will whether Hashizume or somebody else rides him in the classic be the deciding factor?
No. It won’t.
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s racing editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.
