4th March 2017

BetKudos News: 

Irish Racing Focus With Declan O'Donoghue...Another Huge Blow For The Irish!

What a cruel game racing can be and yesterday Coney Island became the latest highly fancied Irish Cheltenham contender to be ruled out by injury.

There had been long and considered debate about what the Festival target of this J P McManus owned hot prospect should be.

Jockey Barry Geraghty - already ruled out of the Festival by injury himself - favoured the three miles of the RSA while trainer Eddie Harty seemed to be leaning towards the JLT.

It's all academic now of course and thankfully the injury is nothing serious.

Frank Berry, former ace jump jockey and now J P's Racing Manager explains: "It's a badly bruised foot."

"Nothing long term or anything like that, but it just came at the wrong time and there was no chance he could be ready in time" he said.

As we said here before, the whole controversy about Phil Smith's handicapping of Irish horses has got totally out of hand.

Perhaps less said the soonest mended and Smith should have ignored a lot of it, but of course anyone is entitled to defend themselves if they feel they are being unfairly criticised.

His different compression of top horses in the Grand National weights was a wee bit inconsistent, Gigginstown may have had a point there.

Whether it was all worth the Mexican hat dance and the public Punch And Judy Show that ensued is a different matter.

But talk of a deliberate bias against Irish horses was absurd, and don't you just know it, probably plenty of Irish horses will skate home now in Festival handicaps. 

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