[crowie]

Originally Posted by Bigkegman

Great stuff seen.

I know crowie raves about the French stat. Away for a study myself - someone on the radio or tv at the weekend was mentioning Idle Talk and siad either the owner or trainier was talking very bullish about it's chances.

Aye, but don't let ODM hear you mentioning the French Bred trend as he doesn't believe in it. Or Santa Claus

Good piece Seen I work on the same trends for the National, one of the few races I take an interest in each year nowadays.

Regarding the French bred thing, they probably didn't supply a great deal of runners in years gone by but think in the last 5 or 6 races 25% of the field is French bred and still no winners. Clan Royal has come close (2nd, carried out race when going well) but as I have always said, until I see 5 or 6 French bred winners over say a 10 year period, I will always side with that trend as opposed to trying to find the horse thats going to beat it. As Seen says, Clan Royal just hit a wall last year and ran out of gas.

One of the articles I read this year on it says that there are not many French races run over further than 3 miles (someone with better knowledge than me might be able to confirm) therefore when they are breeding horses in France they don't have to look at introducing the "stamina gene" to their breeding patterns. Course when said French bred then runs in the National, it doesn't help a great deal!