Tom Scudamore defends Thistlecrack, talks Ascot rides on Coral Hurdle day

Tom Scudamore blog defends Thistlecrack

I was really pleased with Thistlecrack last Friday. He made one mistake at the ditch, he just landed on top off it after taking off too far, but he learned from that and was very good after that. A lot of the criticism of his jumping has been over the top and nonsense really. I read in the Racing Post people saying he’d made several mistakes and was guessy and stuff like that. Well I just thought that was a load of nonsense, and trying to fill some pages.

He’s a very high profile horse and everyone is going to have their own opinions, and that’s fine, but as far as I’m concerned he’s jumped 20 odd fences in public and he’s made one mistake. Kauto Star fell in a three runner race on his second start, Un De Sceaux fell on one of his early starts and my horse has made one little mistake.

There’s more practice to be done and he will hopefully go to Newbury next week for his next start, but all in all I think some people have got carried away. Sometimes on a horse’s second start over fences they can get a bit bolder and a bit braver as they think it’s easy, and Thistlecrack can be an exuberant horse anyway when he wants to be, and it was just over-exuberance when he made that mistake.

When a horse goes from hurdles to fences the big worry is that they don’t change their technique, and they try and hurdle their fences. Thistlecrack isn’t hurdling his fences he’s jumping them properly and making a great shape, and the way he stood off the second ditch and the height he got was incredible. I’d have been far more concerned if he was hurdling his fences, but he’s not he’s jumping them well. He just has to work on it a bit more. We are talking fractions that he has to improve nothing major. It was exhilarating to ride him and I was very pleased with him.