Black Caviar did run to form in the Diamond Jubilee. Her two runs in Adelaide before leaving Australia she ran quite poorly by her previous standards. She lost about 4L to 5L I reckon in those runs vs her form before that. I posted about this on one of the Black Caviar threads on this board after her first run in Adelaide back on 28th April. But this was not just my opinion. Here is a posting from the BHA Handicapper's blog from 12th June
http://www.racehorsesrace.com/bha-ha...pers-blog.html
"Her current rating in Australia is 130 and my colleague Greg Pearson has done plenty of work in assessing her performances over the last 18 months.
He has her running a best of 132 in March 2011 and in her most recent two starts he has her running to figures of 122 and 123 where it could be argued that the figures she was able to post were limited by the opposition she faced."
Greg Pearson (whoever he is) has it correct. Black Caviar lost 4L to 5L in her two runs before leaving Australia and looks to have continued that form last night. She might even have dropped her rating slightly again as the same blog entry gives Moonlight Cloud a rating of 118. But a loss of a length or so could be explained due to the travel
Soul has run 4th last night beaten 1.25L. Soul is a former Australian horse who won 3 from 12 in Australia. His best effort was a decent Listed Stakes win before he left. His best Australian form would rate him about 6L or so behind Black Caviar's form in Australia before her Adelaide runs. So again if Soul has run to about his best Australian form it points to Black Caviar losing 5L. It all fits together
As for Ortensia failing on the Tuesday. Well she had run well twice in overseas races before Tuesday. She won in Dubai the start before beating Joy and Fun (who has recently beaten Little Bridge the winner of Tuesday's race ) and Sole Power who ran 3rd on Tuesday. She also finished only 1.8L behind JJ The Jet Plane and Rocket Man at Sha Tin in the HK International back in December 2010. The start before this HK G1 race Ortensia had run into Black Caviar at Flemington and finished 3rd beaten by 6.3 lengths. Ortensia did not run badly this day at Flemington but ran to her normal form. What happened to Ortensia last Tuesday I don't know. She simply failed as sometimes happened. After racing in Dubai she had been stuck overseas and not been able to return to Australia I don't think as that was the situation Black Caviar would have faced if she had gone to Dubai.
Anyways so now Black Caviar has put in 3 ordinary runs in a row. These ordinary runs are still good enough to win weak G1 races or G3 races. But if she keeps running like this she will get beaten very soon
