Pat Cosgrave’s 28 Day Ban
By Henry Young on Saturday, April 22nd, 2023You may have seen that Pat Cosgrave received a 28 day ban for easing what should have been an easy winner on Concord in the Chelmsford 8pm on 20th April 2023. You can read the Racing Post report here:
Of immediate interest to me is why did he do this? While some may suggest dubious intent, my first thought was that as a seasoned jockey, and given the insights into jockey changing room culture that leak out from time to time, perhaps he simply enjoys underlining his seniority there with over the shoulder glances and a “look at me winning with no hands” attitude which he simply misjudged on this occasion. So I wanted to re-watch some of his other big distance wins to assess his riding manner in similar situations.
But how to find these easy win races ?
Smartform to the rescue with a simple SQL query:
mysql> select scheduled_time, name, course, finish_position as position, distance_won as distance from historic_runners_beta join historic_races_beta using (race_id) where jockey_name = "P Cosgrave" and finish_position = 1 order by distance_won desc limit 20;
+---------------------+--------------------+---------------+----------+----------+
| scheduled_time | name | course | position | distance |
+---------------------+--------------------+---------------+----------+----------+
| 2022-07-07 17:53:00 | Caius Chorister | Epsom_Downs | 1 | 19.00 |
| 2006-07-18 19:10:00 | Holdin Foldin | Newcastle | 1 | 17.00 |
| 2003-10-25 17:00:00 | Excalibur | Curragh | 1 | 15.00 |
| 2015-05-20 14:30:00 | Wonder Laish | Lingfield | 1 | 15.00 |
| 2015-10-06 14:10:00 | Light Music | Leicester | 1 | 14.00 |
| 2009-01-29 14:20:00 | More Time Tim | Southwell | 1 | 13.00 |
| 2018-07-19 14:20:00 | Desert Fire | Leicester | 1 | 12.00 |
| 2008-12-12 12:55:00 | Confucius Captain | Southwell | 1 | 10.00 |
| 2010-04-27 16:10:00 | On Her Way | Yarmouth | 1 | 10.00 |
| 2018-09-22 15:55:00 | Stars Over The Sea | Newmarket | 1 | 10.00 |
| 2012-10-25 16:40:00 | Saaboog | Southwell | 1 | 9.00 |
| 2006-03-31 15:40:00 | John Forbes | Musselburgh | 1 | 8.00 |
| 2015-05-20 15:00:00 | I'm Harry | Lingfield | 1 | 8.00 |
| 2018-06-17 15:10:00 | Pirate King | Doncaster | 1 | 8.00 |
| 2019-05-19 17:30:00 | Great Example | Ripon | 1 | 8.00 |
| 2004-07-19 18:30:00 | Orpailleur | Ballinrobe | 1 | 7.00 |
| 2007-07-04 17:35:00 | Serena's Storm | Catterick | 1 | 7.00 |
| 2008-01-07 13:50:00 | Home | Southwell | 1 | 7.00 |
| 2014-09-06 20:50:00 | Fiftyshadesfreed | Wolverhampton | 1 | 7.00 |
| 2015-05-16 13:45:00 | Firmdecisions | Newmarket | 1 | 7.00 |
+---------------------+--------------------+---------------+----------+----------+
20 rows in set (5.55 sec)
You can watch the top race here, with no apparent easing but plenty of glances behind:
The point of this article is really to emphasize that with Smartform and a modicum of SQL knowledge, you can easily answer those oddball questions that come up from time to time, that no existing software solution or website will answer as easily.
If you remove the jockey constraint from the where clause, you end up with the biggest distance wins of all time, begging the question how accurately do they measure these large winning distances or is it “finger in the air” stuff ?
mysql> select scheduled_time, name, course, finish_position as position, distance_won as distance from historic_runners_beta join historic_races_beta using (race_id) where finish_position = 1 order by distance_won desc limit 20;
+———————+——————+————–+———-+———-+
| scheduled_time | name | course | position | distance |
+———————+——————+————–+———-+———-+
| 2010-05-07 20:10:00 | Hivikos | Aintree | 1 | 124.00 |
| 2010-12-29 12:35:00 | Mr Cracker | Limerick | 1 | 100.00 |
| 2011-01-03 15:15:00 | Morning Supreme | Cork | 1 | 100.00 |
| 2011-02-26 16:15:00 | Tharawaat | Navan | 1 | 100.00 |
| 2012-12-27 15:20:00 | Goonyella | Limerick | 1 | 100.00 |
| 2007-06-19 20:45:00 | Algenon | Newton_Abbot | 1 | 100.00 |
| 2011-07-22 15:30:00 | Farleigh House | Southwell | 1 | 99.00 |
| 2011-10-20 14:40:00 | Tatispout | Ludlow | 1 | 99.00 |
| 2013-03-16 14:30:00 | Bob Ford | Ffos_Las | 1 | 99.00 |
| 2013-06-14 20:10:00 | Sivola De Sivola | Aintree | 1 | 99.00 |
| 2018-11-21 14:05:00 | Pacific De Baune | Warwick | 1 | 99.00 |
| 2019-04-08 16:40:00 | Longtymegone | Kelso | 1 | 99.00 |
| 2016-10-31 13:30:00 | Whataknight | Hereford | 1 | 99.00 |
| 2017-02-09 15:00:00 | Might Bite | Doncaster | 1 | 99.00 |
| 2017-11-03 13:25:00 | Some Invitation | Wetherby | 1 | 99.00 |
| 2017-03-22 15:20:00 | Krackatoa King | Warwick | 1 | 99.00 |
| 2017-05-27 15:55:00 | Wisty | Cartmel | 1 | 99.00 |
| 2015-01-31 14:40:00 | Bob Ford | Ffos_Las | 1 | 99.00 |
| 2014-01-02 13:20:00 | Swatow Typhoon | Ayr | 1 | 99.00 |
| 2014-03-14 14:55:00 | Dreamy George | Fakenham | 1 | 99.00 |
+———————+——————+————–+———-+———-+
20 rows in set (5.68 sec)