IT'S NOT THE NEW ICE AGE... IT'S THE RACING COVER-AGE

Happy New Year to all That Racing Blog readers. I hope the festive period treated you well and you face 2010 suitably refreshed. I got two early, and pretty unwanted, presents at the start of December in the form of the 'flu and no less unwelcome (or debilitating) writer's block - I think would have preferred socks. A / the / any God willing, I'm back on top of matters now.

***

One professional racegoing friend of mine was moved to write in a Facebook update last weekend words to the effect that travelling to so many racecourses recently whose meetings remained in the balance right up until racetime hasn’t been good for his nerves. Or, for that matter, for the pocket.

It’s hard not to sympathise. For those of us living in or close to London (to say nothing of further afield), a return trip to Chepstow for Welsh National day, for example, would have required an investment of at least six hours’ driving time and at least 250-odd miles’ worth of petrol, but above all else an investment in the belief that what racecourse officials were regarding as “touch and go” conditions would have become rather more “all systems go” by the time destination had been reached.

Quite a commitment in the throes of a stingingly cold winter period, and a very long, despondent trudge back along the M4 were it to have been met with an abandonment.

Fortunately, both his trip to Chepstow and an only slightly shorter one to Cheltenham for both of us four days later rewarded our own powers of perseverance... and those of the respective racecourse executives all the more so.

Clear skies in particular – and clear they were on these two racedays - can be cruel tormentors of embattled clerks of courses in the midwinter months. Overcast, cloudy, damp conditions provide a drab backdrop to December and January meetings, but frequently at least halfway workable temperatures, too. If a cold winter’s day is clear enough to let the sun work on the ground, however, chances are that it was clear enough to let the frost get into it first as well.

Ah, but surely the threat posed by these clear skies is no threat at all if the sainted covers employed increasingly often by racecourses do their job properly, yes? Well, no.

The covers do not represent a global panacea, and shouldn’t be assumed to do so. What they will always do is allow a racecourse to steal a bit of a march on the elements, and hopefully a decisive one; but those covers still have to come off enough hours before racing (usually up to three, though opinion varies slightly) to allow even a frost-free racing surface to recover from its incarceration; to breathe, to all intents and purposes.

And anyone who still remembers the ritual torture of cross-country runs during their schooling will know just how hard it is to breathe on a freezing cold day without seizing up.

Seizing up is precisely what the ground did when Haydock’s mid-December card was called off in unfortunate and well-documented circumstances. Yet later that same afternoon Barney Clifford admitted during an interview with us on Timeform Radio that even with the deployment of covers, at least one Kempton jumps meeting last winter came perilously close to meeting the same fate, and with that the same tirades as directed at the likes of Kirkland Tellwright and Fiona Needham in the recent past were only narrowly circumvented.

On such small margins as maybe just one degree’s variance in temperature either way can the difference between inspired perseverance and public relations disaster rest – who’d be a clerk of the course sometimes.

Of course, by simple expedient of calling an inspection, and then another, a realistic degree of caution was being exercised by all at Cheltenham on New Years Day, covers notwithstanding. Hope still sprang eternal, but not recklessly so - I got to the course just before 10am, and the messages to have been conveyed to my already present Cheltenham Radio / Timeform Radio colleagues so far that morning placed the chances of racing at “70-30” – certainly nothing more bullish than that.

The rest you know. Racing survived, albeit with recourse to a further inspection after the opening race, and race times were condensed to ensure the entire racing programme could be squeezed into the remaining, finite daylight hours. Ironically, though, when I left the course at 5.45pm, the air temperature felt as warm as it had at any time during the day and the racing surface had yet to crisp over.

The vagaries of the British weather reinforced once again. What price a set of Kempton-style floodlights, anyone?

And what of the racing itself? All told 30 horses were pulled out due to the going, but in several cases were as much on account of either the racing surface riding faster than the projected, or else the whim of individual owners of horses whose stablemates did in many cases still take their chances.

What was left was undeniably a smaller total of runners than is usually the case for a Cheltenham meeting, but there will be plenty of fixtures at other courses this winter that will fail to attract as many runners as the eventual 56 on far less (real or imagined) marginal going.

And although it won't have been the most informative meeting for Festival pointers, it's not as if we didn't learn a thing or two - Wolf Moon has the potential to remain a horse the assessor has problems nailing; Radium proved he can handle undulating courses and has increased his options accordingly; Sentry Duty remains an irresistible force caught fresh; and Pigeon Island's appetite for chasing is looking on the wane.

Finally, and returning to the theme of perseverance and effort, massive kudos should go the way of Richard Hoiles for showing, during Seven Is My Number and Pigeon Island’s match for the Dipper Chase, just how expansively and compellingly even a two-runner race can be commentated on.

Not for him the “Horse A leads from Horse B” every 10 seconds and nothing else – instead, not a single tick, quirk and / or shift in the two runners' respective balances of power during the race went unnoticed; and his comment three fences into the race of "There are seven places in the world called Pigeon Island... and already the bottom of the barrel has been reached" had plenty in stitches.

Trainers of aspiring racecourse commentators – add this masterclass to your prescribed curriculum of races to watch forthwith.

KEMPTON IN OCTOBER IS LITTLE FUN WITH A CHARISMA BYPASS

Like the dying days of an old and faithful family pet, or the inexorable decline of a once-proud elderly relative into a diminishing shell of skin in a care home, the reduction of a horse race that has been part of your formal racing education to something of zero consequence is something quite hard to take.

Alongside the then Mercedes-Benz Chase at Chepstow usually a week before, the Charisma Gold Cup at Kempton was one of the two 3m chases that used to fanfare the start of the coverage of the current National Hunt season on terrestrial television – three if it was a year in which Ayr’s Timeform Chasers & Hurdlers Handicap Chase got a look-in as well.

These constituted the first indication to the casual-ish viewer of the firepower the major stables had at their disposal in the handicap chase ranks that term, and of how far forward that string was. During the 1980s, it rarely produced a bad winner, far less often a poorly-contested, unsatisfactory spectacle.

Marnik, Approaching, and of course Everett three times on the spin from 1984 to 1986, Contradeal, Acarine, Seagram (30 months before his finest hour)... no horses in that roll-call upwardly mobile to the point of being future champions, but all decent or better handicappers entitled to win their share in the grade.

That grade being a ceiling-free handicap, which it remained initially at least even after the new ratings bands for National Hunt horses and races were introduced in autumn 1989. Even when a ceiling was finally imposed in the mid-90s, it was set to the highest possible value for a handicap of 150, and little or no diminution of the contest’s quality ensued.

So far so unchanged, and although Charisma finally bowed out after the 2001 renewal, the passing of the race through the successive hands of Skybet, Stan James and Ibetx.com over the next three years had little material change on the race conditions (save no reversal of the small drop to 0-145 introduced in 2000) or the horses lining up.

“The most competitive handicap run over fences so far this season”, enthused the Racing Post’s post-analysis of the 2003 renewal won by the then 132-rated Swansea Bay; and despite both the Summer Plate and the Mercedes-Benz (sponsorship of that race ironically handled by Skybet that year, having not committed to the Kempton contest beyond just the 2002 renewal) having already taken place, that was still just about right.

By stark contrast the equivalent write-up for the 2007 renewal, the first under another new sponsorship banner, was described as “nothing like the race it was”; and notwithstanding the fact winner Oniz Tiptoes’ mark of 123 passed muster compared to some that preceded it, that was no small wonder.

The race had survived a temporary sojourn to Huntingdon in 2005 completely intact whilst Kempton acquired its Polytrack course, but the moving of the fixture to a Sunday two years ago appeared to coincide with a complete loss of belief in it as a viable, competitive handicap. The ratings ceiling was lowered by a further 10lb and the win pot nearly halved from what it had been in 2006 to just £9,394, approximately the same as it had been 15 years earlier.

At the same time, however, the prizemoney levels of the Listed novices’ hurdle and the class 2 conditions race that have embellished the same card for as long remained entirely as before. The emasculation of the erstwhile Charisma in comparison to the rest of the meeting was very much laid bare, then, even before the relegation of the race to the very end of the card is considered.

Increasing numbers of racecourses have put on a handicap chase as the afternoon’s denouement in recent years. It’s something Market Rasen in particular has employed to fair effect at those meetings where no bumper is to be run. The received thinking is presumably that holding back the sort of race that everybody loves to the very end reduces racegoers’ temptation of leaving early to beat the traffic, and that’s not the worst logic ever so long as the increased threat of low sun necessitating fence omissions isn’t realised.

In the case of the former Charisma Gold Cup, however, that move has smacked very much of putting the race out of sight, out of mind, as far as possible without removing it outright.

All of which brings us to last Sunday’s renewal, and how apposite it was that the sun should be setting over the Sunbury track just as the race's worst line-up in history shuffled almost apologetically onto the track. Good fortune alone (no unseats on the way to post, late withdrawals, etc.) these last few years has prevented the race from being run in even greater murk, much later than its allotted 5.40pm off time.

Any significant delay would have placed the contest in some jeopardy; and whilst Radio Two’s noted April Fool’s Day joke might have hoodwinked some listeners into believing something called The Million Watt Chase really was taking place under floodlights at Fairyhouse back in 1990, even 19 years on things haven’t necessarily advanced to the stage where the Kempton executive could have run this race with the lights on if required.

Having evaded any further knives through the ribs last year, the 2009 contest was run as a 0-115 and with the winner’s purse halved yet again to £4,553. Of the six horses to line up, only half were rated on or within 7lb of the ceiling, and the third favourite, Rudivale, was able to race off 10st 8lbs despite a mark of 97 that would have seen him appreciably out of the handicap in most renewals hitherto.

For the record, Nagam continued his form and temperament rehabilitation under the tutorship of trainer Alan Fleming, courtesy of a dependably satisfying piece of Timmy Murphy jockeyship ("held up in the lead", as my Timeform Radio colleague Bob Adams succinctly put it), with favourite Ibberton comfortably held over a trip short of his best and fresh air (hardly clear blue daylight by that time) back to the remainder. A nation shrugged, and Bob and I saluted the winner briefly and went home.

It would have been a race of little consequence without any prior knowledge of its past – the sort of 0-115 one would see 20 to 25 times a month in high season and generously describe as “honest fare”, no more or less than that. But with the last decade’s worth of winners having winked back at me from the Racing Post site just that morning as a reminder of far, far better renewals than Nagam’s, it proved nigh on impossible not to reflect on the contest and think, “How has it come to this?”

One of the great tragedies of the Charisma’s fall from grace is that had the support for it been maintained to any great extent, it could now be quite plausibly regarded as the middle leg of a genuine run of early to mid-autumn targets for horses of a certain trip and course disposition.

Think it through; the Blue Square Chase at Market Rasen’s equinox meeting at the back end of September constitutes a decent 2m6.5f 0-150 handicap around a sharpish, flattish right-handed track. The Badger Ales Trophy at Wincanton in early November constitutes a decent 3m1.5f 0-150 handicap around a sharpish, flattish right-handed track. More or less equidistant between the two in both scheduling (mid-October) and distance (3m), the former Charisma at Kempton used to constitute a... you get the picture.

Simply put, I’d love to see the Kempton contest restored to its former status and then marketed as part of this trio of comparable contests which, if all goes to plan, something has an excellent chance of progressing through, winning all three, and perhaps scooping a bonus for so doing. There must be enough second season chasers rated in the mid-120s to early-130s for whom that could rate a wholly realistic itinerary for the first half of the season.

Please reconsider, Kempton. Don’t let this be one faithful old friend that ultimately has to be put out of its misery.

OUMEY GOODNESS, YOU PAID HOW MUCH?

Not for the last time this season, I imagine, I was briefly minded to consider what constitutes a nice piece of business and what does not during last weekend’s increasingly prestigious Market Rasen end-of-summer meeting.

For once the former didn't mean either alchemists par excellence Tim Vaughan or Alison Thorpe, as Vaughan didn't trouble the scorers and Mrs Thorpe's handicap hurdle winner Treaty Flyer had been moved to her rather than purchased.

Emphatically in the good business camp, however, was the former David Arbuthnot inmate Valley Ride, scooping two and a half times his spring purchase price of £13,000 in landing the feature chase on his first outing for Peter Bowen.

As a horse that missed the thick end of two seasons not so long ago he can hardly have been regarded as a wholly sound, safe proposition when considered for purchase, but the fact he’d withstood a winter campaign for Arbuthnot without a setback would have offered encouragement. Moreover, a chasing mark still 13lb below his hurdling best of March 2006 rather belied the fact he entered the race only five runs into his chasing career and still on an upward trajectory (however gentle) judged on two wins and a place the last thrice.

There would have been far bigger stabs in the dark carrying the same or appreciably bigger price tags at the Doncaster Sales back on May 20th, and in hindsight I could almost kick myself for not paying the sales columns in the Post website and elsewhere closer scrutiny more often. A 2m4f-3m1f chaser with effectiveness on a soundish surface proven? Notwithstanding the minor setback which ruled him out of a tilt at the Summer National, was there ever any doubt what sort of races Bowen was going to aim his new acquisition at if he could?

The same race saw another debut for new connections of a horse acquired from the same auction on the same day. However, whilst Valley Ride was refunding Bowen in full and paying for his oats and rugs for a whole season in one go, Oumeyade did nothing to suggest the £40,000 Donald McCain Jr laid out for him four months earlier represents a tidy transaction. Not yet, anyway.

It won’t be the biggest sum a trainer forks out in hope rather than expectation this season by any means, but the ascent of McCain Jr in the last two to three seasons has been largely predicated on buying or being sent bloodstock which is better quality than hitherto, but importantly which has also had little or no racing experience for the greater part.

It has not been predicated on buying 150-rated chasers out of other yards, not least the yards of champion trainers not especially noted for releasing animals if they still have marked improvement to come. That, with the very greatest of respect to the old man, is something Ginger McCain was more predisposed towards doing several years back, usually to guarantee himself a starting line-up with something, anything, in the Grand National.

The appeal of Oumeyade is an increment or two weaker now than it was 12 months ago. After a scintillating all-the-way 2m handicap win at Kempton’s first jumps meeting of the autumn, followed by the same feat repeated in an Exeter novice next time, defeats in both the Wayward Lad and the Celebration Chase thereafter served as two indications that the racing tactic that had wrought so much improvement from the late summer onwards (far in excess of anything he has ever achieved when held up, even in victory) risked exposing him as something of a bunny in higher-class contests.

Ridden more patiently last Saturday for the step back up in trip, an early error won’t have helped matters overly, but it still ranked a pretty pallid effort all the same, and certainly didn’t raise the bar in terms of his efforts under this sort of tactic.

So where to now? A return to dominating fields in 2m handicaps? Maybe, but from his mark of 150 connections won’t find many of those open to him over the season, even if he does drop a few pounds for Saturday's effort.

How about make-all tactics in 2m conditions races, such as the Desert Orchid Chase over the same Kempton course and distance that served him so well once last term, perhaps? Maybe, but it’s hard to imagine something like Petit Robin or a fit-again Fieppes Shuffle won’t be around to take him on for the lead.

Maybe the National after all? His current mark would guarantee him a place in any renewal of that contest, and half-brother Ladalko did of course take Warwick’s 3m5f Grade 3 handicap in heavy ground nearly three seasons ago. The propensity to stay further over time may be there, then. But as Timeform Radio’s excellent Terry Norman always warns us when comparing (half-) siblings’ respective profiles and hoping or expecting the qualities of one to transfer in full to the other; “Elvis’s brother was a baker”.

It seems inescapable that for a horse on the most recent evidence best at 2m, yet to win over further than a sharp 2m5½f and totally untried beyond 3m1f, the words “stamina to prove” will feature foot-high in the text of his Spotlight write-up the first time he tries a marathon trip, whether or not he then proves able to silence the doubters.

Getting a big win out of Oumeyade at any distance will rate among the biggest challenges of McCain Jr’s nascent training career to date, and with that already promises to be, for me at least, one of the more engaging sub-plots of the 2009-2010 season even so early on.

Whatever the outcome, it will still be a purchase to have me shaking the head and tutting, “what were you thinking?!?” rather less than on learning of the £360,000 spent on another of that Market Rasen chase’s participants, De Soto, two and a half years ago. Return on investment so far? £19,432, give or take a few pence!

***

At an earlier stage of its career than either Oumeyade or Valley Ride, but recently sold for more than either, another quiet-season purchase to catch the eye was that of Jurisdiction, who is likely to have his first run since joining Rose Dobbin at Kelso this coming weekend.

This Goldmark 5yo has already hit the headlines once this season by virtue of his outgoing connections. Prior to May 2009, Bradfield, Devon-based farrier and former licensed trainer Graham Hollis had not had so much as a single runner under Rules for almost exactly 12 years and not trained a winner for two decades. Nevertheless, Jurisdiction belied odds of 20-1 to dispatch allcomers by 3l and upwards to make his racecourse debut a winning one.

The gelding’s subsequent appointment in the ring ultimately meant that a mere 4,500gns investment by Hollis at Dbs Sales during August 2007 became a 45,000gns sale to Mrs Dobbin at the same venue two years on. A very tidy piece of business for one of the smallest operations you'll see represented outside of hunter chases and points this term, therefore; and as a once-raced half-brother to a 3m hurdle winner with all the physical prowess to make the sort of chaser the Dobbin yard would love to make a mark with, who's to say the 10-times larger outlay won't yet turn out to be just as astute compared to monies won for the new connections, either?

OF RACECOURSES AND SUGAR PUFFS... BUT IS WORCESTER TOAST?

The fifth and final article in a short series Betfair commissioned from me in recent weeks covers some familiar That Racing Blog subject matter, not least Worcester and Ffos Las racecourses, but a newer idea I have had about the future of the currently for-sale Ayr may delight and horrify in equal measure;

http://betting.betfair.com/horse-racing/general/jeremy-grayson-ayr-essentials-010309.html

THE HUNTERS STILL GO PAST THE PUNTERS... BUT ONLY IF THEY'RE NOT TOO GOOD AT WINNING

Finding new ways to monkey around with terms and conditions of hunter chases has almost assumed the role of an annual task for the BHA - maybe someone has it permanently written into their annual appraisal targets.

My irritated response to the "three wins and out" rule now applied to certain hunter chases will surprise few, much less the few words scribbled down about Lough Derg to cheer me up again;

http://betting.betfair.com/horse-racing/general/bha-bumbles-while-lough-lifts-the-spirits-again-220209.html

THE HUNTERS GO PAST THE PUNTERS... SO TRY TO WIN SOME MONEY ON THEM, THEN

One of Mark Johnson's most enduring catchphrases seems as apt as any to usher in this third article of the five recently commissioned by Betfair.

A fair few hunter chases have been run since I wrote this, and Paul Nicholls has done his best to undermine my nomination of his runners in the sphere as decent lay material by scoring four wins from four with them, but I remain unbowed, if a little bloodied. There's still the return to Towcester of Caveman to look forward to, though...

http://betting.betfair.com/horse-racing/general/be-a-hunter-not-prey-when-it-comes-to-betting-on-hunter-150209.html

OF SALT SHORTAGES, SOAP STARS, AND STRIPPING SANDOWN

Proposals to change the end of the National Hunt season, in the hope of bringing it to a more thundering climax, exercised my time and patience in the second of the five recently-commissioned Betfair articles;

http://betting.betfair.com/horse-racing/general/horseracing-betting-wheres-all-the-bleedin-salt-gone-080209.html

WHERE PRODIGIOUS YOUNG WELSH TALENT AND FAKE INDIE SNOBBERY MEET

The more astute among you will have noticed that updates to this blog have been few and far between in recent months.

Initially this was due to a major change in personal circumstances, but more recently on account of Betfair securing a number of articles from me for its betting.betfair.com website.

Several of these were pertinent only to the given week's racing, but the most recent five have concerned subject matter that I would have had every intention of raising on That Racing Blog in other circumstances. As such, I have little hesitation in posting links to them on this site.

(Well, obviously I do have some hesitation, as the first was published six weeks ago, but you know what I mean...)

Anyone who listened to Timeform Radio's start-of-"proper"-season podcast back in October will have been left in little doubt whom I regarded as the jockey to follow throughout 2008-9, and so far this term I don't think I have been proven too far wrong by what I have seen of him. The "fake indie snobbery" bit probably needs a little more explanation - read on;

http://betting.betfair.com/horse-racing/jockeys/ladies-and-gentlemen-meet-the-next-great-jumps-jockey-r-010209.html

WORTH THE LONG WAIT TO WADE INTO THE SOLENT

Some things in racing take rather longer than others to come to fruition.

My "Out in the Sticks" columns for the monthly edition of Racing Ahead magazine exist principally to outline performances that have caught my eye at some of the country's smaller National Hunt tracks, with a view to finding readers as many next-time winners as possible (NB in answer to a question I found in my inbox recently: the concentration on smaller venues is partly due to them being what I know and understand best, and partly due to fellow contributor Andrew Ayres already covering the "bigger stuff" during the rump of the jumps season).

For the greater part, and especially with summer jumping, I don't have to wait long to find out if I am right, given that most horses will run again within two months. That said, I had to wait over six months before Tamarinbleu's reappearance resulted in a Boylesports.com Gold Cup win at wonderfully rewarding odds, and I fear the wait for late 2006 selections Sexy Rexy and Solid As A Rock to reappear may not actually come to an end.

In a similar vein, about nine months ago I was one of several regular contributors to Betfair Radio to take part in what ultimately proved to be an exhausting but terrifically fun two-hours-and-then-some podcast for that station (mercifully edited to a length manageable for human consumption subsequently), in which our thoughts, betting strategies, tips and bismarks for the forthcoming winter's action were shared.

The suggestions for big race honours we made then have subsequently proven to be about half-right and half-wrong overall. Most of us, myself included, thought something would emerge from leftfield to steal the Champion Chase crown from a fallible title-holder in Voy Por Ustedes. If Master Minded were allowed to drink, we'd buy him a pint. Unfortunately, I was also one of a couple of contributors keen to nonsense Denman's aspirations for the Gold Cup - my assertions that the hanging left and jumping errors of his novices' chase wins as Exeter and Cheltenham in late 2006 would be ruthlessly exploited in senior company looked very silly indeed after his Hennessy win, and had practically gained a red nose and deely-boppers come March 14th of this year.

Away from the Championship races, my selections had a mixed time of it. Iktitaf and Granit Jack, regrettably, were both taken from us too soon, and Nevada Royale's season was best described as abortive; but the likes of Newbay Prop (when he was clearing his fences rather than intent on taking them home with him) and Bible Lord (eventually) did me a couple of timely favours. As with the "Out in the Sticks" examples I cited, however, some tips have come home to roost rather later than others, and none more so than Solent.

My logic for choosing him at the time seemed copper-bottomed enough to me. He appealed as one of the classier Flat recruits likely to take his chance over timber last autumn, what with an Official Rating of 100 and a brace of personal best Racing Post Ratings of 108 to his name. He had signed off his time as a Richard Hannon inmate with a grinding dead-heat in the Listed Fenwolf Stakes at Ascot in September, and in so doing reiterated his effectiveness around a stiff track with an uphill finish. That would come in handy at Cheltenham.

Further, whilst that Ascot race over two miles had been run at a numbingly slow early pace, his efforts in truer-run contests at up to 1m6f around the likes of Ascot again and Haydock previously underlined to me that this would be one former "Flattie" who would have no trouble at all seeing out the minimum trip over hurdles, or in all probability a fair bit further, thereby increasing options.

Last of all, and by no means any less significant, trainer John Quinn had been prepared to go to 155,000 guineas at the Tattersalls sale last October to secure the Montjeu gelding's services. That needs putting into context. His high 90s-rated Cambridgeshire aspirant Mastership cost him 67,000gns, subsequent dual Diomed Stakes winner Blythe Knight 90,000gns and future Grade 2 Elite Hurdle victor King's Quay 110,000gns. After Solent, the last-named is the most expensive animal the Racing Post's bloodstock search facility credits Quinn with ever having bought through a recognised sales ring, and cost all of 45,000gns less.

Price-tags don’t win races, of course but it still read like a serious statement of belief in the horse’s ability to take top rank as a hurdler that the Settrington handler was prepared to outlay quite such an amount on him.

So, with the credentials of Solent well enough established in my mind to have put him forward, all that was needed now was for the gelding to make his debut over timber and hopefully prove me right.

So I waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

And then the season finished.

By the end of April Solent had still not appeared, with nothing in the trade press to suggest he had met with a training setback, but at the same time nothing to suggest he was being kept for a summer novices’ hurdle campaign.

When he did finally reappear it was on the Flat at the start of July, over nine months since last seen. However, two quick appearances in the Old Newton Cup and York’s Silver Handicap Stakes appeared to confirm that his current rating, some way in excess of the 90 of his best ever handicap win, was now prohibitive. Even attempting to boss things from the front was no longer going to yield wins in handicaps barring some significant clemency, and he faded to be beaten an aggregate of 99l over the two runs.

Surely, now, unless attentions were turned exclusively to conditions races, we were going to see his attentions turned to the increasingly inaccurately-titled “winter code”.

Indeed we were. Three weeks later, a Solent visibly rippling with good health and looking every inch primed for the job in hand stepped onto the course at Bangor-on-Dee ahead of his hurdles debut. The tapes went back, Solent took the lead immediately, and that was effectively the end of the race as a contest.

Given his previous exploits on the Flat over as little as a furlong shorter than the 2m1f of this race, Solent was always likely to need to scorch off here to make it enough of a stamina test for himself, and he did just that en route to a really taking triumph, in which he never led by fewer than 10l and could have humiliated his rivals by far more than the ultimate 12l verdict had he or rider Dougie Costello wanted to.

It was a performance that the harder-bitten analyst may still want to crab to a degree. It is hard to argue against the claims that Solent probably beat close to nothing, with runner-up Wood Fern still to reappear at the time of writing but the 19l third Hernando Cortes having been soundly beaten in three subsequent hurdles starts (including an awful 80l drubbing at Southwell just this afternoon). Further, whilst his jumping was absolutely spot on, so well it might have been with all his rivals too far behind throughout to put it under even the merest scintilla of pressure.

As the familiar maxim goes, however, you can only beat what’s put in front of you – Solent beat little but achieved plenty at Bangor. Whilst acknowledging that harder tasks will undoubtedly follow (not least with the penalty), my Racing Ahead write-up on this performance concluded that for all it was a bloodless win, he exhibited enough class and professionalism to suggest he would be able to do himself justice in whichever of the better (eventually Listed or Graded?) novices’ hurdles this autumn he may be aimed at.

With some very interesting fellow former Flat recruits having their first try over timber in the same race, chief among them the 2005 Derby seventh Unfurled, I hope that last bold statement doesn’t have me reaching for the metaphorical red nose and silly headgear again after his appearance in a much tougher Market Rasen contest this afternoon.

Even if it does, though, at least I was proven right about Solent for one brief, fleeting, long-delayed five-minute spell. Eventually.

A SUNDAY OF JUDGMENTS - HERE ARE SOME OF THE WRONG ONES

The Old Roan Chase. The Summer National. The Greatwood Hurdle. The Becher Chase. The Grand Sefton Chase. The National Spirit Hurdle. The Perth Gold Cup. The Borders National. The Newton Abbot Summer Festival Handicap Hurdle. The October Hurdle at Aintree. The Independent Newspaper Novices’ Chase. Listed novices’ hurdles at Kempton and Exeter. The Coors Cumberland Handicap Chase. A couple of dozen class 3 - or better – handicaps, including many throughout the summer months and two last Sunday.

Proof in spades that Tom Segal’s assertion in the Post four days ago that, “the two jumps meetings are, as usual, of very low quality – it is a Sunday, after all”, won’t necessarily rank among the most accurate he will commit to print this year.

Notwithstanding, and being a magnanimous soul, I will of course gladly mention that Segal remains a tipping titan at his very best, as the finding of Regal Parade ahead of his win in the Ayr Gold Cup, and two wins out of two on Sunday with Lord Ryeford and Always Bold, have most recently attested to.

***

In all honesty it was a bad Sunday for anyone to choose to pick a fight with the racing calendar, as the two jumps cards in question at Plumpton and Uttoxeter had a greater concentration of genuine puzzles between them – as opposed to races which looked mere formalities for just one, or certainly no more than two, of their competitors – than most of what had preceded them in recent weeks.

This corresponding Plumpton card, its first for four months, has additionally enjoyed a burgeoning reputation in recent times. The presence of a near-£11,000, 0-125 class 3 handicap hurdle has played some part in that, for sure, but so too have the two novices’ hurdles, one juvenile and one 4yo+, which both increasingly attract some decent types either on debut or just a race or two into their new careers. King’s Quay was sent on the monster round trip from John Quinn’s yard in Settrington two years ago to make a winning start in the latter race, and last year’s winners of each contest, Hypnotic Vibes and – the eventually 141-rated – Alsadaa, have both certainly proven to be very capable animals indeed.

Mention of these contests cannot pass this year without namechecking Wyeth, winner of the older horses’ contest for the dominant local force of Gary and Jamie Moore. Timber-hopping in Sussex surely wouldn’t have been on anyone’s minds when Wyeth was foaled and then sold for 420,000gns as a yearling, what with the Group1-winning quality of his by then six year-old full brother Grandera having been well established and the also appreciable talents of his half-sibling George Washington about to be.

The 2 ¼l win here, and the one in a Bath gentlemans’ handicap that preceded it, probably don’t as yet go anywhere close to meeting the likely lofty expectations of yore. However, after eight mostly underwhelming performances previously (all bar one for first trainer James Fanshawe), which to me looked to have exposed Wyeth as clumsy, backward, and even on occasion a bit thick (hence my passing over him when tipping on the race for Betfair Radio in favour of the eventually well-beaten Muraco), these recent gains have to go down as a triumph for Team Moore. Having proven wrong to have written him off all too soon, I shall watch whatever continued development follows hereafter with great interest.

***

The recurring theme of getting it wrong brings us neatly to Uttoxeter, and to the most high-profile incident over the jumps on the day (in another class 3 event, incidentally, just to labour the point made earlier). The returning Paddy Merrigan, partnering Bill’s Echo on his first ride for nine months following his well-documented self-imposed hiatus, thinks he might have got his timing slightly wrong on Alistair Whillans’ gelding – I happen not to agree, as even with an earlier move, and without a blunder two out, nothing on the day was going to master an Alphabetical free at last of his wind-based infirmities.

What has been got wrong, majorly so, is the decision of the stewards at the Staffordshire track to impose a ban upon him, and one to the tune of seven days at that, for an ill-judged ride. That Bill’s Echo came late and hard, having been put into the race as far on into it as three fences from home, is not in dispute, but there were sound reasons for doing so which should have prevented any steward familiar with them from acting as punitively.

To this pair of eyes the race certainly seemed to be run a deal quicker throughout than the attendant post-race analyst suggested, as evinced, perhaps, by the way all the front-runners barring the operation-enhanced winner were swamped by the more patiently-ridden late on; and as such Paddy Merrigan’s opting to keep Bills' Echo away from the worst excesses of that pace seemed entirely sensible.

As the gelding’s co-owner Charlie Byers told the Post subsequently, Bill’s Echo had similarly come from a different parish when winning a class 2 Huntingdon 2m handicap chase for Richard Guest almost exactly three years previously. It’s also worth pointing out that not only was Paddy Merrigan engaged at Guest’s yard at the time, but he also finished 7l second behind Bill’s Echo in that race on stablemate Wet Lips. Further still, Bill’s Echo and Merrigan’s subsequent tenures with Paul Nicholls also coincided, and they teamed up for a Newbury 2m chase in early 2007 – they recorded a nearest-at-finish fifth place, achieved by exactly the same method as in the other two examples given.

Simply put, Bill’s Echo and Paddy Merrigan go back a long way, and the latter knows what makes the former tick as well as, if not better than, most riders in circulation. Sunday's ride was palpably imbued with that familiarity.

Keep in mind also that Bill's Echo had only once raced over further than 2m4f before this race (2m5f), pulling up over 3m at Aintree in May; and whilst he had admittedly won over 2m4f at Uttoxeter 18 months ago, that was in a more muddling, small field contest - and with the inspiration of first-time blinkers - when at the height of his powers for Paul Nicholls, rather than a big-field speed-fest like Sunday’s whilst at a lowish ebb (his four previous runs for Whillans this year having been universally poor).

Heaven knows it has not always been easy to love Merrigan. It is hard to forget the staggeringly miserable response to perfectly reasonable interview questions from Mike Vince in the winners’ enclosure at Market Rasen last September, following what was back then the biggest win of his career aboard Iron Man in that course’s big autumn chase. It is probably also fair to say he is unlikely to pick up rides from certain yards again as a result of more than one mysterious or untidy split in what has already been a turbulent short career.

However, whilst I'm not sure I would quite describe the Uttoxeter stewards’ actions as agriculturally as he did in the press, on this occasion Merrigan is certainly the wronged boy rather than the boy in the wrong.

And about that much, I’m sure I’m not wrong.

A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME WOULD STILL BE A CHAMPION... BUT OF WHAT?

I am no more in the habit of taking the Racing Post's Alastair Down to task over articles than I am any other of the industry's foremost writers and columnists, especially as my fields of expertise would not be as all-encompassing as many of theirs. However, I found myself adopting a contrary position to Mr Down on a couple of occasions at the end of May, albeit, I suppose, over relatively small matters in the global scheme of things.

The first of these concerned an otherwise very fair and - if it isn't too inappropriate a term to use, given the course's 2007 misfortunes - watertight piece on Worcester (published May 25th), a racecourse which has been the subject of more regular discussion than most on these pages. Mr Down's suggestion that hunters' chases don't feature at the Pitchcroft venue was true to a point, but I felt compelled to don my hunters' chase anorak in writing to the Post and confirming that the intention was to run one such event at the April 23rd meeting of this year.

This would have been the first since the last edition of a hitherto long-running novices' hunters' chase on April 24th, 1999. In the event, this resumption had to be delayed by another year, as the steeplechase course was deemed still not quite fit for purpose.

The second of these occasions was partially related to the first, concerning as it did Mr Down's reaction to the outcome of the amateur riders' jumps title - I say partially rather than wholly, as the chief protagonists in the title race had gained many victories outwith hunters' chases as well as in them.

The reaction was one of dismay that Rose Davidson had been accorded the title of champion woman amateur rider, rather than of the outright champion amateur, despite having ridden more victories than every male counterpart between early June 2007 and the end of May 2008 - 21, compared to the 20 of nearest pursuer Nick Scholfield. Mr Down's opening salvo of, "When is the jockey who has ridden the most winners not a champion? When they are a woman, according to the Amateur Jockeys' Association", leaves little to the imagination.

On an immediate, gut level, I found it hard to disagree with him. He and I would both, I suspect, regard ourselves as equalists, if not necessarily out-and-out feminists. Strictures of time currently prevent me from checking his previous utterances on the matter of, for example, more female presenters and pundits meritocratically added to both the specialist television channels and Channel 4, Carrie Ford's participation in the Grand National, and so on; an old-school sexist in the John McCririck mould, however, I trust he is almost certainly not.

Having thought a little harder and longer, though, I wondered whether this response was at least partly predicated on the belief that the champion woman amateur was referred to as “outright champion” rather than just “champion woman” the last time she rode the most winners in an amateur riders’ season. Further, I also wondered whether there was any belief on Mr Down's part that the amateur ranks cultivate an expectation that a woman with the most wins would be crowned as anything other than just "champion woman".

The answer to the first of those queries is a straight "no". Rose Davidson's achievements made her the first female amateur ever to ride the most Rules jumps winners in a year, so no precedent exists there which opponents of the decision can cite. Pre-emptively, perhaps, Sarah Oliver of the Amateur Jockeys' Association (AJA) reaffirmed in the Post on the morning of Saturday, May 24th (the last day of the season) that the men and women's titles are very much regarded as separate titles. This appears consistent with previous statements from her and the AJA on jockey awards - "It's good for Tom [O'Brien] and excellent for Rose", is how the paper quoted her summary of 2005-6's respective, separate title winners.

In light of this, she was if anything probably a little too generous when suggesting of this year's events that, "Any confusion probably stems from the fact that the winner of the gentlemen's title usually rides about 18 winners, while the winner of the ladies' title rides seven or eight, and the person with the most gets described as champion". Less charitable proponents of the AJA's stance may suggest that any confusion had and still has actually only stemmed from there being no greater familiarity with the Association's long-held position on the matter.

As regards the second query raised, the notion that the amateur riders' jumps championship should comprise one mixed-sex contest under Rules lays contrary to the practice maintained in point-to-points, a sphere of racing in which essentially all of the main protagonists concerned here were still very much active participants right to the end of May (and beyond, in all bar Scholfield's case).

The champion female point-to-point rider has ended the season between the flags on the same or a higher tally of wins than her male counterpart five times since the riders' titles were established after World War II - Polly Curling managed the feat in three successive seasons from 1993 to 1995 alone, comfortably outscoring Alastair Crow (twice) and Nibby Bloom. Yet on none of these occasions has the woman in question been regarded as anything other than the champion of her sex. There just isn't an expectation there to be so, and as such it seems odd to presume that there may be one among - broadly speaking - the same pool of women for the equivalent Rules title.

Does that damn the amateur ranks as backward in their attitude towards their female achievers? Quite the opposite. Point-to-pointing is a medium of the sport in which, as mentioned previously, champion female riders have been identified as such for over 60 years now (and champion female novice riders as well, albeit only more recently), and in which equality of opportunity has been so long established (with hardly any meetings hosting a Men's Open but no Ladies' equivalent any more) that instances of several victories for female riders at any given meeting raises no eyebrows at all.

The silence on the matter of the AJA's amateur Rules champions from nearly all of the tough, phlegmatic women who populate pointing should be taken not as a meek acceptance of the status quo, therefore, but rather as an acknowledgement that there are almost certainly more important things with which they concern themselves.

It is only right of me to mention that just about the only dissenting voice to be heard from the female amateur ranks over the whole affair has been that of Rose Davidson herself, who described "not actually being called champion" (which isn't semantically accurate - she still is being called champion, as we've discussed) as something "a bit silly" and "sexist", but even so appears not to be so exercised by the decision to argue the case for a combined title any further than that.

Opinion will inevitably continue to differ as to whether it is silly and sexist, or anachronistic, or just an extension of the way amateur riders' achievements are quantified at a lower level of racing than Rules racing; but what it certainly isn't is a device dreamed up relatively late in the day just to spite Rose or any other high-achieving female amateur, and nor must it be thought as such.