GRAYSONSCOLUMN VERSUS THE WORLD - SCORING DRAW AT HALF-TIME

There will be any number of grander, more significant races run during the course of this jumps season, of course, but the maiden hurdle on Taunton’s otherwise innocuous card on November 27th had more of my integrity and judgment as an analyst / tipster riding on it than most.

Some of those 25,000 or so worthy souls who had ratcheted the Sportsman up to its highest ever paid-for sales figures in the few weeks immediately before its demise (the irony, the irony!) may have happened to notice that each member of the racing team was in the throes of nominating his or her “ten to follow” during its last week of trading. My ten sneaked into issue number 191 of 193, on October 3rd.

The remit for our choices was emphatically NOT just to try to find ten horses likely to be vying for Championship honours come March, as it was reckoned that:

- the season is far bigger than the four days of the Festival, and
- pinpointing animals likely to show a healthy return on a £1 level stake was more in keeping with the raison d’etre of a betting paper.

I’d no quarrel with either assertion. Therefore, with the exception of Voy Por Ustedes (whom I’m hoping won’t have to watch the backside of the terrific Kauto Star disappear from view too many more times this season) and the now-sidelined Mr Nosie, my list remained relatively short of real or aspiring superstars. Just the way I like it.

One of my ten was Corran Ard, the happiest accident of a great summer for Evan Williams. Originally intended to be given one spin on the Flat to restore confidence after two years out, he instead won three handicaps, including a £20,000 0-100 at Pontefract.

My thinking was that he’d be good enough to land a small novices’ hurdle at least, but become a more rewarding proposition when pitched into a big handicap contest, and in particular the Imperial Cup at Sandown – two game Flat wins at up to 10f indicated an ability to handle the track, and his form in Ireland included a win over the same easy ground conditions as the Esher track is still well capable of producing in early March.

In the same article, as in common with all my colleagues, I was given the opportunity to nominate one horse to avoid for the season, and whilst there other animals out there that were opposable on the grounds of being poorly handicapped or getting on a bit, I didn’t have to think too long and hard before opting to bury Paul Nicholls' ex-Flat recruit Ouninpohja, writing:

Good luck to all concerned, but it’s far from guaranteed that a switch to hurdles will see the Ouninpohja who stormed to a five-timer and a triple-figure Flat rating in 2005 re-emerge to replace the frustrating, head-tossing, unwilling Ouninpohja of 2006 – and certainly not worth the 165,000gns his new connections paid to find out.

That Ouninpohja turned out in a small West Country contest for his hurdles debut, as so many from his yard do, registered as no great surprise, but the pounds signs lit up in my eyes when I saw that Corran Ard was in opposition for his first try over timber also. Vaunted Nicholls animals in 2m1f Taunton novices’ hurdles do not go off at working man’s prices, and a win for Corran Ard at the SP of 5-1 over an Ouninpohja by then trading as the 4-6F jolly would have counted as a very nice boost to my level stakes running total (not doing desperately well so far, to be truthful) as well as a vindication of my judgment.

We know the rest, though. Despite still being only two months on from his final catastrophic display of pratting about under pressure to snatch defeat from victory on the Flat, Ouninpohja looked a calm, confident and altogether different animal throughout here. He was ultimately unextended to win by a length having picked off Corran Ard at the last, instantly catapulting himself into the leading half dozen or so for the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle betting off the back of a performance the Racing Post rated just 6lb inferior to Noland’s in taking that Cheltenham feature earlier this year.

Not quite the outcome for which I was hoping, then, and maybe the change of scenery and discipline were going to help Ouninpohja realise all the potential that, really and truly, something formerly rated as high as 110 on the Flat should be capable of displaying if switching to hurdles, making my decision to oppose him look very foolish indeed on the way.

Back over the same course and distance yesterday, however, there were the first signs that maybe, just maybe, Ouninpohja won’t prove quite as willing or capable of finding the necessary late on all of the time over hurdles either, for whilst he looked all over the winner turning for home, the response off the bridle one flight from the finish simply didn’t pass muster.

Time may show that the 11l winner De Soto, on only his second start for an age, is now suitably over his problems to replicate, if not better, the form of his second in the Festival Bumper 20 months ago, but Ouninpohja still had an undeniable advantage fitness-wise after a sensible enough 2006 campaign spread over both codes (nine runs in eight months couldn’t count as excessive). Moreover, whilst the ground at Taunton was softer than a fortnight earlier, the gelding has won quite peaceably with give underfoot, and indeed if we are to take one of his former trainers Alan Swinbank’s word as gospel, he wasn’t especially enjoying it on faster even when running up his five-timer for that handler in 2005.

Barring a clash with something with a huge reputation at home, you suspect it would take another reversal or two in this company for his starting odds to lengthen to any particular extent, and whilst one relative failure over hurdles may not be enough in and of itself to write him off entirely, the evidence of that run - plus my commitment in print to opposing him! – will have me looking to take him on next time out.

Corran Ard, in the meantime, was able to justify far skinnier odds than last time’s 5-1 – 5-6F this time around, in fact – in taking a Southwell maiden hurdle on good to soft this afternoon. He showed a willing attitude to outbattle Pevensey, like him a horse rated in the high 80s at his best on the Flat, by a neck, with all else well held in behind. Clearly it’s a long way from £2,600 pots at the Nottinghamshire venue to Listed handicap hurdles, and the projected target of the Imperial Cup may prove wide of the mark in several senses, but if nothing else the last 48 hours have served to reaffirm which of these two horses I’d prefer to have on my side to “win ugly” if my life depended on it.

Changing horse and venue briefly to return to my last post from a few weeks ago, the intervening period of time has seen the return to action of the horse whose connections complained to the Sportsman when my review of his win in a rotten Northern handicap chase in September was not fawning enough.

I insisted at the time his jumping out in the lead was simply as functional as it should have been given he had no competition for his preferred front-running berth. On this subsequent appearance, he once again had a soft early lead and found jumping comfortable enough for as long as that remained the case.

That he was then unable to maintain that lead to the end (on a course more suited to pillar to post victories than that of his previous victory) against:

- a horse already beaten 130l in a subsequent outing against similar opposition, and
- another – tubed – rival rated 22lb inferior and running 10lb wrong in total on the day including his jockey’s overweight,

didn’t look to me like anything other than vindication of my previous assertion that recording another victory was likely to prove beyond him.

It’s nice to be proven right sometimes. My dearest wish is to make more of a habit of it as the season progresses.