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.