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?