A NATIONAL HUNT VENUE ONCE MORE - AND A HINTERLAND

Light Programme.  Owned and trained by Uttoxeter-based permit holder Tony Forbes, ridden by Eugene Husband, a one-length victor over favourite Dunkerron (Jack Joseph / Richard Johnson) from 4lb out of the handicap and the 25-1 sixth favourite of seven.  Four minutes four seconds (19 seconds slower than standard), overround of 112%, race off at 9.10pm or thereabouts.  Mark Johnson called it.

This, back on July 15^th, 2002, was how National Hunt racing at Wolverhampton ended, seemingly forever, with a nondescript 0-105 event to conclude a six-race, 47-runner card of the old Class D or lower fare (including both a claiming and a selling hurdle).  A double for David Wintle and Warren Marston was the most obvious immediate highlight, and the Pipe-McCoy team’s novices chase winner Golden Alpha – next victorious in the following spring’s Red Rum Chase at Aintree – by the looks of it the only animal present with serious prospects at a more vaunted level going forward.

A week and a half after it had started with a Friday afternoon fixture, Dunstall Park’s allocation of two jumps events for both the entire summer jumping season and the season as a whole had been and gone – exactly as had been the case every summer since 1997, if you gloss over the July 5^th meeting of the latter year having been lost to the weather. 

Proper “blink and you’ll miss it” stuff, this was, and the fact National Hunt racing ever returned to Wolverhampton at all after its conversion to the country’s first floodlit artificial surface Flat venue by December 1993 (nine months after the meeting on Friday March 19^th, the day after Cheltenham had finished that year, had first brought jumps action to an abrupt halt there) may well come as a surprise to some.

This small-scale return of what, by that stage, couldn’t be called the “winter sport” anymore (except on pain of death, according to every racing editor I’ve ever worked for) wasn’t entirely without its own small notes of interest, however, for all that the fare was with relatively little exception moderate.      

1) Tony McCoy was mustard around the place, and only twice in 11 visits from 1997 on did he leave empty-handed.  The second of the two fixtures in 1997, 1998 and 1999 between them netted him 10 victories – a four-timer and two hat-tricks.  That’s all the more impressive considering every meeting bar that of July 6^th 2001 was limited to six races.

2) July 13^th 1998 was the occasion of McCoy’s four-timer, with Martin Pipe supplying every one of the winning quartet.  One-time Royal SunAlliance Hurdle third, 6-1 Coral Cup favourite (well beaten behind Top Cees) and 149-rated timber topper Daraydan was the class act of the lot, though as on his chasing debut at Worcester five days earlier he took the opening novice chase here without appearing to care that much for the discipline.

Meanwhile, 31l further down the track, the heroic Quixall Crossett was racking up Rules defeat number 75 under a 7lb claimer by the name of Jim Crowley.

3)  Daraydan wasn’t a one-off quality-wise, though it frequently felt as if Pipe ploughed a lonely furrow in terms of bringing potentially well-above average animals summer jumping to Wolverhampton – certainly until the arrival of an Ian Balding inmate towards the very end (see below).

Maybe, just maybe, some suspicion of the tight track; of the intersections with the then Fibresand Flat course; of the potential for “summer fast ground” (which over-watering nuked on at least one occasion anyway); and/or of the brush hurdles that Wolverhampton enlisted, played a part. 

Either way, the master of Pond House profited with good or promising horses where others feared to tread.  The McCoy/Pipe hat-trick of July 12^th 1999 featured a win in Daraydan’s novice chase for “nearly horse” Nocksky.  What might he might have achieved, had injury not robbed him of 2000, 2001 and 2003. 

A little later on the same card, the brand new French import Carlovent made an absolute nonsense of an opening handicap hurdle mark of 119.  By that autumn he’d won a Free Hurdle off 133, and within 18 months been awarded a rating of 155 after running Baracouda to 3l in a foot and mouth-necessitated World Hurdle replacement Grade 1 event at Sandown.

4)  Fourth in the Grand Annual (2m) and brought down at the first in the Grand National (4m4f!) in successive races earlier in the year, Logician’s win off 131 in the feature 0-135 2m handicap chase on July 5^th 2002 (part one of, inevitably, a McCoy double) gave Ian Balding the first of four successes in the final half-season of National Hunt of his long and distinguished training career (son Andrew took over the following January).  Gunner Welburn, at Chepstow just before Christmas, was one of the other three.

5)  For all of Pipe’s heavy scoring at Dunstall Park, the notional award for the best training feat of the 1997-2002 era arguably ought to go to Robin Dickin for bringing back Sagaman to land the opening handicap chase on July 4^th 1998. 

Winner of the Galway Hurdle for Liam Codd in 1991, the German-bred 12-year-old had been a martyr to tendon and muscle injuries in more recent times, but under Jim Culloty made light on this occasion of an absence of a staggering 1,002 days.  No “bounce” followed – Sagaman doubled up at Market Rasen a month later, and scored once more the following summer as a teenager.

6)  If his perch of 131 made Logician the highest-rated animal to land a handicap during Wolverhampton’s revival of jumps racing, then the 53 of Curragh Peter on July 7^th 2000 made him comfortably the lowest – and one of the very lowest anywhere, in fact, since the late-1989 revision of the ratings scale.  The Pippa Bickerton-trained, Steve Wynne-ridden 40-1 outside of six additionally achieved the feat from 11lb out of the weights, though the tragic coda to his so doing was a fatal heart attack post-race.

7)  Quixall Crossett was not the only cult hero to take in the action at Dunstall Park in this period.  A novice hurdle of July 6^th 2001 bore witness to the racecourse debut of none other than Amjad, at the time an ex-Clive Brittain 4yo hope for Pat Haslam.  Still with the leaders bearing down on three out, an unfortunate loss of footing brought he and McCoy down to earth and a chance begging. 

Few of the wily old rogue’s subsequent losses (another 83 since then over jumps alone, interspersed with four victories when he’s felt like it) have required many excuses making, however; and by dint of a latest outing in October 2012 at the time of writing this now 16-year-old is unsurprisingly the last horse to have jumped an obstacle competitively at Dunstall Park still in training under Rules.

8)  Away from Rules action, finally, May 12^th 2002 also witnessed the last occasion of the course’s foray into Point-to-Pointing, with the Wheatland hosting its fixture there for one final year before decamping to its still-current home at the outstanding Chaddesley Corbett. 

A venture first embarked upon in 1996, and by 2002 thought well enough of by connections of Pointers for 86 horses to face the starter across eight races that afternoon (no small turnout for a late-season event), the 20^th and final victory (19 between the flags) of Sheila Crow’s indefatigable Whatafellow in the Men’s Open ranked an obvious equine highlight; though for those spectators of a more waspish disposition towards artificial surface racing, maybe getting to park their vehicles all over the actual Fibresand racing surface was at least as gratifying.

If all of these fixtures had escaped many of your attention, chances are that an earlier, but ill-starred, attempt to rekindle National Hunt action at Wolverhampton might have also.

Perhaps with a view to swelling attendances to late-1980s sorts of figures (6,346 customers paid full whack in 1989), or perhaps as an appeasement to Midlands jumps fans with Nottingham’s own National Hunt line confirmed as doomed (and never used again under Rules after February 29^th 1996), the decision was taken to convert the lucrative Boxing Day fixture of both 1995 and 1996 back to one of hurdles and fences.  Each, however, fell to the weather.

Turf jumping, of course, is now a logistical impossibility at Dunstall Park.  The conversion of the course from Fibresand to Polytrack in 2004 also took with it enough vestiges of the turf line that even a part-grass, part-sand course cannot be entertained.  Additionally, nearly 19 years on from the abrupt cessation of hurdling on an artificial surface in this country, when the hideously conspicuous demise of the miles-clear War Beat at Lingfield (February 24^th, 1994) proved one loss too many for some in racing to stomach, there’s no obvious prospect looming of Polytrack or Fibresand hurdles and chases returning on even a trial basis.

As such, this blog’s trip down memory lane today shouldn’t ordinarily enjoy any sort of present-day context – National Hunt at Wolverhampton is over and done with, finished, kaput.  But go back to the second paragraph above, and the words “seemingly forever”.  Seemingly, but not actually.

For the ninth time since the concept was first tried out on a British racetrack at Kempton back in December 2010, this Sunday will see the hosting of a “jumpers’ bumper” card of National Hunt Flat races for horses with experience over obstacles.  For the first of these occasions, the card will take place at Wolverhampton.  A return, then – not one with jumps in it, but one with jumpers, so a return nonetheless.         

Seven races, 79 runners; and whilst not exactly wall-to-wall quality, at least two or three animals for whom connections have sensed that some outing – any outing – over a weekend for which they may well have been primed to have a final pre-Festival outing is necessary and welcome. 

Hence, perhaps, the appearance of Nicky Henderson’s 2m4f-3m chaser Mush Mir, whose current rating of 135 would walk him a place in the Kim Muir line-up if connections wanted it, and for whom stable amateur Nico de Boinville would represent a logical choice of partner (it’s Jerry McGrath who’s on board this time, however).  It’s no hindrance to his prospects on Sunday, of course, that he’s already recorded a good second in another jumpers’ bumper as recently as last month.

Hence also, perhaps, the second run on the comeback trail for Have You Seen Me, the trailblazer on his return from 20 months out in the Paul Stewart at Cheltenham last time before a lack of race-fitness inevitably told, but surely better for that outing and not one for giving up on with big 2m4f-2m5f handicaps in mind in the coming weeks barring a setback.

Hence perhaps above all, and among a phalanx of lesser Paul Nicholls animals entered, the appearance in the finale of Hinterland, already this autumn the winner of the erstwhile Free Hurdle and runner-up in both the Henry VIII and Wayward Lad Chases.  If a little shy of top-class in the novice chase ranks, as appears to be the case at this stage, the Grand Annual looks more his metier.  An authoritative display on Sunday would do little to nothing to derange that thought.

Assuming the 140s-rated hurdler and chaser proves amenable enough to this change of discipline to oblige, you may want to start rehearsing the following: Hinterland, owned by Chris Giles & Portensis Ltd, trained by Paul Nicholls, ridden by Daryl Jacob and sent off at something cramped.  The times, overrounds and other sundries I’ll leave to you.

That, then, will become the new holder of the title “last jumps winner at Wolverhampton” – except to anyone insisting that the runner had to have jumped something to qualify...