ONE LEG TOO FEW - FOR NOW

It would be tempting to suggest that if there were a stable cat at Pam Sly’s Cambridgeshire yard she’d be kicking it by now, would trying to do so with her one remaining fit leg not risk sending her crashing to the floor.

Sometimes when your luck’s out it’s really out.  Already enduring a thin jumps season by her standards (2-38, when there’s typically been at least four winners on the board by now), with stable star Helpston yet to complete in two starts and Kayaan’s pair of thirds in Market Rasen’s two Listed summer hurdles increasingly fading from view, Sly’s mishap before race one at Wetherby last Sunday put a particularly rancid cherry on a most unappealing of cakes.

The first sketchy details of her leg break to flutter onto the assorted social media did little to suggest anything other than what most of us would have assumed to be the likeliest of causes – namely, that Sly’s handicap hurdle runner Chicklemix (Helpston’s half-sister, and the trainer’s first National Hunt winner since May when obliging at the same course on Boxing Day) had lashed out in the box-park or pre-parade ring and scored a direct hit. 

In fact the blameless mare had done nothing of the sort.  Instead, Sly’s upper leg, already the subject of two hip replacements previously, simply gave way completely as horse and human took the downward slope of the horsebox ramp, leaving the trainer wracked in agony and quite possibly wondering what fresh Hell may be next.

Hopefully none, is the answer; but whilst the weekend’s misfortune is clearly as far removed joy-wise from the 2005-6 glory days of 1,000 Guineas heroine Speciosa (the magnesium-scoffing “witch in a box” made good) as it’s possible to get, it’s equally not the only major reverse ever endured during the long training career of Sly, memorably still the target of unjustified vilification by Animal Aid all of two years after Griffins Bar’s freak demise in the 1998 Grand National (two days after a fall in the John Hughes Trophy which none but the most opportunistic ghouls would claim contributed to his tragic accident).

The Thorney (of residence rather than temperament) handler can be taken to emerge fighting, and fighting fit, once again before the summer’s out, though a nice winner as soon as Tuesday at Market Rasen would certainly help the medicine go down for now.  Overnight Post tissue prices of 20-1, 66-1 and 25-1 respectively would count against the chances of Bountiful Catch, Patna and Iconic Rose as winning propositions, but all three are either homebred or from families with which Sly has done really well over the years. 

None yet older than six, they have time enough to come good;  and if not wads of punters’ cash, may they at least carry the goodwill of many in racing towards their ailing handler tomorrow.