PUNTING THAT UNHINGED DESERVES A PAT

And so to Beverley yesterday evening, the course shrouded in gloom on what had turned out to be quite a greyish day (remember them?) on the expanses of Westwood Heath.  No prospects this time, then, of seeing the £75,000 worth of recently installed solar panels on the grandstand roof helping to turn the proverbial wheels at the East Riding course.

No prospects either, alas, of every last member of a fair-sized crowd having enough natural light left to work with after racing to find a safe way back to their vehicle without some manner of cowpat-oriented disaster befalling a number of them.

Your writer will leave you to decide how he fared.  Suffice it to say that there’s a reason why Minesweeper has found most favour as a game on a PC desktop rather than as a twilight outdoor pursuit in rural Yorkshire; and that if not uniquely incontinent, the bovine residents of the Heath certainly appear to be prolific.

Increasingly prolific in a thankfully more socially acceptable way, Relight My Fire looked banker material to complete a hat-trick before the evening's 7.5f handicap and proved as much in practice, a 9lb higher mark (factoring in a penalty) ultimately as insufficient a bar to further gain as both Racing Post and Timeform adjusted ratings had predicted would be the case. 

Indeed, the latter organisation deemed Relight My Fire the only declaration worthy of a “Horse In Focus” award on the entire card, and the 4lb that Tim Easterby’s Firebreak three-year-old had over his next best rival on adjusteds was a margin without equal anywhere else at Beverley on the evening, according to the sages of Halifax.

All in all, then, his was a chance that resounded off the page as loudly as duty commentator Mark Johnson’s delivery did from the microphone all evening.  Not that Skegness’s finest was all gusto and force at the expense of user-friendliness and humour.  Far from it. 

“Relight My Fire? Take That!”, Johnson shared as the Easterby runner dotted up, with all the confidence of a man certain that even a former number one barely three months short of its twentieth birthday (no, really, it is – check British Hit Singles, and then wonder where a quarter of your life went) would be well-enough known to elicit the desired crowd reaction.  He was right.

More curious from Johnson was the attempt at rendering 2m maiden handicap participant Moaning Butcher as “Butt”cher, in that same scrubbed-up, don't-say-it-too-northern manner effected by party leaders whenever ordering fish, chips and “muss”shy peas in front of the television cameras on an electoral walkabout. 

This nascent identity crisis clearly weighing on Moaning Butcher's mind, it’s no wonder that the Lucarno gelding seemed otherwise distracted during the race itself, never looking fully inclined to provide Silvestre De Sousa with a fourth winner on the night and to stride out more purposefully.

Not that anything was proving that capable of striding out very fast at all in that race, if the truth be told.  Marathon low-grade three-year-old handicaps (maiden or otherwise, and especially those this soon into the summer) are almost their own special little sub-genre of races, each stocked with creatures presumably thought too slow to be worth sending over the 2m-2m2f juvenile hurdling trips, yet at the same time that are too young to be found any opportunities in 2m4f-plus handicap hurdles until into the autumn at least.

Hold the equine treasures that populate these races close to your hearts, people.  Right here are the genuine Kittenkats or Peters or Bally Liras of the Flat world – unstintingly modest, but able to plod on and on interminably like nothing else in this mode of racing until some spoilsport calls a halt to proceedings two miles in, declares one of them to be the marginally least pedestrian of the bunch and advises the rest that they’ve probably been participating in the wrong East Yorkshire slowpokes' event of renown. 

Just imagine.  “No, Neddy love, it’s the Kiplingcotes Derby you want.  Seven miles down the road that way, turn right at the big church and continue just past Etton.  You’ll like that contest – twice the length of tonight’s and with something a bit heavier than nine stone up to keep your speed down…  Have fun, don’t hurry home too soon (obviously), etc.”

Imagination got the better of your writer once again in the finale, a 5f sprint handicap with the day’s biggest field of nine.  Miss Bunter was set to come out of box nine itself, but given this season’s prevailing far greater spread of winning draws in sprint races at Beverley (inside, middle and indeed outside) than hitherto, siding with one in a car park stall wasn’t what constituted the flight of fancy.

Rather, it was the unhinged thinking (“lateral” pays it too great a compliment – think 321 rather than Only Connect) that led me to convince myself that Miss Bunter constituted a topical bet on the night. 

Topical how?  Well, Miss Bunter is presumably named after Bessie Bunter, the sister of Billy Bunter, and as such shares his love of food.  Yes?  So here is a horse named after a girl who eats a lot, and there’s one girl eating a lot who couldn’t have been any more in the news right now.  With me so far?  One girl who’ll have been eating for two for the past nine months - until finally delivering the third in line to the throne yesterday evening itself.

That’s right – it was pre-ordained that Princess Catherine was going to ensure that Miss Bunter won.  Except, of course, it wasn't and she did nothing of the sort, instead finding five of her rivals – including eventual winner Oil Strike and the newest member of racing’s “100 Club”, Dandy Nicholls’ popular teenager Indian Trail – too much to handle on her first start back since March.

Note to self: pick a chubbier girl for inspiration next time.  Even in the most advanced state of her pregnancy, Kate was probably still scarcely any wider than one of my own legs…