A WINNER AT HUNTINGDON INSTEAD OF CARTMEL? BE MY GUEST

Huntingdon for the Racing Post, rather than Cartmel just for fun, constituted my racing fix on August Bank Holiday Monday yesterday; though mention of the Lakeland idyll cannot pass without first offering congratulations to Harriet Graham for training Soul Magic to the moment for a seventh course and distance victory in the extended 2m1f handicap chase.

The Post’s David Carr put that achievement into some context in today’s paper.  Whilst the singular nature of Cartmel does lend itself to certain horses being aimed at races there over and over again, ubiquity can frequently be mistaken for actual course specialism. 

I had to remind myself in writing this piece that Britannia Mills (my first ever winning bet at the track on my first trip there) won “only” three races at the venue 10-15 years ago despite 12 visits; and more starkly still, Peak Seasons has mustered a single win at the course despite facing the starter there 20 times since Whitsun 2007.

Carr, however, confirmed that to win seven times at Cartmel is a feat achieved by just one other animal previously – Deep Mystery, who eked out those scores over eight years (firstly for Edward Hollister Owen, latterly for Cathie Lloyd-Jones) from 1976 to 1984.  Soul Magic, conversely, has required just two years and two months to rack up the same quantity, and whilst the greater number of meetings at Cartmel now compared to 30-plus years ago has aided his cause on the one hand, more typically punitive reactions to victories by handicappers nowadays won’t actually have made the task any simpler.

If not from a ratings sense, given he’s never defied higher than yesterday’s 96 up to now, to this writer’s mind Soul Magic can lay a strong claim to being the most extraordinary horse ever to have graced the Cartmel turf – and in a course history which has included everything from the oldest ever recorded Rules runner (Creggmore Boy, fourth in a chase in June 1962 at the age of 22) to a win for the same season’s eventual Triumph Hurdle hero (Countrywide Flame), that would be no small accolade.  A commemorative race should be framed, it nothing else.

Time was, of course, that virtually every Cartmel meeting would feature a pile of runners, and often a winner or two, for either or both of two Richards – messrs Ford and Guest.  Save for one runner for the latter in the Monday afternoon juvenile hurdle, however, neither had any designs on trying to win another bottle of champagne or sticky toffee pudding at this weekend’s two-day fixture.  Huntingdon was on the agenda for both instead, and successfully so for Guest.

Ten years ago the Richard Guest mantra was still very much one of sourcing or homebreeding animals to bring along slowly and eventually win chases with – your writer devoted hour after hour to recording Guest's successes and failures with his jumpers on the long-since dormant Brancepethfan blog. 

A lot of water has flown under the bridge for Guest since then, however, including but not limited to the loss of a sizeable portion of his then jumps-biased string when splitting with chief owner Paul Beck in late 2005; the eventual departure from Brancepeth Manor Farm when landlord Norman Mason quit both racing and the UK; the removal of subsequent dual Group 1 hero Les Arcs by Willie McKay; the Bute-based nobbling of his 2005 Royal York runner Ooh Ah Camara by Vicky Haigh; a shortlived tenure at Carburton in Nottinghamshire with Shaun Harris; and a happier recent tenure at Bawtry in South Yorkshire than nevertheless still saw principle owners Steven Arnold and EERC move their Flat strings elsewhere in time.

Reinvention has proven necessary on more than one occasion, and the Guest of the past four years or so has been one whose stock in trade has been to elicit a steady supply of wins from mostly cheaply bought and (barring the odd Barnet Fair-like exception) very ordinary Flat stock – quite some way removed from the slow, often painstaking rearing of embryonic chasers of his original blueprint.

As mission statements go, though, it’s been one that the former Grand National-winning rider has been conspicuously successful at adhering to.  None of his six winners on the level this month will have struck the broader public as anything of particular note, being an assortment of class 5 and 6 scores once again. 

In notching up these victories, however, the now Wetherby-based Guest has continued to ensure that he’s saddled at least one British Flat winner every single month since December 2009 – that’s a grand total of 45 months on the spin.

It’s hard to find too many of his peers that can boast an unbroken Flat sequence as long as or longer than that.  Richard Fahey’s current run started in the same month as Guest’s, whilst those of Ron Harris, David Evans and Mark Johnston go back further still.  That’s almost certainly as many such runs as there still are, especially after Richard Hannon’s own marathon run without a blank month came to an end in January of this year. 

Steeplechase winners for Guest, conversely, there had been none of since the last of Be My Deputy’s four quickfire wins this last April and sale out of the yard a month later (an increasingly smart-looking piece of business, that, given how the Oscar gelding has appeared held off his current mark since joining Lucinda Russell).  None, that is, until Huntingdon yesterday.

Balinroab, purchased for £8,000 at the DBS Sales just 20 days earlier to bring owner Christine Fordham’s portfolio back up to two horses (Pobs Trophy having been retired immediately after winning a Market Rasen hurdle in July), could yet prove another tidy piece of business, especially if the personal attention likely to be bestowed upon him as the sole chaser currently in Guest’s care makes him feel better about himself than ever before.

Whatever magic Guest might try to work on the gelding’s confidence at home will count for little if his rider doesn’t follow in a similar vein on course.  Pairs of hands don’t come a lot safer in that regard than Denis O’Regan’s, though, and the same rider that rather had to get after the idle Be My Deputy for a number of those early-2013 wins gave an exemplary display of his other, more conciliatory riding talents on the ex-Jonjo O’Neill new recruit in Huntingdon’s feature 3m handicap chase. 

Mistakes came from Balinroab early on.  They were sat tight through by O’Regan and forgiven.  Time was afforded the gelding to (re-)organise himself as far as it is possible to around this flat, turning venue.  He repaid the favour and continued to travel well.  O’Regan inched Balinroab ever closer again without battering him, and got him to the coat-tails of his two remaining serious rivals at the last.  A big effort was called for to outjump and outsprint Baily Storm and Rudigreen.  The call was answered.  Balinroab careered up the run-in a happy horse.

To what extent the Milan six-year-old can build on this effort is a question for another day; ditto whether sparing the rod and spoiling the horse will always work as well once his mark starts to take a marked hike north once again (having dropped to within 1lb of his last winning one here). 

For the time being, at least, Guest can reflect on a job well done with Balinroab.  He's still no pudding where training chasers are concerned, you know - sticky toffee or otherwise.
 

SWAP YOU SUN, SEA AND SAND FOR STRATFORD

“We’re all going on a summer holiday”… except we no longer are, if the “we” in question happen to be some of the country’s leading National Hunt riders.

With the programming of six new Tuesday twilight fixtures by the British Horseracing Authority from September 3^rd onwards came successful bids from six tracks, and in the case of Stratford an additional fixture (the richest of the sextet, with a £39,000 prize fund) which plugs a seven-week gap between its core summer season and pair of late-October events.

That such a gap exists at all “makes no sense whatsoever for a summer jumping course”, according to managing director Stephen Lambert, up until now unable to secure a replacement for the BHA leasehold meeting Stratford held on the third Tuesday of September from 2008 to 2010, but not since, following that fixture’s discontinuation.

Lambert will therefore doubtlessly be delighted that, by whichever route, this corresponding raceday is back on the Stratford portfolio.  As well he may be.  The racecourse's executive is well within its right to secure an extra meeting for its venue – one of the six original members of the summer jumping programme founded in 1995 – in what is still the summer season, if the branding of the "Prelude" day at Market Rasen two weeks later as summer jumping’s denouement is held as gospel.

So wherein lies the rub, especially given September’s longstanding and disproportionate paucity of meetings compared to every single other month in the National Hunt calendar? 

Well, it turns out that the only “rub” many riders had planned for that week was of Factor 30 lotion into torsos in rather warmer climes than Luddington Road, CV37 9SE.

Brickbats, then, in the direction of the BHA for permitting a small jumps track in the Midlands to provoke the cancellation of many escapes to the sun, or the packing of buckets and spades back in the garden shed?  Not at all - it’s probably got very little to reproach itself over on this occasion.  The actual BHA-designated holiday-time for our riders - short enough or too short as it may be - is taking place right now, as this very article is written.

First, some background context.  Half-remembered complaints from some of the saddle’s leading practitioners over the September break lead your writer to a search back through Racing Post articles of yesteryear, and sure enough, a piece from September 9^th 2010 unearthed some of them in full.

Leading the argument for a dedicated break in the jumps programme back then, Richard Johnson insisted that, “it should be at a time which suits everyone; lads with children would like it when the kids are on holiday in August, not when they are back in school”.

Back then such break as existed wasn't programmed at a time which suits everyone, but now it is.  In defending Stratford’s application, BHA media manager Robin Mounsey inferred that the continued break in September still exists only by dint of no other jumps courses having encroached upon it by now.  More tellingly still, though, Mounsey reminded us all that the actual designated summer break for National Hunt riders in 2013 runs in August, as indeed it had also done in 2012.  For this season, that means from the 5^th to the 12^th inclusive.

And that August hiatus, lest it be forgotten, was contrived entirely with riders in mind.  Riders such as Graham Lee, still a jumps man at the time of the Post article cited above, and hence also at the time of his assertion that, “It is no use at all to me having a break in September when the children are back at school”.

Whether a week is long enough is a moot point; Johnson had suggested back in 2010 that two to three weeks would be appreciated, and Lee himself six (a period he'd surely now be less likely to secure at this time of year given his current duties as a Flat rider?).  Regardless, the August break is there to be used by riders; it was framed especially for them to do so; and to bemoan the (sanctioned) filling in of the previous break that it was intended to replace does smack a little of gainsaying the BHA's best intentions.

Aidan Coleman was certainly one rider planning to use the time off away from the racetrack, according to the Post of Wednesday of this week, but insisted to the paper that now he cannot. 

“Cannot” – now that’s a strong word in this context.  Does that hint that the relationship between so many jumps riders and their principle employers is so delicate as to be placed in jeopardy by the rider missing one hastily arranged fixture to go on holiday – a holiday that would likely refresh and recharge the rider concerned and help them better serve their patrons upon their return? 

That’s a genuine question in search of a genuine answer, as your writer doesn't know; though on the face of it the likelihood that Coleman’s major provider of rides, Venetia Williams, would ask her stable jockey and star asset to seek alternative employment elsewhere on the back of his forgoing just one afternoon’s work at Stratford in a habitually quiet month of the year for her (just 17 runners have been sent out by the Kings Caple handler across the last four Septembers since 2009) doesn’t seem all that strong.

It’s a question which can remain unanswered if one workaround is implemented.  If the pro riders still want this September break in addition to the August one, but don’t want to miss races in which they’re eligible to ride, then plenty points towards Stratford framing the twilight card as one of races open to amateur and conditional riders only.

It’s hardly as if Stratford is averse to loading a fixture with events for the sport’s emerging or unpaid pilots, as those present on Stratford Foxhunter evening (with its four hunter chases) will attest to.  A reintroduction of the heat of the Fegentri gentleman amateur riders world series which it used to stage at a July fixture (in the guise of a 2m handicap hurdle) could tie down a further slot on the card; ditto the addition of a second conditionals and amateurs bumper to complement that which is already run at the height of summer.

A final thought, and one touched on in passing by Professional Jockeys Association chief executive Paul Struthers in the same Post piece this week: it wouldn’t surprise if all this talk of factoring in “holidays” for jumps jockeys has rather bemused those based steadfastly in the north of England and in Scotland, many of whom would love a summer fixture list possessed of such congestion in the first place. 

From the start of July until the final Tuesday of August, Cartmel and Perth alone offer riders opportunities over the sticks north of the M62; and whilst the quantity of meetings at both has risen slightly in recent years, those still cannot prevent blank periods for National Hunt in “The North” from June 24^th to July 2^nd, July 5^th to 13^th, and August 1^st to 16^th. 

All periods of time, you’ll note, at least the equal and in one case twice the length of the official break for jumps riders.