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.