That Racing Blog

2010-01-11T00:13:00.007Z

IT'S NOT THE NEW ICE AGE... IT'S THE RACING COVER-AGE

Happy New Year to all That Racing Blog readers. I hope the festive period treated you well and you face 2010 suitably refreshed. I got two early, and pretty unwanted, presents at the start of December in the form of the 'flu and no less unwelcome (or debilitating) writer's block - I think would have preferred socks. A / the / any God willing, I'm back on top of matters now.

***

One professional racegoing friend of mine was moved to write in a Facebook update last weekend words to the effect that travelling to so many racecourses recently whose meetings remained in the balance right up until racetime hasn’t been good for his nerves. Or, for that matter, for the pocket.

It’s hard not to sympathise. For those of us living in or close to London (to say nothing of further afield), a return trip to Chepstow for Welsh National day, for example, would have required an investment of at least six hours’ driving time and at least 250-odd miles’ worth of petrol, but above all else an investment in the belief that what racecourse officials were regarding as “touch and go” conditions would have become rather more “all systems go” by the time destination had been reached.

Quite a commitment in the throes of a stingingly cold winter period, and a very long, despondent trudge back along the M4 were it to have been met with an abandonment.

Fortunately, both his trip to Chepstow and an only slightly shorter one to Cheltenham for both of us four days later rewarded our own powers of perseverance... and those of the respective racecourse executives all the more so.

Clear skies in particular – and clear they were on these two racedays - can be cruel tormentors of embattled clerks of courses in the midwinter months. Overcast, cloudy, damp conditions provide a drab backdrop to December and January meetings, but frequently at least halfway workable temperatures, too. If a cold winter’s day is clear enough to let the sun work on the ground, however, chances are that it was clear enough to let the frost get into it first as well.

Ah, but surely the threat posed by these clear skies is no threat at all if the sainted covers employed increasingly often by racecourses do their job properly, yes? Well, no.

The covers do not represent a global panacea, and shouldn’t be assumed to do so. What they will always do is allow a racecourse to steal a bit of a march on the elements, and hopefully a decisive one; but those covers still have to come off enough hours before racing (usually up to three, though opinion varies slightly) to allow even a frost-free racing surface to recover from its incarceration; to breathe, to all intents and purposes.

And anyone who still remembers the ritual torture of cross-country runs during their schooling will know just how hard it is to breathe on a freezing cold day without seizing up.

Seizing up is precisely what the ground did when Haydock’s mid-December card was called off in unfortunate and well-documented circumstances. Yet later that same afternoon Barney Clifford admitted during an interview with us on Timeform Radio that even with the deployment of covers, at least one Kempton jumps meeting last winter came perilously close to meeting the same fate, and with that the same tirades as directed at the likes of Kirkland Tellwright and Fiona Needham in the recent past were only narrowly circumvented.

On such small margins as maybe just one degree’s variance in temperature either way can the difference between inspired perseverance and public relations disaster rest – who’d be a clerk of the course sometimes.

Of course, by simple expedient of calling an inspection, and then another, a realistic degree of caution was being exercised by all at Cheltenham on New Years Day, covers notwithstanding. Hope still sprang eternal, but not recklessly so - I got to the course just before 10am, and the messages to have been conveyed to my already present Cheltenham Radio / Timeform Radio colleagues so far that morning placed the chances of racing at “70-30” – certainly nothing more bullish than that.

The rest you know. Racing survived, albeit with recourse to a further inspection after the opening race, and race times were condensed to ensure the entire racing programme could be squeezed into the remaining, finite daylight hours. Ironically, though, when I left the course at 5.45pm, the air temperature felt as warm as it had at any time during the day and the racing surface had yet to crisp over.

The vagaries of the British weather reinforced once again. What price a set of Kempton-style floodlights, anyone?

And what of the racing itself? All told 30 horses were pulled out due to the going, but in several cases were as much on account of either the racing surface riding faster than the projected, or else the whim of individual owners of horses whose stablemates did in many cases still take their chances.

What was left was undeniably a smaller total of runners than is usually the case for a Cheltenham meeting, but there will be plenty of fixtures at other courses this winter that will fail to attract as many runners as the eventual 56 on far less (real or imagined) marginal going.

And although it won't have been the most informative meeting for Festival pointers, it's not as if we didn't learn a thing or two - Wolf Moon has the potential to remain a horse the assessor has problems nailing; Radium proved he can handle undulating courses and has increased his options accordingly; Sentry Duty remains an irresistible force caught fresh; and Pigeon Island's appetite for chasing is looking on the wane.

Finally, and returning to the theme of perseverance and effort, massive kudos should go the way of Richard Hoiles for showing, during Seven Is My Number and Pigeon Island’s match for the Dipper Chase, just how expansively and compellingly even a two-runner race can be commentated on.

Not for him the “Horse A leads from Horse B” every 10 seconds and nothing else – instead, not a single tick, quirk and / or shift in the two runners' respective balances of power during the race went unnoticed; and his comment three fences into the race of "There are seven places in the world called Pigeon Island... and already the bottom of the barrel has been reached" had plenty in stitches.

Trainers of aspiring racecourse commentators – add this masterclass to your prescribed curriculum of races to watch forthwith.

2009-10-20T16:53:00.003+01:00

KEMPTON IN OCTOBER IS LITTLE FUN WITH A CHARISMA BYPASS

Like the dying days of an old and faithful family pet, or the inexorable decline of a once-proud elderly relative into a diminishing shell of skin in a care home, the reduction of a horse race that has been part of your formal racing education to something of zero consequence is something quite hard to take.

Alongside the then Mercedes-Benz Chase at Chepstow usually a week before, the Charisma Gold Cup at Kempton was one of the two 3m chases that used to fanfare the start of the coverage of the current National Hunt season on terrestrial television – three if it was a year in which Ayr’s Timeform Chasers & Hurdlers Handicap Chase got a look-in as well.

These constituted the first indication to the casual-ish viewer of the firepower the major stables had at their disposal in the handicap chase ranks that term, and of how far forward that string was. During the 1980s, it rarely produced a bad winner, far less often a poorly-contested, unsatisfactory spectacle.

Marnik, Approaching, and of course Everett three times on the spin from 1984 to 1986, Contradeal, Acarine, Seagram (30 months before his finest hour)... no horses in that roll-call upwardly mobile to the point of being future champions, but all decent or better handicappers entitled to win their share in the grade.

That grade being a ceiling-free handicap, which it remained initially at least even after the new ratings bands for National Hunt horses and races were introduced in autumn 1989. Even when a ceiling was finally imposed in the mid-90s, it was set to the highest possible value for a handicap of 150, and little or no diminution of the contest’s quality ensued.

So far so unchanged, and although Charisma finally bowed out after the 2001 renewal, the passing of the race through the successive hands of Skybet, Stan James and Ibetx.com over the next three years had little material change on the race conditions (save no reversal of the small drop to 0-145 introduced in 2000) or the horses lining up.

“The most competitive handicap run over fences so far this season”, enthused the Racing Post’s post-analysis of the 2003 renewal won by the then 132-rated Swansea Bay; and despite both the Summer Plate and the Mercedes-Benz (sponsorship of that race ironically handled by Skybet that year, having not committed to the Kempton contest beyond just the 2002 renewal) having already taken place, that was still just about right.

By stark contrast the equivalent write-up for the 2007 renewal, the first under another new sponsorship banner, was described as “nothing like the race it was”; and notwithstanding the fact winner Oniz Tiptoes’ mark of 123 passed muster compared to some that preceded it, that was no small wonder.

The race had survived a temporary sojourn to Huntingdon in 2005 completely intact whilst Kempton acquired its Polytrack course, but the moving of the fixture to a Sunday two years ago appeared to coincide with a complete loss of belief in it as a viable, competitive handicap. The ratings ceiling was lowered by a further 10lb and the win pot nearly halved from what it had been in 2006 to just £9,394, approximately the same as it had been 15 years earlier.

At the same time, however, the prizemoney levels of the Listed novices’ hurdle and the class 2 conditions race that have embellished the same card for as long remained entirely as before. The emasculation of the erstwhile Charisma in comparison to the rest of the meeting was very much laid bare, then, even before the relegation of the race to the very end of the card is considered.

Increasing numbers of racecourses have put on a handicap chase as the afternoon’s denouement in recent years. It’s something Market Rasen in particular has employed to fair effect at those meetings where no bumper is to be run. The received thinking is presumably that holding back the sort of race that everybody loves to the very end reduces racegoers’ temptation of leaving early to beat the traffic, and that’s not the worst logic ever so long as the increased threat of low sun necessitating fence omissions isn’t realised.

In the case of the former Charisma Gold Cup, however, that move has smacked very much of putting the race out of sight, out of mind, as far as possible without removing it outright.

All of which brings us to last Sunday’s renewal, and how apposite it was that the sun should be setting over the Sunbury track just as the race's worst line-up in history shuffled almost apologetically onto the track. Good fortune alone (no unseats on the way to post, late withdrawals, etc.) these last few years has prevented the race from being run in even greater murk, much later than its allotted 5.40pm off time.

Any significant delay would have placed the contest in some jeopardy; and whilst Radio Two’s noted April Fool’s Day joke might have hoodwinked some listeners into believing something called The Million Watt Chase really was taking place under floodlights at Fairyhouse back in 1990, even 19 years on things haven’t necessarily advanced to the stage where the Kempton executive could have run this race with the lights on if required.

Having evaded any further knives through the ribs last year, the 2009 contest was run as a 0-115 and with the winner’s purse halved yet again to £4,553. Of the six horses to line up, only half were rated on or within 7lb of the ceiling, and the third favourite, Rudivale, was able to race off 10st 8lbs despite a mark of 97 that would have seen him appreciably out of the handicap in most renewals hitherto.

For the record, Nagam continued his form and temperament rehabilitation under the tutorship of trainer Alan Fleming, courtesy of a dependably satisfying piece of Timmy Murphy jockeyship ("held up in the lead", as my Timeform Radio colleague Bob Adams succinctly put it), with favourite Ibberton comfortably held over a trip short of his best and fresh air (hardly clear blue daylight by that time) back to the remainder. A nation shrugged, and Bob and I saluted the winner briefly and went home.

It would have been a race of little consequence without any prior knowledge of its past – the sort of 0-115 one would see 20 to 25 times a month in high season and generously describe as “honest fare”, no more or less than that. But with the last decade’s worth of winners having winked back at me from the Racing Post site just that morning as a reminder of far, far better renewals than Nagam’s, it proved nigh on impossible not to reflect on the contest and think, “How has it come to this?”

One of the great tragedies of the Charisma’s fall from grace is that had the support for it been maintained to any great extent, it could now be quite plausibly regarded as the middle leg of a genuine run of early to mid-autumn targets for horses of a certain trip and course disposition.

Think it through; the Blue Square Chase at Market Rasen’s equinox meeting at the back end of September constitutes a decent 2m6.5f 0-150 handicap around a sharpish, flattish right-handed track. The Badger Ales Trophy at Wincanton in early November constitutes a decent 3m1.5f 0-150 handicap around a sharpish, flattish right-handed track. More or less equidistant between the two in both scheduling (mid-October) and distance (3m), the former Charisma at Kempton used to constitute a... you get the picture.

Simply put, I’d love to see the Kempton contest restored to its former status and then marketed as part of this trio of comparable contests which, if all goes to plan, something has an excellent chance of progressing through, winning all three, and perhaps scooping a bonus for so doing. There must be enough second season chasers rated in the mid-120s to early-130s for whom that could rate a wholly realistic itinerary for the first half of the season.

Please reconsider, Kempton. Don’t let this be one faithful old friend that ultimately has to be put out of its misery.

2009-10-03T02:33:00.002+01:00

OUMEY GOODNESS, YOU PAID HOW MUCH?

Not for the last time this season, I imagine, I was briefly minded to consider what constitutes a nice piece of business and what does not during last weekend’s increasingly prestigious Market Rasen end-of-summer meeting.

For once the former didn't mean either alchemists par excellence Tim Vaughan or Alison Thorpe, as Vaughan didn't trouble the scorers and Mrs Thorpe's handicap hurdle winner Treaty Flyer had been moved to her rather than purchased.

Emphatically in the good business camp, however, was the former David Arbuthnot inmate Valley Ride, scooping two and a half times his spring purchase price of £13,000 in landing the feature chase on his first outing for Peter Bowen.

As a horse that missed the thick end of two seasons not so long ago he can hardly have been regarded as a wholly sound, safe proposition when considered for purchase, but the fact he’d withstood a winter campaign for Arbuthnot without a setback would have offered encouragement. Moreover, a chasing mark still 13lb below his hurdling best of March 2006 rather belied the fact he entered the race only five runs into his chasing career and still on an upward trajectory (however gentle) judged on two wins and a place the last thrice.

There would have been far bigger stabs in the dark carrying the same or appreciably bigger price tags at the Doncaster Sales back on May 20th, and in hindsight I could almost kick myself for not paying the sales columns in the Post website and elsewhere closer scrutiny more often. A 2m4f-3m1f chaser with effectiveness on a soundish surface proven? Notwithstanding the minor setback which ruled him out of a tilt at the Summer National, was there ever any doubt what sort of races Bowen was going to aim his new acquisition at if he could?

The same race saw another debut for new connections of a horse acquired from the same auction on the same day. However, whilst Valley Ride was refunding Bowen in full and paying for his oats and rugs for a whole season in one go, Oumeyade did nothing to suggest the £40,000 Donald McCain Jr laid out for him four months earlier represents a tidy transaction. Not yet, anyway.

It won’t be the biggest sum a trainer forks out in hope rather than expectation this season by any means, but the ascent of McCain Jr in the last two to three seasons has been largely predicated on buying or being sent bloodstock which is better quality than hitherto, but importantly which has also had little or no racing experience for the greater part.

It has not been predicated on buying 150-rated chasers out of other yards, not least the yards of champion trainers not especially noted for releasing animals if they still have marked improvement to come. That, with the very greatest of respect to the old man, is something Ginger McCain was more predisposed towards doing several years back, usually to guarantee himself a starting line-up with something, anything, in the Grand National.

The appeal of Oumeyade is an increment or two weaker now than it was 12 months ago. After a scintillating all-the-way 2m handicap win at Kempton’s first jumps meeting of the autumn, followed by the same feat repeated in an Exeter novice next time, defeats in both the Wayward Lad and the Celebration Chase thereafter served as two indications that the racing tactic that had wrought so much improvement from the late summer onwards (far in excess of anything he has ever achieved when held up, even in victory) risked exposing him as something of a bunny in higher-class contests.

Ridden more patiently last Saturday for the step back up in trip, an early error won’t have helped matters overly, but it still ranked a pretty pallid effort all the same, and certainly didn’t raise the bar in terms of his efforts under this sort of tactic.

So where to now? A return to dominating fields in 2m handicaps? Maybe, but from his mark of 150 connections won’t find many of those open to him over the season, even if he does drop a few pounds for Saturday's effort.

How about make-all tactics in 2m conditions races, such as the Desert Orchid Chase over the same Kempton course and distance that served him so well once last term, perhaps? Maybe, but it’s hard to imagine something like Petit Robin or a fit-again Fieppes Shuffle won’t be around to take him on for the lead.

Maybe the National after all? His current mark would guarantee him a place in any renewal of that contest, and half-brother Ladalko did of course take Warwick’s 3m5f Grade 3 handicap in heavy ground nearly three seasons ago. The propensity to stay further over time may be there, then. But as Timeform Radio’s excellent Terry Norman always warns us when comparing (half-) siblings’ respective profiles and hoping or expecting the qualities of one to transfer in full to the other; “Elvis’s brother was a baker”.

It seems inescapable that for a horse on the most recent evidence best at 2m, yet to win over further than a sharp 2m5½f and totally untried beyond 3m1f, the words “stamina to prove” will feature foot-high in the text of his Spotlight write-up the first time he tries a marathon trip, whether or not he then proves able to silence the doubters.

Getting a big win out of Oumeyade at any distance will rate among the biggest challenges of McCain Jr’s nascent training career to date, and with that already promises to be, for me at least, one of the more engaging sub-plots of the 2009-2010 season even so early on.

Whatever the outcome, it will still be a purchase to have me shaking the head and tutting, “what were you thinking?!?” rather less than on learning of the £360,000 spent on another of that Market Rasen chase’s participants, De Soto, two and a half years ago. Return on investment so far? £19,432, give or take a few pence!

***

At an earlier stage of its career than either Oumeyade or Valley Ride, but recently sold for more than either, another quiet-season purchase to catch the eye was that of Jurisdiction, who is likely to have his first run since joining Rose Dobbin at Kelso this coming weekend.

This Goldmark 5yo has already hit the headlines once this season by virtue of his outgoing connections. Prior to May 2009, Bradfield, Devon-based farrier and former licensed trainer Graham Hollis had not had so much as a single runner under Rules for almost exactly 12 years and not trained a winner for two decades. Nevertheless, Jurisdiction belied odds of 20-1 to dispatch allcomers by 3l and upwards to make his racecourse debut a winning one.

The gelding’s subsequent appointment in the ring ultimately meant that a mere 4,500gns investment by Hollis at Dbs Sales during August 2007 became a 45,000gns sale to Mrs Dobbin at the same venue two years on. A very tidy piece of business for one of the smallest operations you'll see represented outside of hunter chases and points this term, therefore; and as a once-raced half-brother to a 3m hurdle winner with all the physical prowess to make the sort of chaser the Dobbin yard would love to make a mark with, who's to say the 10-times larger outlay won't yet turn out to be just as astute compared to monies won for the new connections, either?

2009-03-09T01:59:00.003Z

OF RACECOURSES AND SUGAR PUFFS... BUT IS WORCESTER TOAST?

The fifth and final article in a short series Betfair commissioned from me in recent weeks covers some familiar That Racing Blog subject matter, not least Worcester and Ffos Las racecourses, but a newer idea I have had about the future of the currently for-sale Ayr may delight and horrify in equal measure;

http://betting.betfair.com/horse-racing/general/jeremy-grayson-ayr-essentials-010309.html

2009-03-09T01:54:00.002Z

THE HUNTERS STILL GO PAST THE PUNTERS... BUT ONLY IF THEY'RE NOT TOO GOOD AT WINNING

Finding new ways to monkey around with terms and conditions of hunter chases has almost assumed the role of an annual task for the BHA - maybe someone has it permanently written into their annual appraisal targets.

My irritated response to the "three wins and out" rule now applied to certain hunter chases will surprise few, much less the few words scribbled down about Lough Derg to cheer me up again;

http://betting.betfair.com/horse-racing/general/bha-bumbles-while-lough-lifts-the-spirits-again-220209.html

2009-03-09T01:47:00.002Z

THE HUNTERS GO PAST THE PUNTERS... SO TRY TO WIN SOME MONEY ON THEM, THEN

One of Mark Johnson's most enduring catchphrases seems as apt as any to usher in this third article of the five recently commissioned by Betfair.

A fair few hunter chases have been run since I wrote this, and Paul Nicholls has done his best to undermine my nomination of his runners in the sphere as decent lay material by scoring four wins from four with them, but I remain unbowed, if a little bloodied. There's still the return to Towcester of Caveman to look forward to, though...

http://betting.betfair.com/horse-racing/general/be-a-hunter-not-prey-when-it-comes-to-betting-on-hunter-150209.html

2009-03-09T01:41:00.002Z

OF SALT SHORTAGES, SOAP STARS, AND STRIPPING SANDOWN

Proposals to change the end of the National Hunt season, in the hope of bringing it to a more thundering climax, exercised my time and patience in the second of the five recently-commissioned Betfair articles;

http://betting.betfair.com/horse-racing/general/horseracing-betting-wheres-all-the-bleedin-salt-gone-080209.html

2009-03-09T01:28:00.004Z

WHERE PRODIGIOUS YOUNG WELSH TALENT AND FAKE INDIE SNOBBERY MEET

The more astute among you will have noticed that updates to this blog have been few and far between in recent months.

Initially this was due to a major change in personal circumstances, but more recently on account of Betfair securing a number of articles from me for its betting.betfair.com website.

Several of these were pertinent only to the given week's racing, but the most recent five have concerned subject matter that I would have had every intention of raising on That Racing Blog in other circumstances. As such, I have little hesitation in posting links to them on this site.

(Well, obviously I do have some hesitation, as the first was published six weeks ago, but you know what I mean...)

Anyone who listened to Timeform Radio's start-of-"proper"-season podcast back in October will have been left in little doubt whom I regarded as the jockey to follow throughout 2008-9, and so far this term I don't think I have been proven too far wrong by what I have seen of him. The "fake indie snobbery" bit probably needs a little more explanation - read on;

http://betting.betfair.com/horse-racing/jockeys/ladies-and-gentlemen-meet-the-next-great-jumps-jockey-r-010209.html

2008-09-27T01:40:00.004+01:00

WORTH THE LONG WAIT TO WADE INTO THE SOLENT

Some things in racing take rather longer than others to come to fruition.

My "Out in the Sticks" columns for the monthly edition of Racing Ahead magazine exist principally to outline performances that have caught my eye at some of the country's smaller National Hunt tracks, with a view to finding readers as many next-time winners as possible (NB in answer to a question I found in my inbox recently: the concentration on smaller venues is partly due to them being what I know and understand best, and partly due to fellow contributor Andrew Ayres already covering the "bigger stuff" during the rump of the jumps season).

For the greater part, and especially with summer jumping, I don't have to wait long to find out if I am right, given that most horses will run again within two months. That said, I had to wait over six months before Tamarinbleu's reappearance resulted in a Boylesports.com Gold Cup win at wonderfully rewarding odds, and I fear the wait for late 2006 selections Sexy Rexy and Solid As A Rock to reappear may not actually come to an end.

In a similar vein, about nine months ago I was one of several regular contributors to Betfair Radio to take part in what ultimately proved to be an exhausting but terrifically fun two-hours-and-then-some podcast for that station (mercifully edited to a length manageable for human consumption subsequently), in which our thoughts, betting strategies, tips and bismarks for the forthcoming winter's action were shared.

The suggestions for big race honours we made then have subsequently proven to be about half-right and half-wrong overall. Most of us, myself included, thought something would emerge from leftfield to steal the Champion Chase crown from a fallible title-holder in Voy Por Ustedes. If Master Minded were allowed to drink, we'd buy him a pint. Unfortunately, I was also one of a couple of contributors keen to nonsense Denman's aspirations for the Gold Cup - my assertions that the hanging left and jumping errors of his novices' chase wins as Exeter and Cheltenham in late 2006 would be ruthlessly exploited in senior company looked very silly indeed after his Hennessy win, and had practically gained a red nose and deely-boppers come March 14th of this year.

Away from the Championship races, my selections had a mixed time of it. Iktitaf and Granit Jack, regrettably, were both taken from us too soon, and Nevada Royale's season was best described as abortive; but the likes of Newbay Prop (when he was clearing his fences rather than intent on taking them home with him) and Bible Lord (eventually) did me a couple of timely favours. As with the "Out in the Sticks" examples I cited, however, some tips have come home to roost rather later than others, and none more so than Solent.

My logic for choosing him at the time seemed copper-bottomed enough to me. He appealed as one of the classier Flat recruits likely to take his chance over timber last autumn, what with an Official Rating of 100 and a brace of personal best Racing Post Ratings of 108 to his name. He had signed off his time as a Richard Hannon inmate with a grinding dead-heat in the Listed Fenwolf Stakes at Ascot in September, and in so doing reiterated his effectiveness around a stiff track with an uphill finish. That would come in handy at Cheltenham.

Further, whilst that Ascot race over two miles had been run at a numbingly slow early pace, his efforts in truer-run contests at up to 1m6f around the likes of Ascot again and Haydock previously underlined to me that this would be one former "Flattie" who would have no trouble at all seeing out the minimum trip over hurdles, or in all probability a fair bit further, thereby increasing options.

Last of all, and by no means any less significant, trainer John Quinn had been prepared to go to 155,000 guineas at the Tattersalls sale last October to secure the Montjeu gelding's services. That needs putting into context. His high 90s-rated Cambridgeshire aspirant Mastership cost him 67,000gns, subsequent dual Diomed Stakes winner Blythe Knight 90,000gns and future Grade 2 Elite Hurdle victor King's Quay 110,000gns. After Solent, the last-named is the most expensive animal the Racing Post's bloodstock search facility credits Quinn with ever having bought through a recognised sales ring, and cost all of 45,000gns less.

Price-tags don’t win races, of course but it still read like a serious statement of belief in the horse’s ability to take top rank as a hurdler that the Settrington handler was prepared to outlay quite such an amount on him.

So, with the credentials of Solent well enough established in my mind to have put him forward, all that was needed now was for the gelding to make his debut over timber and hopefully prove me right.

So I waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

And then the season finished.

By the end of April Solent had still not appeared, with nothing in the trade press to suggest he had met with a training setback, but at the same time nothing to suggest he was being kept for a summer novices’ hurdle campaign.

When he did finally reappear it was on the Flat at the start of July, over nine months since last seen. However, two quick appearances in the Old Newton Cup and York’s Silver Handicap Stakes appeared to confirm that his current rating, some way in excess of the 90 of his best ever handicap win, was now prohibitive. Even attempting to boss things from the front was no longer going to yield wins in handicaps barring some significant clemency, and he faded to be beaten an aggregate of 99l over the two runs.

Surely, now, unless attentions were turned exclusively to conditions races, we were going to see his attentions turned to the increasingly inaccurately-titled “winter code”.

Indeed we were. Three weeks later, a Solent visibly rippling with good health and looking every inch primed for the job in hand stepped onto the course at Bangor-on-Dee ahead of his hurdles debut. The tapes went back, Solent took the lead immediately, and that was effectively the end of the race as a contest.

Given his previous exploits on the Flat over as little as a furlong shorter than the 2m1f of this race, Solent was always likely to need to scorch off here to make it enough of a stamina test for himself, and he did just that en route to a really taking triumph, in which he never led by fewer than 10l and could have humiliated his rivals by far more than the ultimate 12l verdict had he or rider Dougie Costello wanted to.

It was a performance that the harder-bitten analyst may still want to crab to a degree. It is hard to argue against the claims that Solent probably beat close to nothing, with runner-up Wood Fern still to reappear at the time of writing but the 19l third Hernando Cortes having been soundly beaten in three subsequent hurdles starts (including an awful 80l drubbing at Southwell just this afternoon). Further, whilst his jumping was absolutely spot on, so well it might have been with all his rivals too far behind throughout to put it under even the merest scintilla of pressure.

As the familiar maxim goes, however, you can only beat what’s put in front of you – Solent beat little but achieved plenty at Bangor. Whilst acknowledging that harder tasks will undoubtedly follow (not least with the penalty), my Racing Ahead write-up on this performance concluded that for all it was a bloodless win, he exhibited enough class and professionalism to suggest he would be able to do himself justice in whichever of the better (eventually Listed or Graded?) novices’ hurdles this autumn he may be aimed at.

With some very interesting fellow former Flat recruits having their first try over timber in the same race, chief among them the 2005 Derby seventh Unfurled, I hope that last bold statement doesn’t have me reaching for the metaphorical red nose and silly headgear again after his appearance in a much tougher Market Rasen contest this afternoon.

Even if it does, though, at least I was proven right about Solent for one brief, fleeting, long-delayed five-minute spell. Eventually.

2008-09-25T01:20:00.007+01:00

A SUNDAY OF JUDGMENTS - HERE ARE SOME OF THE WRONG ONES

The Old Roan Chase. The Summer National. The Greatwood Hurdle. The Becher Chase. The Grand Sefton Chase. The National Spirit Hurdle. The Perth Gold Cup. The Borders National. The Newton Abbot Summer Festival Handicap Hurdle. The October Hurdle at Aintree. The Independent Newspaper Novices’ Chase. Listed novices’ hurdles at Kempton and Exeter. The Coors Cumberland Handicap Chase. A couple of dozen class 3 - or better – handicaps, including many throughout the summer months and two last Sunday.

Proof in spades that Tom Segal’s assertion in the Post four days ago that, “the two jumps meetings are, as usual, of very low quality – it is a Sunday, after all”, won’t necessarily rank among the most accurate he will commit to print this year.

Notwithstanding, and being a magnanimous soul, I will of course gladly mention that Segal remains a tipping titan at his very best, as the finding of Regal Parade ahead of his win in the Ayr Gold Cup, and two wins out of two on Sunday with Lord Ryeford and Always Bold, have most recently attested to.

***

In all honesty it was a bad Sunday for anyone to choose to pick a fight with the racing calendar, as the two jumps cards in question at Plumpton and Uttoxeter had a greater concentration of genuine puzzles between them – as opposed to races which looked mere formalities for just one, or certainly no more than two, of their competitors – than most of what had preceded them in recent weeks.

This corresponding Plumpton card, its first for four months, has additionally enjoyed a burgeoning reputation in recent times. The presence of a near-£11,000, 0-125 class 3 handicap hurdle has played some part in that, for sure, but so too have the two novices’ hurdles, one juvenile and one 4yo+, which both increasingly attract some decent types either on debut or just a race or two into their new careers. King’s Quay was sent on the monster round trip from John Quinn’s yard in Settrington two years ago to make a winning start in the latter race, and last year’s winners of each contest, Hypnotic Vibes and – the eventually 141-rated – Alsadaa, have both certainly proven to be very capable animals indeed.

Mention of these contests cannot pass this year without namechecking Wyeth, winner of the older horses’ contest for the dominant local force of Gary and Jamie Moore. Timber-hopping in Sussex surely wouldn’t have been on anyone’s minds when Wyeth was foaled and then sold for 420,000gns as a yearling, what with the Group1-winning quality of his by then six year-old full brother Grandera having been well established and the also appreciable talents of his half-sibling George Washington about to be.

The 2 ¼l win here, and the one in a Bath gentlemans’ handicap that preceded it, probably don’t as yet go anywhere close to meeting the likely lofty expectations of yore. However, after eight mostly underwhelming performances previously (all bar one for first trainer James Fanshawe), which to me looked to have exposed Wyeth as clumsy, backward, and even on occasion a bit thick (hence my passing over him when tipping on the race for Betfair Radio in favour of the eventually well-beaten Muraco), these recent gains have to go down as a triumph for Team Moore. Having proven wrong to have written him off all too soon, I shall watch whatever continued development follows hereafter with great interest.

***

The recurring theme of getting it wrong brings us neatly to Uttoxeter, and to the most high-profile incident over the jumps on the day (in another class 3 event, incidentally, just to labour the point made earlier). The returning Paddy Merrigan, partnering Bill’s Echo on his first ride for nine months following his well-documented self-imposed hiatus, thinks he might have got his timing slightly wrong on Alistair Whillans’ gelding – I happen not to agree, as even with an earlier move, and without a blunder two out, nothing on the day was going to master an Alphabetical free at last of his wind-based infirmities.

What has been got wrong, majorly so, is the decision of the stewards at the Staffordshire track to impose a ban upon him, and one to the tune of seven days at that, for an ill-judged ride. That Bill’s Echo came late and hard, having been put into the race as far on into it as three fences from home, is not in dispute, but there were sound reasons for doing so which should have prevented any steward familiar with them from acting as punitively.

To this pair of eyes the race certainly seemed to be run a deal quicker throughout than the attendant post-race analyst suggested, as evinced, perhaps, by the way all the front-runners barring the operation-enhanced winner were swamped by the more patiently-ridden late on; and as such Paddy Merrigan’s opting to keep Bills' Echo away from the worst excesses of that pace seemed entirely sensible.

As the gelding’s co-owner Charlie Byers told the Post subsequently, Bill’s Echo had similarly come from a different parish when winning a class 2 Huntingdon 2m handicap chase for Richard Guest almost exactly three years previously. It’s also worth pointing out that not only was Paddy Merrigan engaged at Guest’s yard at the time, but he also finished 7l second behind Bill’s Echo in that race on stablemate Wet Lips. Further still, Bill’s Echo and Merrigan’s subsequent tenures with Paul Nicholls also coincided, and they teamed up for a Newbury 2m chase in early 2007 – they recorded a nearest-at-finish fifth place, achieved by exactly the same method as in the other two examples given.

Simply put, Bill’s Echo and Paddy Merrigan go back a long way, and the latter knows what makes the former tick as well as, if not better than, most riders in circulation. Sunday's ride was palpably imbued with that familiarity.

Keep in mind also that Bill's Echo had only once raced over further than 2m4f before this race (2m5f), pulling up over 3m at Aintree in May; and whilst he had admittedly won over 2m4f at Uttoxeter 18 months ago, that was in a more muddling, small field contest - and with the inspiration of first-time blinkers - when at the height of his powers for Paul Nicholls, rather than a big-field speed-fest like Sunday’s whilst at a lowish ebb (his four previous runs for Whillans this year having been universally poor).

Heaven knows it has not always been easy to love Merrigan. It is hard to forget the staggeringly miserable response to perfectly reasonable interview questions from Mike Vince in the winners’ enclosure at Market Rasen last September, following what was back then the biggest win of his career aboard Iron Man in that course’s big autumn chase. It is probably also fair to say he is unlikely to pick up rides from certain yards again as a result of more than one mysterious or untidy split in what has already been a turbulent short career.

However, whilst I'm not sure I would quite describe the Uttoxeter stewards’ actions as agriculturally as he did in the press, on this occasion Merrigan is certainly the wronged boy rather than the boy in the wrong.

And about that much, I’m sure I’m not wrong.

2008-06-30T17:47:00.006+01:00

A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME WOULD STILL BE A CHAMPION... BUT OF WHAT?

I am no more in the habit of taking the Racing Post's Alastair Down to task over articles than I am any other of the industry's foremost writers and columnists, especially as my fields of expertise would not be as all-encompassing as many of theirs. However, I found myself adopting a contrary position to Mr Down on a couple of occasions at the end of May, albeit, I suppose, over relatively small matters in the global scheme of things.

The first of these concerned an otherwise very fair and - if it isn't too inappropriate a term to use, given the course's 2007 misfortunes - watertight piece on Worcester (published May 25th), a racecourse which has been the subject of more regular discussion than most on these pages. Mr Down's suggestion that hunters' chases don't feature at the Pitchcroft venue was true to a point, but I felt compelled to don my hunters' chase anorak in writing to the Post and confirming that the intention was to run one such event at the April 23rd meeting of this year.

This would have been the first since the last edition of a hitherto long-running novices' hunters' chase on April 24th, 1999. In the event, this resumption had to be delayed by another year, as the steeplechase course was deemed still not quite fit for purpose.

The second of these occasions was partially related to the first, concerning as it did Mr Down's reaction to the outcome of the amateur riders' jumps title - I say partially rather than wholly, as the chief protagonists in the title race had gained many victories outwith hunters' chases as well as in them.

The reaction was one of dismay that Rose Davidson had been accorded the title of champion woman amateur rider, rather than of the outright champion amateur, despite having ridden more victories than every male counterpart between early June 2007 and the end of May 2008 - 21, compared to the 20 of nearest pursuer Nick Scholfield. Mr Down's opening salvo of, "When is the jockey who has ridden the most winners not a champion? When they are a woman, according to the Amateur Jockeys' Association", leaves little to the imagination.

On an immediate, gut level, I found it hard to disagree with him. He and I would both, I suspect, regard ourselves as equalists, if not necessarily out-and-out feminists. Strictures of time currently prevent me from checking his previous utterances on the matter of, for example, more female presenters and pundits meritocratically added to both the specialist television channels and Channel 4, Carrie Ford's participation in the Grand National, and so on; an old-school sexist in the John McCririck mould, however, I trust he is almost certainly not.

Having thought a little harder and longer, though, I wondered whether this response was at least partly predicated on the belief that the champion woman amateur was referred to as “outright champion” rather than just “champion woman” the last time she rode the most winners in an amateur riders’ season. Further, I also wondered whether there was any belief on Mr Down's part that the amateur ranks cultivate an expectation that a woman with the most wins would be crowned as anything other than just "champion woman".

The answer to the first of those queries is a straight "no". Rose Davidson's achievements made her the first female amateur ever to ride the most Rules jumps winners in a year, so no precedent exists there which opponents of the decision can cite. Pre-emptively, perhaps, Sarah Oliver of the Amateur Jockeys' Association (AJA) reaffirmed in the Post on the morning of Saturday, May 24th (the last day of the season) that the men and women's titles are very much regarded as separate titles. This appears consistent with previous statements from her and the AJA on jockey awards - "It's good for Tom [O'Brien] and excellent for Rose", is how the paper quoted her summary of 2005-6's respective, separate title winners.

In light of this, she was if anything probably a little too generous when suggesting of this year's events that, "Any confusion probably stems from the fact that the winner of the gentlemen's title usually rides about 18 winners, while the winner of the ladies' title rides seven or eight, and the person with the most gets described as champion". Less charitable proponents of the AJA's stance may suggest that any confusion had and still has actually only stemmed from there being no greater familiarity with the Association's long-held position on the matter.

As regards the second query raised, the notion that the amateur riders' jumps championship should comprise one mixed-sex contest under Rules lays contrary to the practice maintained in point-to-points, a sphere of racing in which essentially all of the main protagonists concerned here were still very much active participants right to the end of May (and beyond, in all bar Scholfield's case).

The champion female point-to-point rider has ended the season between the flags on the same or a higher tally of wins than her male counterpart five times since the riders' titles were established after World War II - Polly Curling managed the feat in three successive seasons from 1993 to 1995 alone, comfortably outscoring Alastair Crow (twice) and Nibby Bloom. Yet on none of these occasions has the woman in question been regarded as anything other than the champion of her sex. There just isn't an expectation there to be so, and as such it seems odd to presume that there may be one among - broadly speaking - the same pool of women for the equivalent Rules title.

Does that damn the amateur ranks as backward in their attitude towards their female achievers? Quite the opposite. Point-to-pointing is a medium of the sport in which, as mentioned previously, champion female riders have been identified as such for over 60 years now (and champion female novice riders as well, albeit only more recently), and in which equality of opportunity has been so long established (with hardly any meetings hosting a Men's Open but no Ladies' equivalent any more) that instances of several victories for female riders at any given meeting raises no eyebrows at all.

The silence on the matter of the AJA's amateur Rules champions from nearly all of the tough, phlegmatic women who populate pointing should be taken not as a meek acceptance of the status quo, therefore, but rather as an acknowledgement that there are almost certainly more important things with which they concern themselves.

It is only right of me to mention that just about the only dissenting voice to be heard from the female amateur ranks over the whole affair has been that of Rose Davidson herself, who described "not actually being called champion" (which isn't semantically accurate - she still is being called champion, as we've discussed) as something "a bit silly" and "sexist", but even so appears not to be so exercised by the decision to argue the case for a combined title any further than that.

Opinion will inevitably continue to differ as to whether it is silly and sexist, or anachronistic, or just an extension of the way amateur riders' achievements are quantified at a lower level of racing than Rules racing; but what it certainly isn't is a device dreamed up relatively late in the day just to spite Rose or any other high-achieving female amateur, and nor must it be thought as such.

2008-05-29T18:25:00.001+01:00

A THREAD ABOUT CARTMEL
(“What took you so long to get round to it?”)

Regular visitors to a certain quartet of internet racing fora will have known, without needing to ask, where I was most likely to have spent at least one day of the Bank Holiday weekend just past. And once again, they would have been absolutely right.

I have never yet managed to attend all six days of racing at the magical Lakeland venue of Cartmel in a given year, nor am I likely to any time soon. Financial constraints prevented this in the past, and the not unwelcome freelance racing engagement or two elsewhere during the Bank Holidays do so nowadays (a Hammersmith studio one day this year, a jaunty but rain-sodden point-to-point in Bonvilston, South Wales, one day last). If all else fails, though, I will make sure I’m a permanent fixture at the course one day in the dim and distant future by instructing my next of kin to have my ashes scattered over it.

I am, truly, madly, deeply, that big a fan of Cartmel, and my only real regret about the place is that it took 26 years before I finally managed to get there for the first time, back in August 2001. I’ve not missed a year since, and my return two days ago took my number of visits into the teens.

No enduring love affair is blind, though, and it often surprises people to find me happy to spend time candidly discussing Cartmel’s shortcomings on the aforementioned fora around the time of each meeting, rather than simply maintain that these don’t exist.

Of course, there is often little dissuading anybody who has already decided, some without ever having attended, that Cartmel is merely an overpriced, inaccessible gaff at which plating-class animals occasionally appear from behind a funfair to the indifference of a racing-illiterate crowd left entirely at the mercy of the elements. That’s their loss, especially as some of the points they raise deserve looking at in a little more detail than these detractors have been prepared to afford them.

***

Cartmel is an expensive course to visit for what you actually get in terms of facilities. Given the increases to the admission price for the paddock / grandstand from £12 in 2002 to £18 in 2006 (the latter figure the same as for the better-endowed equivalent at Cheltenham), it would serve me no purpose to try to argue otherwise. However, Cartmel is refreshingly candid about to what use income from the above-average entry fee is put.

Over the past few years racecourse chairman Lord Cavendish has frequently and admirably explained in both the Cartmel racecards and the wider media that the money is required first and foremost for the "fighting chest" with which the course can bid, and bid successfully, to retain its coveted Bank Holiday fixtures. It may well have surprised many of those that bought a racecard at last August’s meeting to learn that the first ever Bank Holiday meeting at Cartmel, from which maps and contents had been reproduced inside the card, took place as recently as September 1st 1969, so synonymous has the Lakeland track become with racing on Whitsun and August Bank Holidays since then. Now nearly 40 years on, and in a prevailing environment of competitive and hostile bids for many of the calendar’s most lucrative racedays, few other courses can be so dependent as Cartmel on so few days' worth of racing, the days they take place on, and the money they bring in.

Continuity is a valuable asset here, and for as long as the sizeable holiday crowds continue to flood in on these most bankable of racing dates (Monday accommodated over 20,000 racegoers, or I’m a Dutchman), so improvements to the assorted facets of the racing experience can be furthered. Having replaced the stands and commentary box and added a restaurant in recent years, in 2007 it was the turn of the race programme and prize fund to reap the benefits, albeit to a lesser extent.

The number of Class 3 contests run at Cartmel annually increased from one to three last year, though Richard Ford’s attack on the prizemoney for the hunters’ chase he won on Monday, which has actually lessened in value since he first won the corresponding race in 1987, serves as a reminder that there is still quite some way to go to bolster the entire programme.

Whilst many of the races still offer ordinary or worse prizemoney, then, the patronage of those races remains high enough to keep punters happy, even in an era where BHA-imposed runners-to-stabling-capacity limits prevent more than a maximum of 75 runners from taking their chances on any given Cartmel card. Races of 16 runners or more are appreciably rarer than previously, but framing of field limits by the course executive where deemed necessary has ensured that only 12 out of 95 races run since May 27th 2006, the first day of that year’s Whit meeting, have featured fewer than eight runners – the July meeting last year, for example, was neatly divided into five 11-runner and two 10-runner contests quite deliberately.

Further, regardless of the small number of meetings at Cartmel each year, and of the changes to the shapes and sizes of fields, trends of benefit to the punter have emerged over time and continue to do so.

For example, the wins of Cashari and Chabrimal Minster at this year’s Whit meeting took the aforementioned Richard Ford’s track record to nine wins from 37 runners (a 25% strike-rate to all intents and purposes) in the last five years. Cashari’s win at 16-1 bolstered the Cheshire handler's level stakes profit to 16.25 points, which detracts from the fact that blind-backing him at the course had not been an especially lucrative strategy hitherto. However, the remaining eight winners were drawn from just 15 Ford horses to be sent off at odds of 6-1 or shorter, and the combined profit of this smaller pool of runners totals 21.25 points.

***

For all that investment continues at the course, as described earlier, some of the remaining shortcomings of the raceday experience at Cartmel are likely to remain insuperable. The most obvious of those is the viewing, and there seems something slightly perverse about the fact that it is only possible to see as much from the grandstands as one can (in particular the top end of the course behind them) because of their lack of any rooves or back walls.

Many of Cartmel’s detractors claim the hulking great fairground in the course’s larger infield area hides the bottom end of the course. In truth, however, the video screen employed by the course would still be required even if these entertainments were banned from the course forthwith. Although not even close to being the worst course in Britain for viewing (not whilst the exasperating Peper Harrow point-to-point course continues to operate), Cartmel is deceptively undulating, with the bottom section especially low-lying. Extensive deforestation and earthmoving would rectify matters rather quicker than decluttering the centre of the course, not that any is being planned.

In any event, the fair serves a vital purpose in keeping that element of the youth in the crowd totally disinterested in the racing – and there are plenty of these - distracted enough not to be causing trouble closer to the action. Increasingly that is a virtue not to be sniffed at!

Finally, the myth of the course’s perceived inaccessibility needs debunking. For all that one does not simply turn off a dual carriageway and straight through the course’s front gates, the flow of traffic in and out of the venue is far smoother than many other racetracks where that is actually the case.

The established and perfectly-executed filtering of traffic along the many country lanes to the track is most effectively performed by local officials and police who know the drill to the letter. Consequently in all my visits to Cartmel to date, I've never yet needed more than 25 minutes to get to the track from the M6 (some 8-10 miles away), and never needed more than 40 to get back to the M6 afterwards.

***

In spite of what I hope has read as spirited a riposte as I intended it to, I still wouldn't presume to be able to convince every last sceptic of the magic of Cartmel, much less try to. However, I know where I'll be again either this August Bank Holiday, or at the very latest next Whistun - piling the cool-bag full of Richard Woodall Cumberland sausages and locally brewed damson ale; threading my way through the forest of barbecues to the bookies' pitches by the run-in; and joining the thick end of 20,000 other punters (and Iain Mackenzie in the box, chances are) in cheering home the winner of a 2m1.5f novices' handicap chase (0-95, Class 5, first prize of little real worldly significance) come rain or shine. If anyone cares to join me, they'd be most welcome.

2008-05-22T00:38:00.001+01:00

WORCESTER - IMPERFECT, AND MEANLY-ENDOWED, BUT HOW SUMMER NEEDS IT

After all the flood-induced trials and tribulations at the course in the last 12 months, it was great to see Worcester racecourse fully functional again a week last Sunday, the seven-race card including the first steeplechases at the track this year following two all-hurdle affairs previously.

With neither a cloud in the sky nor a semblance of a puddle on the racing surface, only a Biblical plague of frogs or similar was going to stop this hitherto ill-starred venue proceeding with a meeting as intended on this occasion.

The Pitchcroft course does have its critics, myself and fellow Betfair Radio pundit David Cleary among them - Sportsman readers may remember both of us having taken turns to give the place a bit of a kicking in our respective columns at least once each. Its physical situation, hard up between the city centre streets and the River Severn, inhibits significant outward development of the course’s facilities, and many of those facilities are modest to say the least. Further, judged against some of the other jumps courses in operation during the spring and summer, the prizemoney on offer is regularly dismal – last Sunday’s feature 0-135 handicap chase offered a first prize kitty of £5,850, all of £3,300 less than the equivalent for a 0-130 handicap chase at Aintree on Friday night and just the same as for a class 3 early season novices’ hurdle at Fakenham two nights earlier.

However, to steal a line from the 18th century poet William Cowper, “Worcester, with all thy faults, I love thee still”. Its long straights, sweeping bends and two rows of wide fences ensure that Worcester remains as fair a test of a horse as you will find during the summer season. Indeed, once Hexham and Towcester draw stumps on their respective seasons in mid-June, it becomes the only track in operation over the following three months that can realistically be labeled as anything other than “sharp”.

Simply put, Worcester offers vital variety to the summer jumping calendar and a sole refuge for the longer-striding animal. It would actually rate a more logical place for a proper marathon chase to me than Uttoxeter, home of the Summer National since its inception in 2000; and the resurrection of the course’s King John Chase, a 3m5f handicap run at a March meeting at Pitchcroft until around 20 years ago, as a big-money contest around July or August would certainly meet with my approval.

***

Back to the here and now, however, and despite not being rewarded especially handsomely for his efforts in terms of pounds, shillings and pence, the 9yo Kilrogan threw his hat into the ring as a possible aspirant for the “Plate” races – the Galway Plate and Market Rasen’s Summer Plate – with a gutsy display in the aforementioned Worcester feature. Out in front for long enough on a course (ironically, given what we’ve discussed so far) rather more galloping than he prefers, he dug deep close home under Timmy Murphy to record a fourth victory under Rules.

It is exactly a year since he took a maiden hunters’ chase at Folkestone’s all-amateur meeting on his British debut for then handler Bob Lancaster, and he has progressed nicely since then granted good or quicker going and a minimum of 2m4f to travel. A raise for this win is likely to elevate his current mark of 120 to one off which he should be able to sneak into the Summer Plate with an attractively small weight (the bottom one in last year’s maximum-field renewal ran off 126), and Market Rasen will suit his prominent racing style better than Worcester. Along with Border Castle, he is a grand advertisement for the skills of the still relatively new trainer Andrew Haynes.

Not that we are guaranteed even to see the Summer Plate winner any time before the event itself, of course, with many recent renewals having gone to horses making their seasonal reappearance. However, the Summer Plate and Summer Hurdle trials will continue at a steady trickle until the start of July now - next stop a 0-135 hurdle at Stratford on Friday and a class 2 handicap chase at the same venue 24 hours later.

2008-04-15T00:28:00.001+01:00

FLAVIN STILL IN THERE PUNCHING AFTER THE MOTHER OF ALL KICKINGS

I read with interest in the Racing Post earlier this week that jockey John Flavin has announced his intention to return to his native Ireland within the next few days. The 22 year-old, most recently based with Evan Williams, has deemed the move, along with a return to the amateur ranks, as essential if he is to prolong his race-riding career.

At first I found it hard not to be a little saddened by this revelation. Recourse to any such plan of action looked hard to envisage barely two years ago when, to this pair of eyes at least, Flavin was starting to look like a winner-in-waiting of the British conditional jockeys' championship and maybe something better still further down the line.

However, one fateful day at Wetherby in 2006 introduced the young man from Tramore to the highest highs and lowest lows jump racing has to offer, and his subsequent struggle for form and fitness served as a salutary reminder of how cruelly the racing game we love can disregard and even destroy some of its finest young talents. Ultimately, it is a relief that he is still sound enough of mind and body to have been able to make this week’s decision at all.

***

Already a winner of a number of point-to-point races in Ireland, John Flavin’s career in Britain was one I followed with a great deal of interest, initially as a by-product of my running the Brancepethfan fanblog concerning all matters relating to Richard Guest’s then Durham-based training operation. Flavin first appeared on British racecards as Mr J P Flavin (5) on October 20th 2005, partnering Beaver in a Haydock hands and heels handicap hurdle for Guest.

This proved something of an inauspicious debut, though through little fault of his own, as the gelding faded into a well-held sixth with a tongue strap failing to counter his well-established breathing problems sufficiently. Either way, Guest had seen enough that he liked about Flavin at home and on the track to offer him paid-jockey terms, and his second ride for Guest was duly as a 10lb conditional at Hexham 15 days later.

With commitments by the trainer to the likes of Larry McGrath, Paul O’Neill and Patrick Merrigan already established, for the next few months it was very much a case of making do with rides on the yard’s less capable or willing beasts. There were a few positive signs notwithstanding the mediocrity of most of his partners, though. He twice got a very good tune out of the veteran hurdler Teme Valley, placing on him around his beloved Sedgefield on Boxing Day on the latter occasion; and then on January 6th he recorded his first victory for Guest when booting home Insurgent, cast off by Darley for just 800 guineas, in a Musselburgh bumper at rewarding odds.

Flavin continued to improve quite markedly with more race-practice as the winter wore on, although the sickness-induced below-par running of many of the yard’s inmates throughout February and March masked to what extent that came across on paper – in all he managed just two wins and five other podiums from 41 rides prior to the Easter programme.

Come Easter, Guest’s horses were starting to perform better, but O’Neill and Merrigan had both severed their ties with the yard by then and McGrath’s personal problems – which culminated in a six-month ban for cocaine abuse – saw his number of rides first thin out and then stop completely by the end of April. The trainer entrusted his improving conditional with more and better rides, and had his faith repaid in spades, with Flavin recording six wins and four more places from only 22 rides in a 15-day period from Easter Saturday.

A broad and pleasing range of riding competencies was exhibited in these latter performances. It was clear from the two hold-up wins gained on Jodante that Flavin possessed a fine clock in his head, and even around the ultra-sharp Fakenham he knew precisely how much rope to give the leaders before reeling them in late on. It was also clear that he knew how to keep a little in reserve on weak-finishing animals, and his skills in getting Guerilla to find more and more right to the end to win a Wetherby 2m4f hurdle when nearly every other rider has failed to do so with him since then – even when Guerilla is dropped to the minimum trip – look all the more impressive now than they did at the time.

It was Flavin’s win on Pass Me By at Carlisle on Easter Saturday that drew the most praise from his boss, Guest describing him in the Racing Post afterwards as, “the best lad I’ve ever had”. However, it was not this win but the one on Red Perk at Worcester on April 26th that will live longest in my memory.

***

Another victory for Red Perk on desperate going at Newcastle two months earlier, plus previous failures on a fast surface, had seemed to establish beyond doubt that this was one Executive Perk gelding for whom the word “firm” in the going description was anathema. Quite why he was allowed to take his chance in a 3m brush hurdle contest at the Severnside venue that evening, then, on ground actually riding a touch faster than the official good to firm, baffled this onlooker completely.

It seemed to baffle Red Perk as well at first, almost as much as being asked to make all of the running on this occasion. What then followed, however, was a masterclass in getting a horse to realise that the prevailing underfoot conditions were alright for him after all. Flavin demonstrated a gossamer-light touch on his partner for the first circuit, letting him cover the ground and take the brushes as lightly on his hooves as he wished, and always a couple of lengths in advance of all his rivals so as to let him practice without distraction or panic.

By the time heads turned for home, Red Perk had been so emboldened by this educative ride that he was allowing himself to stride on confidently despite the fastness of the surface, and it was a happy horse as well as a happy rider that crossed the line a length and a quarter in advance of his nearest pursuer.

Sadly Red Perk was killed in a fall at Hexham two runs later when chasing a hat-trick; but the run in between his final run and this Worcester score, and which set up the bid for the three-timer, saw him record another win on fast ground. It was at Wetherby on April 30th 2006, it was over the West Yorkshire venue’s famously stiff black fences, and it suggested that the lesson Flavin had taught him last time out was one he had gladly kept on board. It also proved to be the last winner the young man was to record until the autumn of the following year.

Confidence could barely have been higher going into the 2m4f chase on the card that afternoon. Having recorded his first double four days earlier at Worcester on Red Perk and Jodante, Flavin had already repeated the feat here with the aforementioned scores on Red Perk again and Guerilla, and was rightly the subject of excited and impressed discussion on Racing UK as the afternoon wore on. Anchored near the back as usual in his race, Jodante popped away contentedly enough early on and all seemed to be going to plan as the even money favourite and his rider approached a fence early on the final circuit.

However, distracted by a faller up ahead, Jodante swerved violently on crossing the fence and shifted Flavin out of the saddle. The young man held on to his partner’s neck rather than let himself fall straight away, and that proved to be the worst possible decision, for on eventually hitting the ground he then received a kick in the face from the gelding, which knocked him unconscious for seven minutes, fractured his skull and cheekbone and ultimately put him out of action for a year.

***

Flavin did all the right things he could during his period on the sidelines in terms of working out each day, whilst Guest for his part worked on the mental side of his employee’s rehabilitation and also promised to keep his job open for him. Good as his word, Flavin’s return to race-riding at Southwell on May 4th 2007 was on board a Guest animal, albeit the awful Barney’s Luck; and with Graham Lee and Timmy Murphy taking a lot of the better rides for the by then Nottinghamshire-based operation at the time, Flavin was back in the position of having to make do with rides mostly on the stable’s lesser lights.

In 36 rides for Guest between May and November of last year Flavin managed just four podiums (none of them close finishes except for the last one, more on which shortly) and no wins. The quality of horses alone wasn’t depriving him of winning opportunities, as he performed little better on the few occasions he got to partner decent types like Donovan or Shannon’s Pride (once each) – lack of confidence had plenty to do with it. Hearts must have been in mouths when two of his first six rides back ended in messy unseats, and he looked nervous and ragged on a few other occasions.

Relations between Guest and Flavin – professionally, at least – appeared to change from the end of August, for fully two and a half months elapsed from Bank Holiday Monday until the latter rode for the former once more, and when he did, he did so just twice before the alliance stopped suddenly again. Flavin’s neck defeat on Drum Native at Fakenham on November 20th was regarded as defeat snatched from victory in some quarters, the rider having set sail for home a touch early two fences from home. If that was indeed the catalyst for a split, how ironic that it should take place at a course where Flavin’s judgment had proven so utterly perfect on Jodante previously.

No matter, the light at the end of the tunnel had arrived in the form of a double at Ludlow for Evan Williams five days earlier, and it was with the Welsh handler that Flavin would spend his remaining British days. It would not have mattered one iota that the seller he won on Soviet Sceptre and the bumper taken by Brenin Cwmtudu were both very ordinary contests – they were his first scores for 18 months and something he thought he’d never live to experience again.

Most pleasingly of all, the former knack of extracting extra late on from a generally suspect animal was once again evident in his win on Soviet Sceptre, ordinarily a dreadful rogue at any level but galvanised into action for a rare score here.

Further wins followed for Flavin on Williams animals courtesy of fellow plater Axinit in a Leicester selling hurdle on December 29th and a Hereford claimer on February 10th 2008, and a classier handicap came his way back at the latter venue on Mickmackmagoole on February 25th also. The last-named proved to be his final winner on these shores, and the rides dried up rapidly at the start of March.

Neither injury nor a falling out with Williams knowingly precipitated this sudden end to race-riding, but rather an acceptance that, as a man of 6ft 2ins in height, the rigours of constantly wasting to a minimum weight below 10st was proving too great a burden. A return to the unpaid ranks, and to plying one’s trade off at least a stone more, was deemed the only practicable solution.

***

July 6th of this year will witness the third running of the Market Rasen conditional jockeys' handicap hurdle named in honour of Tom Halliday, the Sue Smith-based rider killed in a fall at the track in July 2005 (a race in which Flavin partnered Kidithou for Richard Guest last year). Halliday has also since been immortalised in the name of a young riders' scholarship awarded at the track each autumn by the Northern Racing College. A fellow 10lb claimer, Gareth Horner, cheated death but still attained career-ending injuries in a head-first fall from one of his boss John Cornwall's inmates in a November 2004 Doncaster chase.

Had the cards of fate been dealt only slightly differently, the possibility to ride horses may have been wrested from Flavin as it had these two other young conditionals, and three talents therefore lost to the game, not two. For some time during those black months after the accident it must have seemed and felt like it had, though.

Instead, once he is re-admitted to the amateur ranks back home this coming October, this gifted and above all else fortunate jockey will be in a position to bring to bear in point-to-points and hunters’ chases the experience of riding nearly 175 times under British National Hunt Rules (winning 13 times); of partnering some very reasonable performers inamongst that total; and of course of pulling through a character-testing personal challenge like few others.
Still only 22 years old, he has time on his side more than the likes of JT McNamara, Derek O’Connor, Jamie Codd et al, so maybe a champion rider’s title of some description, albeit not the champion conditional, might not be beyond him some time in the future after all. I genuinely wish him well.

2008-01-31T08:52:00.001Z

THE SANATOGEN AND SAGA BRIGADE DESCENDS UPON SOMERSET - BUT WHITHER THE HUNTERS?

Having respectfully disagreed with the Racing Post Weekender’s Carl Evans in a previous post on the merits of granting any rider in the 2001 point-to-point season the title of “champion”, I will gladly redress the balance to an extent on this occasion, by thanking him for bringing to readers' knowledge the return to greater prominence of a certain genre of race.

The (re-)emergence of unusual or long-forgotten race types is a constant source of fascination to me, adding as they do their own curious little footnotes to a racing programme increasingly groaning under the weight of workaday mid to low-ranking handicaps under both codes. To that end I always look forward to the cross-country races at Cheltenham, and the race restricted to grey horses at Newmarket; I still lament the fact the genuine 3m4f marathon hurdle died when jumps racing at Nottingham did; I was intrigued to see Aintree following Newton Abbot’s lead last May by running a handicap hunters’ chase; and I am hoping that the reappearance of claiming chases – the next one is scheduled for Musselburgh this Sunday – to Britain after a protracted absence proves not to be a fleeting, one-season experiment.

It wasn’t any of these that Mr Evans reported on in the Weekender just before Christmas, but rather on the introduction to the calendar of four veterans’ chases, the first one of which takes place at Wincanton this afternoon. This 2m5f race will be followed by a 3m contest at Doncaster on February 20th, a 3m2f one at Newbury on March 1st and a 3m Ascot race on April 11th. All of them are 0-145 handicaps restricted to horses aged 10 or older.

These races do not represent either the first ever attempt at framing races for veterans, of course, or even the first running of any such race for many years, as Cartmel has staged the 10yo-and-older 0-130 Burlington Slate Grand Veterans’ National for each of the last eight Whit Saturdays (barring the 2001 renewal, lost to foot and mouth). This dizzying spectacle, taking in nearly four complete circuits of the idiosyncratic Lakeland venue, has quickly caught the imagination of the local racegoing public there. At the same time, by dint of never yet failing to produce a competitive contest with eight or more runners, it has advertised to the wider racing world that such races are of some worth as betting media, as long as they are pitched at the right level at the right time of year.

This last point was the one which has historically not been got right with veterans’ chases, and which had to be one of the major contributory factors to their total disappearance from the calendar for three years before Cartmel’s enterprising move. There were 19 veterans’ chases run between 1988 and 1997, comprising nine run at Warwick in May, five at Wincanton in late March and another five at Haydock in December. These races between them mustered only 98 runners, an average per race only just above five, and never once did more than eight line up together.

The Warwick and Wincanton races being run as non-handicap contests with no ratings ceilings during comparative lulls in the season (the latter always took place the week after Cheltenham) often led to them featuring one in-form or genuinely classy act easily dispatching a small field of lesser opponents. In four consecutive runnings of the Warwick event from 1991, Huntworth, Skipping Tim and Docklands Express (twice) recorded odds-on wins over just four rivals each – hardly the most appealing betting propositions either in theory beforehand or in practice. Haydock, meanwhile, did run its races as handicaps (latterly as 0-140 contests), but heavy ground - and few places get heavy like Haydock does, of course - saw the last two runnings of its Boston Pit Veterans’ Handicap Chase cut up to just four runners apiece, and time was called on the race at that point.

The Wincanton race today has already achieved something none of those previous 19 races managed, namely attracting 11 starters (from an original entry of 22) of whom over half are rated within a stone of the 145 ratings ceiling; and much of that has to go down to the race being run as a contest for realistically-rated animals at a time of the season when many of them are still very much in circulation. In short, on Official Ratings at least, it has more strength in depth than any other veterans’ chase run in Britain within the last 20 years, if not longer, and I would not be surprised if the Doncaster or Newbury equivalents in the next few weeks prove even stronger in that regard.

One of the main reasons for that assertion is that the Wincanton race is the only one which falls outside of the period of the season during which hunters’ chases are run. In essence, anything that ran today would automatically be ineligible for those amateur races, today’s contest falling as it does two days before the hunters’ season starts. Thereafter, however, there is nothing to stop any suitably aged and rated horse that has already been plying its trade in point-to-points this winter from being aimed squarely at the remaining veterans’ chases ahead of hunters’ races.

This was certainly one concern that Carl Evans raised in his veterans’ chase article in the Weekender, and whilst the number of horses being campaigned in such a way is unlikely to run into dozens and dozens, his is definitely a fair concern. The fact that only professionally licensed trainers could pull off the feat (i.e. Steve Flook couldn’t run a pointer of his in a veterans’ handicap, but Paul Nicholls could one of his) will certainly do little to impress those already sitting firmly in the camp against such trainers participating in points or hunters at all, particularly if any sense is derived that these amateur races are being used as an instrument by licensed trainers to get their charges match-fit ahead of these bigger, more lucrative 0-145 handicap assignments that only they may undertake.

All that said, the drain of Nicholls and O’Neill horses from points / hunters to veterans’ races won’t be absolute, as the likes of Le Passing and East Tycoon are still too young to take part in the last-named even if Thisthatandtother, Innox, etc. are not. Plus, of course, we were all given to understand that the purpose of licensed trainers’ horses running in the amateur sphere was that they had become too highly handicapped under Rules, so a complete reneging on that statement by their attempting to farm all the veterans’ races with pointing / hunting animals would surely rate a huge publicity own-goal.

For many reasons, then, the line-up for the remaining 10yo and up races this term will be a source of real interest, far beyond the actuality of how many horses take part. I can’t wait.

2008-01-30T21:46:00.002Z

WHEN IS A CHAMPIONSHIP NOT A CHAMPIONSHIP - A STUDY, 1967 to 2001

As one of thousands of confirmed hunters’ chase and point-to-point enthusiasts, the Racing Post Weekender is a permanent fixture in my weekly shopping basket between December and June. Whilst the results listed in the pull-out on the amateur sport are available in varying formats elsewhere, the rump of the editorial content is not; and both the human interest stories behind certain runners and riders, plus those of rules and programme changes, are given the fine toothcomb treatment by me each week.

One article from last week’s Weekender served as a reminder that the one thing that all racing writers, pundits and enthusiasts have in common is that they each have their own hobby-horse subject or subjects, which are then maintained and defended with a zeal arguably disproportionate to all else.

In the case of one or two of my colleagues on Betfair Radio, the subject guaranteed to elicit the strongest reaction is the provision to the media of timely and accurate changes to a racecourse’s conditions (e.g. the moving in or out of running rails). My equivalents would be the introduction of hurdle races over a genuine marathon trip, i.e. beyond the current longest of 3m3.5f, and a recognised championship – with prizes - for permit-holders as an acknowledgement of their longstanding historical significance to and continued support of the sport of National Hunt racing. For Carl Evans, the Racing Post’s hunters’ chase and point-to-point expert and writer of the informative and engaging "Pointing Diary" in the Weekender each week, the recording of the 2001 pointing season appears to be a perennial bugbear.

That season was, of course, blighted by the return to the British Isles of foot and mouth disease and an instant cessation of all racing in mid-February. Whilst Rules action returned to those courses suitably detached from the movement of potentially affected livestock shortly after (e.g. Musselburgh, Haydock, Huntingdon and the London courses), the intrinsically rural, and in many cases farm-based point-to-point tracks, never really had any live prospect of a resumption; and so it came to pass that the pointing season ended abruptly after the Brocklesby Park and Parham meetings on February 24th, the seventh weekend of the season, with only 218 races out of a likely programme of around 1400 having taken place.

Mr Evans’ contention is that the severely truncated nature of pointing in 2001 should prevent that season from being regarded as one in which any riders, horses, etc. are classed as “champions”, even for historical purposes. Weatherbys in general, and Mackenzie and Harris’ Hunter Chasers and Point-to-Pointers annual in particular, is cited as perpetuating the idea that what racing did take place that year was sufficient to constitute a proper season; and that the recording of Polly Gundry as champion woman with six wins, and of messrs Dunsdon, Gordon and Jefford as the men’s joint champions with five apiece, is entirely acceptable.

Whilst broadly sympathetic to Mr Evans’ opinion, and whilst acknowledging, as he did, that a number of pointing regions were unable to host a single meeting on account of first the weather and then foot and mouth, I have little hesitation in agreeing with Weatherby’s judgment on this occasion.

2001 was not the first year in many people’s living memory to be broadsided by an epidemic of the disease, of course. November 28th 1967 saw a Ministry of Agriculture-driven ban imposed on all horse racing, one which held across the entire country for two months and in some areas until early the following summer. There were no point-to-point fixtures scheduled for the first few weeks of that imposition anyway, but losses thereafter there certainly were, albeit admittedly not on the same scale as over 30 years later.

A glance at the roll-call of previous champions in the Annual reveals one present and correct for both gentlemen’s and ladies’ championships in 1968, and therein lies the point – the precedent already exists for a championship to be counted as a championship, however foreshortened or truncated by circumstances beyond anyone’s control.

The nature of that interruption to the season ought not make any difference, either. A glance further up the table reveals that the 1963 season was still regarded as valid enough to warrant the declaration of Major Guy Cunard and Sally Rimell as the winners of their respective championships, despite that year’s savage winter more or less wiping out all action until part-way into March.

The aforementioned fact that some areas of the country saw no pointing action whatsoever in 2001, to the detriment of most of the riders and certainly all of the horses and trainers based in these areas, is not disputed. That, however, is just the way it is. The composition and geography of certain places will always leave them more at risk of having their racing way of life compromised than others, be that by susceptibility to epidemics or extremes of weather.

A not insubstantial chunk of the summer jumping programme was lost to the terrible floods last year, both of these events being based largely in the Midlands; but it would set an unwise precedent to suggest that the inability of a large number of the Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire trainers to train or send out runners during that period rendered the championship too loaded against them to count as credible.

In short, were there ample precedent of shortened point-to-point championships not being counted as championships, then I would have no hesitation in agreeing with Carl Evans on this occasion, but whilst it may exist I am yet to see it.

(As an aside, I would also counter the assertion made in the same article that, “no-one claims Esha Ness won the void 1993 Grand National”. On the contrary.

Those that did complete the course did so having raced in earnest throughout, right down to fighting out a finish, from which Esha Ness emerged victorious in a time 12.6 seconds faster than the Racing Post standard fo the course and distance. The paper’s comments in running for him, “held up in touch, headway to join leaders last, shaken up to lead flat, stayed on well, finished first”, don’t really read like those of a horse only going through the motions rather than racing for real, either.

As such, and notwithstanding the depleted field following the multiple pullings-up after the first circuit (which still left 19 going out for a second time, far more than in the undisputedly legitimate 2001 renewal), the race still stands on its own merits as an indication that Esha Ness, Cahervillahow, On The Other Hand, etc. genuinely stayed a marathon trip, however much they did or did not run over similar thereafter).

2007-12-31T19:34:00.004Z

PERILS OF THE JOB REAFFIRMED AS CAT LOSES A LIFE

Many of those of us watching Racing UK’s coverage of Newbury last Saturday saw unfurl before our eyes the latest example of one of racing’s most unfortunate, conspicuous, hard to disguise errors. Mike Cattermole mistook Mick Fitzgerald on Khyber Kim for the rather less stylish amateur Mike Lurcock on 200-1 outsider Levantine until the final flight of a novices’ hurdle, and in so doing stimulated a degree of debate on assorted racing fora as to the culpability of commentators versus the art of trusting one's own eyes alone in reading a race.

More so than most jobs in the racing media, commentating is a job with no safety net, and nowhere to hide if the wrong horse is called the winner or – especially with the increasing prevalence of exchanges and in-running options – incorrectly said to have departed the contest. Any error, no matter how small, is likely to cause a ruction of whatever size somewhere on course, in a bookmakers or on internet betting exchanges, and it must be the hope of any commentator that if such a fate absolutely has to befall them, it does so in the most minor of contests rather than the Cheltenham Gold Cup or Derby.

That was certainly the case for Graham Goode, whose mis-calling of a race winner at Musselburgh in June 2006 came, luckily for him, in a four-runner juvenile seller that passed without much lasting comment beyond a few initial tut-tuts as to how it was possible to make such a mistake with a tiny field. For all that it was not one of the bigger meetings at the Berkshire track, Cattermole’s Newbury error would nonetheless have been heard – and felt – by more people, and attracted a larger negative reaction.

Much of that reaction, originating from some of cyberspace’s more excitable inhabitants, was predicated on the belief (certainly not shared here) that Cattermole was not fit for purpose at such a prestigious track, and should be removed straight away; and also on the belief that he should not be paid a sizeable sum only to deliver what on this occasion proved to be a flawed performance.

The latter is a fair comment up to a point. Up until around five years ago (the latest figure this writer possesses, taken from a Racing Post article on the profession), a commentator on the Racetech roster would be paid around £475 a day including expenses, even if the meeting he was booked for ultimately fell foul of the weather on his arrival. With the most popular commentators on the roster currently calling between 80 and 90 meetings a year, it becomes clear that many Racetech employees are certainly well rewarded for their efforts (even before other engagements for the likes of Channel 4 and the two specialist racing channels are factored in).

This is not money willingly handed over by Racetech without any questions being asked of the recipient’s performance as necessary, though. How could it be, when certain commentators - Kel Mansfield, Johnnie Turner, Mike Vince, Ben Newton, Andy Orkney and Jon Hickman since 2003 alone, for example - have been removed from the roster, rather than left it of their own volition? The point to make about this sextet, however, is that their departure from the roster was not instant, not overnight, but was instead due to the cumulative effect of mistakes and / or loss of confidence in them, rather than one solitary error.

It may be useful to divulge a little background into how racetracks are allotted commentators for their meetings at this stage. As with a couple of the details referred to in this piece, this represents the method in use up to a couple of years ago at least, but nothing in more recent conversations with several racing media figures familiar with the process has expressly indicated that this is no longer in use. All corrections are gratefully received.

In its simplest terms, racecourses, bookmakers and other interested parties are surveyed periodically to provide lists of commentators that they would prefer to have engaged at meetings at given tracks in future. The contents of these lists are then received by Racetech, whereupon all commentators to be retained are allotted as appropriate a suite of meetings as those lists and their own individual ration of engagements – from 20 to 30 for most rookies to around 90 for the premier callers – will permit.

It is reasonable to assume that some commentators will be more over-subscribed than others, and that the most popular - Richard Hoiles, Simon Holt and John Hunt, perhaps - would have to work for a prodigious number of days in the year to meet the requests of all the lists to the letter. Clearly that isn’t going to happen, and a greater degree of compromise / "best fit" has to be exercised in such instances.

In others, certain commentators are recognised as best fitting the ethos of particular racecourses. For example, Iain Mackenzie’s most common haunts of Cartmel, Fakenham, Hereford, Huntingdon, Ludlow and Perth are spread out over a huge geographical area, but are mostly rural tracks with a fair number of hunters’ chases run – very apposite for the co-author of the amateur sport’s annual. In yet other instances, the geographical location of some commentators is brought to bear, which helps explain why Phil Curry, Doug Fraser and Malcolm Tomlinson, all based in the North, are regulars in Yorkshire and further up the country than that.

These lists are not submitted any more regularly than annually, so any loss of faith in a commentator caused by significant error is unlikely to register anywhere until the first subsequent list is compiled however many months later. Even then, human nature can be such that a course executive will take the view that accidents do happen, and that the caution that the offending commentator may get from Racetech subsequently will rate as sufficient punishment.

Clearly having built up a bank of goodwill never does any harm either, which may explain why Hickman, a longer-standing fixture on the roster, was able not only to survive calling the wrong winner in a race at Chepstow in 2003 but also continue to be used most enthusiastically by the Monmouthshire venue for three more years; whereas the luckless Vince was dropped in his first and only year on the roster despite a small series of minor mistakes during the year rather than one notably huge one. The latter does still call a small handful of meetings at Aintree and Ascot, however, albeit at the invitation of the day's race sponsors rather than that of Racetech.

So where does all the above leave Mike Cattermole? In the immediate aftermath he was certainly mortified and contrite, though those visiting the subsequent Newbury races on the Racing Post video archive individually in the future may well query the origin of the slightly crestfallen tone of the commentary in those races and a nervous attempted pun on the name of Souffleur in the feature race. No course looks to have taken it upon itself to demand for someone else for its subsequent meetings, however, and nor should any; and the smooth, professional, affable delivery that has otherwise typified Cattermole's near 15-year (and counting) career as a Rules commentator ought to return to the fore soon enough.

This won’t have been an afternoon he will forget lightly, with any caution resonating in his ears from Racetech’s senior management likely to make doubly sure of that. As with falling off a horse, however, the best thing a man commentating on them can do after a mishap is dust himself off and get on with it, and that he undoubtedly will have to do – reputations take seconds to dent, far longer to build or, as here, restore.

As regards the punters calling for Cattermole's head after mistaking Khyber Kim and Levantine, the incident should serve as a reminder to them that however good our current raft of commentators undoubtedly is (arguably the best ever), there is usually no substitute for trusting one’s own eyes above anything else; and there was some very easy money to be made laying in-running for those who were both able to tell the – considerable – difference between messrs Fitzgerald and Lurcock, and were quick enough to do something about it.

2007-11-25T11:01:00.001Z

NO TIME FOR HAND-WRINGING AS OWNER POTTS THE QUESTION

If the victories of Spot Thedifference and Katie Walsh on the Friday of the Open meeting principally served to remind us of the magic and romance that Cheltenham can still give rise to, and if the Sunday reaffirmed that the oft-maligned drainage work on the course still isn’t quite so zealous that heavy or waterlogged ground cannot occur, then the Saturday in between reminded us above all else – and in the most brutal way possible - that the innate perils the course can have in store for horse and rider are still very much evident.

The deaths of the Paul Nicholls pair of Willyanwoody in the novices’ chase and Granit Jack in the feature Paddy Power Gold Cup, both at the second last fence on the Old Course, have arguably generated more column inches outside of the trade papers than any other fatalities in a jumps race since the double-figure tally at HQ during the 2006 Festival some 20 months previously. And to a large extent that should not surprise; these were big enough profile Saturday afternoon contests over an Old Course which welcomes Channel 4 cameras to six of its seven race days each season. The challenge it poses is conspicuously familiar even to just the weekend television viewer.

With that higher profile come greater pronouncements from a greater number of quarters on the suitability, or otherwise, of the challenge than one might expect in the light of a fatality in a selling hurdle at Towcester. The sources of the most trenchant arguments both for and against the jumping of the offending obstacle on the Old Course are easy enough to guess at; and whilst the tone of the headlines on Animal Aid’s website (Cheltenham as a whole is described as "notorious", and clerk of the course Simon Cliasse (sic) as having dismissed the fatalities as "bad luck") is little over which supporters of the sport can hold much sway, I have found it hard not to be just a touch disappointed by the response of the majority of owners, trainers and jockeys (and indeed certain columnists) in the intervening few days.

The blunt, unequivocal recourse to the maxim of “that’s racing” with which messrs Henderson, Hobbs and McCoy’s responses in the Racing Post earlier this week were shot through (and one can only be guided by how accurately those replies were committed to print), did reek a little too much of a collective whitewashing over the whole affair of the sort that jumps racing can increasingly ill afford. Exhibiting rather more - not contrition, exactly, but perhaps more acknowledgement that Saturday's events would not have looked especially good to the outside world, might have been a smarter strategy. Whilst Paul Nicholls admitted to a large degree of soul-searching over the loss of two of his string at Cheltenham in his Post column yesterday, and unequivocally stated that something needs to be done about the offending obstacle, Paddy Brennan alone of those interviewed in the Post’s piece earlier in the week appeared alive to any “outside looking in” sensibilities.

Ultimately, if racing's participants and proponents are slow, or unwilling, to adopt a wider view of the public image of the sport (good and bad), then it can have little quarrel when its opponents wantonly choose not to, either.

Some cries of overreaction have inevitably sprung from the lips of the most fervent defenders of the Old Course’s current, long-established configuration. In so far as the course had not suddenly become any more intrinsically dangerous overnight prior to last Saturday’s brace of fatalities, they are entitled to those cries. However, whilst the topography of the course and the stiffness of the obstacles have altered relatively little over time (with just small modifications to each), the way it is ridden, and on what sort of horse, both have to larger extents.

Gone are the days when big fields would hack round for the first half of a handicap even of the magnitude of the Paddy Power; one can be assured of end-to-end gallops in such races more often than not nowadays, with the twin concerns of travelling at speed yet being run ragged enough for mistakes to occur late on both very much an issue. And the profile of the horses who contest these races is not quite what it was previously, either, Granit Jack being just one of so many French imports that would have faced no slope even halfway comparable to the downhill run at Prestbury Park during their earlier careers at Auteuil, Enghien or elsewhere.

All the more reason, therefore, for the connections of such animals intended for running in such frenetic races to assume greater responsibility in ensuring their charges are suitably equipped for the task in hand.

Preparing a horse for a specific test by simulating the conditions he or she will most likely face there as closely as possible is common practice ahead of races such as the Grand National, where connections take to constructing giant spruce practice fences at home. Notwithstanding the more conventional nature of the obstacles there, it is similarly surely in the best interests of all trainers with Cheltenham aspirants to have a simulation of that course permanently in situ.

Having an uphill gallop is seen as such a prerequisite of any even halfway serious jumps operation nowadays, and without being too flippant about things, any hill equipped with an uphill stretch automatically comes with a downhill one included as well. Some trainers, including the aforementioned Nicky Henderson, do indeed maintain set-ups that typically mimic the third, second and last fences at Cheltenham and the runs between them. Whilst it is implausible at this remove to think that pressure could be brought to bear to compel all top-flight trainers to follow suit mandatorily, any continued refusal to do so with Cheltenham-bound horses could be argued to constitute as much of a dereliction of duty as not schooling them at all.

***

With most of the press, action groups and racing people having not otherwise done so, it has fallen upon the brighter racing minds lurking on the internet forum TRF (visit www.theracingforum.co.uk) to provide some light and shade on the matter of what to do with the Old course in general and two out in particular; with the fearless and admirable Lydia Hislop of the Times providing both encouragement for debate, and the means by which to represent the best ideas emanating from that debate in the mainstream sports press.

A rough estimate would suggest at least two-thirds of the contributors to the debate on TRF favour some degree of modification to the Old Course at Cheltenham, although at the same time there has been a ready consensus that any such modification should ideally not result in the significant emasculation of that course and its challenge. On both counts, and several more that result from it, the idea of professional punter and “Golden Anorak Racing Club” owner Alan Potts has rightly met with a great deal of support.

Posting on TRF just a few hours after the demise of Granit Jack, Potts observed;

"Cheltenham currently stage 16 days racing each season between October and the end of April, far fewer than many smaller country tracks. So why do they need two separate courses? Rather than fiddling with positioning of the second last on the Old Course, simply move all chases at Cheltenham to the New Course. The fences could be made much wider and dolled off to provide fresh ground as necessary and we'd have a much better and fairer track with a longer home straight and an easier bend into that straight. Then run all the hurdle races on the current Old Course, which would allow Cheltenham to move the hurdles across the full width of the track to provide fresh ground. In effect, hurdle races would use the inner loop, chases the outer loop at all meetings. As a useful by product, this would also do away with the hurdle races on the New Course, with the very long run from the second last that is equally unsatisfactory for championship races”.

The response from the course to Potts’ proposal has been open and receptive, helped no doubt to a degree by his standing as a bastion of common sense and good ideas where races and race-planning matters are concerned (he can realistically lay claim to having been the progenitor of the idea to run a mares’ race at the Cheltenham Festival, for example). Barriers to the possible implementation of the model have been identified, however, managing Director Edward Gillespie’s primary concern lying with the demands it would place on course husbandry thereafter.

With both the Old and New Course (as well as the cross-country infield) effectively being in permanent use, financial and natural demands on watering could conceivably double. This writer is not sure how insurmountable a barrier that need prove – the meeting or matching of the costs of the additional watering (if it is required) by the BHA or whoever else would seem a small price to pay in the scheme of things if it helps to project the best possible image of a well-tended, infinitely versatile racecourse.

Whether or not the idea of moving chases to one course and hurdles to the other en bloc does ultimately prove too radical, there has been no shortage of other suggestions on what should or should not be sited on the Old Course’s downhill stretch. Another owner, Mr A S Helaissi (Dinarius, Gardasee and recent juvenile hurdle winner Lemon Silk), wondered whether the positioning of a smaller obstacle in place of two out would be a positive step towards lowering the attrition rate, but whilst not decrying the idea completely, this writer would tentatively suggest it may not.

If the maxim of "speed kills" is held to be true. I'd proffer that there are far more terrible accidents at this fence compared to the fence at the bottom of Plumpton's not insubstantial downhill run. Whilst that particular obstacle is admittedly not especially tricky in and of itself, were a stiffer one put in its place the attrition rate would most likely rise little, if at all, simply due to the absence of animals approaching it at Championship pace at the Sussex venue. Conversely, anything which could permit horses travelling down the whole of Cheltenham's hill even faster than they already do really runs the risk of inviting yet further high-speed, potentially lethal, spillages.

A further suggestion came from respected TRF poster Grasshopper, who proposed the addition of another fence in between the third and second last. That would thereby create something akin to the Railway Fences at Sandown – namely three obstacles taken in rapid succession which would both provide more of a spectacle, whilst at the same time taking a decisive edge off the remaining competitors’ speed.

The distances of races and positions of fences on the Old Course are such that there would be numerous candidates for a fence to be removed from its present site to that proposed by Grasshopper with no addition to or subtraction from the number of obstacles jumped during a race – this writer’s personal preference would be to re-site either the fence taken immediately after the winning post, or else the fourth in the back straight (for all that that would then mean two ditches are taken in succession).

***

The bottom line is that how seriously one regards the need to change the Old Course in general, and / or two out in particular, depends on how much one regards as a fair challenge a fence at which horses can sprawl on landing and exit the contest even having jumped it entirely soundly. Potts was emphatic in a subsequent post on TRF that no fence on any course should be designed or intended to produce fallers, which should emphatically not be the purpose of steeplechasing.

Most (but not all) of the respondees on that forum certainly concur, and Nicholls’ piece yesterday indicates he appears to also, but the likes of McCoy, Henderson, Hobbs would evidently require a little more convincing. It remains to be seen which parties’ voices will prove to carry the greater weight in the matter, but if change is to come eventually, let it have as its origins the discussions of this last week, rather than a panicked response to another spate of accidents over the course when next used in March.

2007-10-26T23:18:00.001+01:00

FOUND : ONE RACECOURSE. ANSWERS TO THE NAME OF....

Call off the dogs, look what’s been found hidden in the undergrowth! As the delays to the opening of Great Leighs continue to try the patience of even the most ardent proponents of both all-weather racing and the need to bring Rules racing to Essex, news reached the Racing Post last weekend of the current state of progress on a project that has been even longer in the making than the aforementioned venue.

The racecourse being built at Ffos Las near Llanelli at present represents the second attempt by Pembrey Racecourse PLC to establish a new Rules racecourse in Carmarthenshire, and with it become the first such venue in the locality since the - by then corruption-sullied - Tenby track closed its doors this month in 1936 (Chris Pitt’s peerless A Long Time Gone survey will tell you the whole sorry tale there).

As the name of the holding company suggests, Pembrey itself was the intended venue of the course when BHA fixtures were secured by the nascent PLC (Pembrey Racing Ltd as was) in the summer of 2000, before matters of land ownership and the risk of flooding forced it to look elsewhere, settling on the site of a former mine in Ffos Las three miles further inland. This has inevitably delayed matters, the overoptimistic claims of certain local councillors at the time that a course only finally granted planning permission in late summer 2003 would be built from scratch and functional within two years having proven wide of the mark. Judged on the aerial shot of the site in the Post, however, the revised projected date of 2009 does not look implausible.

In scrutinising the current surface in one of its essays, the new edition of Timeform’s Chasers and Hurdlers (meditations on which shall feature on this blog in due course) noted that the original racing turf at Ascot was given six years to bed in before any competitive racing took place on it. Ffos Las will only get a couple if all runs to time hereafter, but the ground has already seeded staggeringly well given that particular process only started last month. The Post’s photo indicates a covering of grass on around half of the course already, with a full growth now more than cautiously anticipated before the winter kicks in.

And for those who don’t already know or did not see the picture, that represents an awful lot of grass. No tight, sharp gaffe in the making, the turf courses at Ffos Las at least look a galloping horse’s dream – the circuit is basically flat, left-handed, 1m5f in length and with sweeping turns – and wide with it, provision evidently existing for maximum fields of 20 on both the hurdles and chase courses. Think Ayr, Doncaster, Newbury, Worcester or Wetherby for the closest points of reference.

Quite what else will be provided is a little more conjectural, as separate Pembrey Airport and Ffos Las Racecourse websites (both seemingly live) promise different versions of the finished product – the former, for example, maintains that an all-weather track will run around the outside of the turf circuit. If that is true, that would offer something to the genuine long-striding type on an artificial surface for the first time in this country, as well as realistically doubling the options of all-weather campaigners from Ireland (alongside Dundalk); but that still rates something of a major "if".

The importance of the potential Irish patronage alluded to there is not to be underestimated. More so than most other tracks in Britain, if not all of them, Ffos Las is superbly appointed to encourage raiders from across the sea given the aforementioned ferry links (plus the airport if permitted), and neither website wastes the opportunity to hammer home that point. Pre-emptively, this writer suggests that the paucity of Irish runners at Chepstow, the nearest Rules track to Ffos Las, cannot be held as an indication that the anticipated support will not materialise, given the Monmouthshire track is another 86 miles further east, another two unappealing hours away in a horsebox.

Then of course there is the matter of support from the local Rules trainers, and as South Wales continues to flourish as a hotbed of (comparatively) recently-established talent, from Peter Bowen and Evan Williams to Alison Thorpe, Keith Goldsworthy and Tim Vaughan, it will be interesting to see whether the availability of the new course on their doorsteps encourages more of the area’s many point-to-point handlers to take out a permit at least. The bountiful numbers of local runners in its pointing meetings season-long offer some grounds for optimism on that score.

Other than those already mentioned, there are numerous other “what if”s and as-yet unresolved or contentious issues associated with the project. The intended developing of the course as Wales’ centre of excellence for harness racing, polo and equestrianism looks a smart move towards ensuring usage of the site above and beyond Rules racedays, but the organisers of the well-established local point-to-point courses at Cilwendeg (since 2002), Erw Lon (1979), Llanvapley (1953), Trecoed (2002) and in particular the visually stunning peninsula course at Lydstep (1948), could all feasibly stand in the way of the course’s efforts to become the definitive local venue for the amateur sport by staying put.

Remember that, with the exception of Fakenham and few if any others, point-to-point meetings at Rules tracks doubling up as pointing venues tend to be characterless affairs not wholly appreciated by the cognoscenti, and the Ffos Las executive could lose a deal of goodwill if trying to bring too much pressure to bear on the local hunts to move to hosting such meets.

Another interesting imponderable will be how the respective Ffos Las and Chepstow executives respond to the challenge of incorporating all the meetings allocated to both (plus any successfully bid for) in a way that benefits them the most. Chepstow has 29 fixtures a year to program in, and as both courses are dual-purpose owing to it being an absolute prerequisite of the Ffos Las bid to be so, there was never really going to be the option there to put forward the new racecourse as, say, a summer jumping venue when the former is well into its Flat season.

Further, as galloping left-handers the two courses are not at all dissimilar (Chepstow’s undulations being the major distinguishing feature). There would be a degree of danger, therefore, in running a meeting at each track on consecutive days, and assuming that the pool of horses who can get to either one and are suited by their composition won’t be split between them to the possible detriment of both.

This is not to give an early bath to Ffos Las’s aspirations of being successful and as far as possible commercially viable from the start. Far from it – none of the points of contention raised above would rate as even halfway insurmountable in this writer’s opinion, and indeed things could get better still if the upgrading of the main link road to the site from the east is finished in time, as is the hope. With the right care and attention taken, the racing world will hopefully have cause to regard Ffos Las racecourse as an important addition to the broad church of racing provision in Britain (and Ireland), rather than some new oddment in one of its furthest-flung corners. It deserves to succeed.

2007-10-22T20:05:00.001+01:00

GOODBYE AND SLOW LONG - A TRIBUTE

A long-overdue holiday with Mrs Column to Hamburg a few weeks ago, and the resultant backlog of work awaiting me on my return, conspired to delay any further updating of this blog until now, for which apologies.

One date of great personal significance came and went during my break. October 5th 2007 was spent messing around on a boat on the River Elbe, darting in and out of the impressive Hanseatic structures of Hamburg's harbour and generally making best use of the (at least then) unseasonably mild German autumn. October 5th 2006, however, was an altogether less jolly affair, witnessing as it did the death of two things in which I had significant interests - one professional, both personal.

I am yet to comment on the Sportsman's demise this time last year in anything other than the most passing of terms, and I fear I shall let down those of you wishing me to redress the balance here once again. I do intend to commit a few more words to screen in due course, though, in particular now that there are parallels to be drawn between the respective launches of that paper 18 months ago and the weekend edition of Racing Ahead last weekend.

This blog update, however, concerns a horse. In fact it concerns the only horse I have ever sat on in my life, the one on whom I co-edited a website for several years, and the one whom I have frequently suggested on several occasions, and only half-jokingly, that I would be minded to nominate as my specialist subject were I ever to carry out a long-standing threat to try to appear on Mastermind. That horse is the "losingmost legend" Quixall Crossett, the announcement of whose putting to sleep on October 5th of last year capped a day that was overwhelming in every way imaginable.

Following my pieces on the late Geos and Mighty Fine in recent months, I am mindful of not letting That Racing Blog start to read too much like an obituary site. However, I have taken the anniversary of Quixall's passing as the opportunity to honour a request I have had from a good number of people to reproduce an article I submitted to the monthly edition of Racing Ahead about a week after my own personal Black Thursday.

Along with a trend analysis piece on the Paddy Power Gold Cup, it represented the first work that I had accepted for inclusion in the magazine (and with it my first freelance engagement ever), so it is a piece I hold dear for reasons other than just the subject matter. I believe the edition in which it was first published (November 2006) has long since been out of print, so is reproduced here in good faith - it goes without saying, however, that I shall take it down again if so instructed, but for the time being at least, I hope it proves an interesting read.

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GOODBYE AND SLOW LONG

Quixall Crossett, for so long the star of Ted Caine’s North Yorkshire permit-holding operation and the loser of all his 103 National Hunt starts and a point-to-point, was put down earlier this month at the age of 21. Jeremy Grayson looks back over the life of the ultimate loveable loser.

NEVER in the field of steeplechasing has one slow, low-rated gelding given so much to so many people. Quixall Crossett never won a race, and only very rarely came close to doing so, but his 11-year career earned him the adoration of thousands and gave the three people closest to him, trainers Ted and Joy Caine and their then assistant Geoff Sanderson, purpose to their lives once more in the face of the most unbearable grief.

Prior to Quixall’s ascent to public prominence, the Caines’ training career, which had commenced in 1976, had passed as quietly as that of numerous other Northern permit-holders, with their array of cheap, angular homebreds making only modest gains on the racetrack (the granite-tough Cavalier Crossett, who was foaled for just £50 but won eight 2m races, being a notable exception). The evidence of his first 13 starts suggested that Quixall Crossett, named after the former Sheffield Wednesday and Manchester United star Albert Quixall, was shaping up to be pretty much more of the same, and almost certainly not the “Good ‘un” Ted had hoped he’d saved the name for.

Life changed forever for the Caines in November 1994, however, when Malcolm, their 26 year-old son, was killed in an accident at High Crossett Farm. Clearly devastated by their loss, they still had the welfare of the farm’s horses to consider, and it was Quixall and his stablemates that gave them the impetus to pull through their darkest weeks and months. Quixall in particular was a revelation, proving sound enough to withstand extensive campaigning (31 runs during the 1996-7 season alone) having previously been a wind-sucker and crib-biter, as well as a poor eater after exercise.

It was around this time that Quixall was allocated a new helper in the form of Sanderson, briefly engaged at Ginger McCain’s yard in the 1970s but by this point a pensioned-off sufferer of clinical depression following the death of his severely handicapped two year-old son Adam. The gelding proved a most patient, giving tutor, tolerant of the ailing Sanderson’s early mistakes before eventually becoming more of a wind-up merchant as his rehabilitation developed.

Simply put, Quixall got all three of his carers back on a more even keel, out to the racecourse and mingling with people again, and their collective pilgrimage took in 21 National Hunt courses from Ascot to Perth over the years. Novices’ and maiden chases and selling hurdles comprised the bulk of his itinerary, but occasional forays into top-class races whose fields had cut up were embarked upon as well. A 57l fourth place behind Dublin Flyer in the 1996 Peterborough Chase earned him his single biggest prizemoney cheque of £1,500, but a similar attempt at such enterprise in the Tommy Whittle Chase two years later saw his last of five finish, two fences adrift of Suny Bay (at the time rated all of 118lb superior), Earth Summit, The Grey Monk and Lord Gyllene, go unrewarded beyond Haydock’s covering of travelling expenses.

***

There were a number of misconceptions that Quixall was increasingly saddled with as his profile rose. First and foremost, he couldn’t be considered “Britain’s worst racehorse” (as one tabloid had dubbed him in a full-page article in 1999) on the evidence of official ratings. Despite his BHB mark sliding to an eventual low of 46, this is by no means the lowest recorded over fences since the National Hunt ratings scale was revised in late 1989 – indeed, Dual Star (39), Iron Buck (41) and Spilaw (44) are three chasers to have recorded lower in the last 18 months alone.

Similarly, he was nowhere near as unsafe a conveyance as was made out in some quarters. Jockey Gary Lyons once insisted, “he’s a great old ride and just goes his own pace…. there are much more risky propositions to ride in novice chases than Quixall Crossett”, and the fact the gelding only hit the deck unaided five times in his long career bears that out to a large extent.

Lyons rode Quixall nine times under Rules, as did Scott Taylor. Michael Naughton managed 11, the most of anyone. His thirty or so other partners included Richard Hale and Brian Clifford, nowadays a prominent jockey’s agent and clerk of the course at Kempton respectively. A young Jim Crowley, enjoying such a bountiful time riding on the Flat at present, was on board for Quixall’s nearest miss, a staying-on 2l second to Toskano at Wetherby in May 1998. But it was Nick Kent, now a successful Lincolnshire hunter chaser trainer and rider, who was on board for the highest profile run of all, his 100th Rules defeat at Southwell on July 22nd 2001.

There had been appreciable build-up to this appearance. The Quixall Crossett website – still extant to this day, although updated rather infrequently [actually down at present (10/07) - JG] – was greatly expanded. At least one script for the film version of Quixall’s life and times was known to have been drafted, albeit one bearing such fictitious embellishments as a love interest for the (permanent) jockey and a Colonel Blimp-type figure of fun and ridicule. An astrologer, Jane Headon (now married to Sanderson), was enlisted to predict what behaviour and ability Quixall might show on the 22nd. Come race-day itself, a “Meet Quixall Crossett” competition was run on the course, Sky Sports devoted special interest to his race, to the extent of employing a “Quixall Cam” to follow him around the track, and a well above-average crowd for the Nottinghamshire venue was on hand to see… well, not much of a performance in the end.

Quixall was already tailed off after five of the 19 fences and was not asked to go out on the final circuit by Kent. He came back safe and sound, however, and got a rapturous reception as he jogged past the stands. Headon suggested his star charts revealed a possible struggle to channel his energies in the right areas on the day, whilst other possible causes of the below-par run may have been the watered surface or an early bump, but ultimately there was nothing connections regarded as a copper-bottomed excuse, and they reaffirmed there would be other days for their charge.

***

The Southwell run marked the high-point of Quixall’s popularity, with the website taking thousands of hits over that weekend in July and the race filling column inches of pretty much every national newspaper. Within four months, however, he had made his final appearance under Rules, pressure having been brought to bear on the Caines regarding the effect running the gelding any longer may have had on the image of the sport. A very long last in a maiden chase framed for and named after him at Wetherby (and sponsored by Reliant Cars), followed by two consecutive unseatings (the second from 30 pounds out of the handicap and with rider John Barlow carrying 10 extra himself) did little to silence doubters, and even the Racing Post’s Paul Haigh, hitherto one of the gelding’s most ardent supporters, suggested that, “the joke has worn first thin and now out”.

Behind the scenes there was discord in the Crossett camp as well. Geoff Sanderson departed High Crossett Farm in mid-August, having expressed unease about Quixall’s continued campaigning following the Southwell disappointment, although it was November before this split was made public. Sanderson has since pursued a burgeoning career in equine rehabilitation, still insisting that little of what he has achieved in that field would have been possible without having previously worked with the “absolute Christian” Quixall.

Ted and Joy Caine more or less disappeared off the radar following Castle Stephen and Clavering’s runs at Doncaster on December 15th, Ted claiming shortly after to have had a “belly full” of unwelcome attention from racing’s authorities. Occasional hints were made in the following years that Quixall was still fit and well enough to take his place in local point-to-points were the Caines so minded, but he never did; only lower-profile colleagues Cloigeann Rua, Cregg Rose and Pharnoon (plus Nopublicityplease if his withdrawal from a Wetherby hurdle 18 months ago on debut is counted) have appeared between the flags or under Rules in the last five years, racking up just penny numbers of appearances between them.

Greater activity should be forthcoming now that Ted has taken out his permit once more, although only time will tell whether any of his current charges, including relatives of Quixall Crossett, will ever occupy the same place in the hearts of so many racegoers as their singularly generous and character-laden, if rather slow, former stablemate.

Quixall Crossett, a bay gelding by Beverley Boy out of Grange Classic (Stype Grange) was born on April 5th 1985 and was reported dead on October 5th 2006.

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2007-08-31T00:32:00.001+01:00

A MIGHTY SAD END... BUT NOTHING MORE SINISTER

Outside of – or maybe for some people even alongside - great champions, there are two particular kinds of racehorse that seem to draw a greater emotional response from racegoers than any other.

One of these is the grey horse, the closer to white the better; an instantly recognisable, spectral sight juxtaposed against the predominately green (or sand) coloured backdrop of the racecourse, every flicker of facial feature far more visible to the naked eye compared to those of his brown, black and bay counterparts.

The other is the veteran horse; a reassuring sight, returning year after year to add a degree of continuity to a dizzying, congested and for the greater part transient racing world, refusing to bend to age and rewarding his loving connections’ faith and patience in keeping him race-worthy into his dotage.

Given his possession of both these attributes of near-white skin and veteran status, therefore, it was inevitable that when the 13 year-old hurdler and chaser Mighty Fine started recording a succession of career-best performances in running up a sequence of victories this summer, he captured the imagination of many and added a dash of colour (in more senses than one) to the undeniably quieter portion of the jumps season. Just as inevitably, then, his fatal heart attack on the way back to the stables following a hard-fought victory at Perth last month went anything other than unnoticed.

Cries of unfair treatment of Mighty Fine rang out across certain of the online racing forums almost immediately, mostly directed at trainer Paul Blockley, who was sending out the gelding for the fifth time in nine weeks since his eyebrow-raising claiming of him from a Sedgefield selling hurdle at the start of June. It was barbaric, or at the very least desperately ill-advised, many suggested, to wait until the thirteenth year of the horse’s life to put him through his heaviest ever campaign (12 races this year up to and including the Perth outing), and to turn him out just 10 days after a second on sapping ground in a competitive 2m6f Market Rasen handicap hurdle.

The facts of Mighty Fine’s campaigning prior to his demise are not in dispute, and it was without question a very, very sad end for a horse who literally ran his heart out on the night, but I would still stop a long way short of castigating Blockley or of suggesting that that campaigning in any way hastened his charge’s demise.

The point to make about pretty much all of Mighty Fine's other six 2007 wins is that they had been attained with consummate ease (an aggregate of 72l, in actual fact) against opponents - and in races - ranging from ordinary to dreadful. Indeed, the Perth victory was the only one of his wins this year recorded in a race greater than Class 4 status (with selling hurdles accounting for half of the other six), and the only one he had to fight for to any particular extent.

I would suggest that such "contests" as preceded Perth would have taken very little out of him. I stand by that assertion even though this habitual front-runner attempted to record pillar to post victories on every occasion.

Discussing the science of front-running with my good friend and former boss at the Sportsman Simon Rowlands earlier this week, we both voiced our disapproval of many course commentators’ referring to attempts to make all as “doing it the hard way”. Assuming a front-runner must automatically be running himself into the ground each time is inaccurate and in all honesty a bit insulting to many horses – look no further than the succession of wins gained via "conservative front-running" by Ellerslie Tom last summer for a strong counter-argument against such an assumption.

Mighty Fine’s final campaign of 12 races did indeed make 2007 his busiest ever calendar year, as already stated, but this has to be looked at in the wider context of his racing life as a whole, which had started in bumpers nearly nine years earlier. An overall total of 47 races for a 13yo is anything but an exhaustive, exhausting career, and due in part to him having had at least one lengthy spell on the sidelines with a cracked foot during the earlier years of his tenure with Evelyn Slack and Diane Sayer. In real terms, he probably gave every outward sign of being as fit and well this summer as a more evenly-campaigned horse four or five years his junior.

Racing jumps horses with conspicuous frequency is an emotive issue (all the more so the older they get), as it is presumed that the horses in question are not getting the requisite amount of time to recover from exertions which, even at their shortest (1m4f, say, for a junior bumper and 2m for a hurdle or chase race), constitute greater physical tests than the majority of assignments on the Flat.

But not all horses are alike, of course. The mere fact that Mighty Fine was in his best form ever at 13, and carried 11st 9lb to victory in his final race in a time equal to the Racing Post standard for 3m chases at Perth, proves that much alone. Another 13yo, Barry Potts' Dream Castle, made all to land the claiming hurdle at the same venue the following afternoon; whilst campaigned with less frequency than Mighty Fine in 2007, his profile as an injury-plagued (broken down four times) but still thoroughly enthusiastic animal in the best form of his life otherwise bears remarkable similarities.

Moreover, Paul Blockley belongs to that tranche of jumps trainers, along with the likes of Michael Chapman and Milton Harris, who know precisely which of their charges are best able not just to cope with, but to flourish under, a busy and prolonged racing schedule. Such a schedule did not do Blockley’s Is It Me any harm last summer, and it was certainly not to the detriment of Chapman’s sadly-missed Ei Ei, either – this was a horse, remember, that was killed by a final flight fall when a distance clear in a race, rather than by the schedule which had seen him turn out 60 times in under three years for Chapman immediately before that.

Ultimately I suspect this incident will serve only to reinforce already trenchant views for and against running horses over jumps, whether they are as old as Mighty Fine and / or raced with the frequency he was latterly. It should be clear on which side of the fence I come down - Mighty Fine's demise is a terrible shame, and a sadly conspicuous one for those who witnessed it at closer order at Perth last month, but the questioning of Paul Blockley's handling of him is some way wide of the mark in my opinion, and nothing that is going to bring the loveable old grey back. Here’s wishing all our equine heroes, of all ages, colours, abilities and shapes, safe passage through the rest of the season.

2007-07-05T01:37:00.001+01:00

SOUTHWELL - EMERGES FROM THE DEPTHS AS A RACECOURSE AT RISK.

Having already inadvertently pre-empted far-reaching and not especially welcome changes to one racecourse in this blog, I am wary of speculating on future developments at Southwell as I did Haydock nine months ago. However, I have been moved to put fingers to keyboard again having seen the pictures released today of the East Midlands venue, and whilst they clearly show that the flood levels at the track have abated at last (for however long will be the question on everyone’s lips at the course, though), the true extent of the damage wrought by the exceptionally wet summer is only just starting to become apparent.

Not to put too fine a point on it, there is essentially nothing useful or re-usable left of the all-weather track which has been in situ for 18 years, its place taken instead by a mess of salt, silt, stones and slime, and rectification work on this alone is likely to account for £1.5 million of an overall bill which could yet nudge eight figures – emphatically not the kind of money too many racecourses in the country have sitting idle for a rainy day (never mind the several rainy weeks in this instance).

This is a crying shame for one of my favourite tracks in the country, one which at last count I had managed to visit seven times so far this decade, all for the summer jumps meetings with which it does so well. That should have been eight, but my intended visit earlier this year came to nothing in the end. What a greater pity that now looks in hindsight.

In all honesty. Southwell has never been a track of any great significance in the wider scheme of things (nor would its personnel claim otherwise), and its location in a largely nondescript corner of Nottinghamshire interspersed with the odd electricity pylon hardly marks it out as one of the most beautiful places to enjoy racing in the UK – Cartmel or Hexham it is not. It does, however, have a delightfully informal atmosphere, a courteous and dedicated staff, a surprisingly well-proportioned parade ring given the overall compact nature of the site, easy access to all facilities and an open sweets shop to die for.

The Fibresand track has important qualities above and beyond the actuality of its surface. The second course in the country to host an all-weather meeting back in November 1989 (a few days after Lingfield started it all off on October 30th), it remains to this day the only one of the quartet of artificial surface circuits to possess a straight 5f, and it is possessive of both a length of circuit and run-in longer than those of its contemporaries.

Although an infrequent stopping-off point for Festival and Classic winners, Southwell has nevertheless had a few noted course performers and curious moments in its recent history. Reg Hollinshead’s entire Suluk won a staggering 20 contests at the track in three and a half years up to August 1993 – including 18 wins and three seconds from 22 runs in the more widely feared all-weather hurdle races – and would have managed more besides these had injury not forced him to retire to stud (where he cut no ice) at eight. Barely a fortnight would pass during the early 1980s without Bill Clay’s front-running Some Jinks contesting a 2m 74yds chase of some description at the track, winning plenty. It was Southwell that played host to the bizarre contest in January 2002 in which every horse met with mishap before Family Business remounted to win. Lastly, of course, it was at Southwell that losingmost legend Quixall Crossett recorded his 100th consecutive defeat in July 2001.

In light of the course’s recent drubbings it has not taken too long for one inevitable decision to be taken, and no meetings will be run at Southwell until September at the very earliest. Realistically, with time required to lay a new artificial surface and then bed it in, and large sections of the turf jumps track apparently looking a very black shade of green at present, January 2008 would probably not rate as too unkind a projected resumption date. The question is – in what form should Southwell return?

It is probably a measure of the more holistic view of the sport I have taken with age that, even as an arch jumps fan, I refuse to regard the course’s misfortune as a perfect opportunity for it to eschew all-weather racing and return to just what I originally knew it to be, a low-ranking jumps track with an extensive programme of meetings right around the year. Quite the opposite in fact: its status as the only remaining Fibresand venue is not something that should be relinquished lightly, and the hordes of trainers who have in their care animals for whom this slower surface offers their soft ground / sand horses their greatest (in some cases only) chances of winning contents must be desperate for Arena not to use the flood as the excuse to usher in a change to Polytrack.

Inevitably clamours for Polytrack have already been voiced in certain racing forums, the supposed unpredictability and incongruity of Fibresand racing being cited as the main reason why Southwell is a graveyard for punters. Take Tioga Gold's record-breaking win at 125-1 earlier this year out of the equation, and it is absolutely nothing of the sort. A regular correspondent of mine insists that Southwell race analysis is like shooting fish in a barrel, particularly if one is to concentrate on races full of exposed types whose ability or inability to handle Fibresand over (or as well as) Polytrack was well established. I wouldn’t be in a hurry to contradict that assertion. Indeed, whilst other distractions meant that I only tipped on Southwell's Flat meetings spasmodically during my Sportsman tenure, I rarely finished down on the day there, even when confronted with a card of wall-to-wall Banded fare.

This assumes, of course, that Southwell will be reopened whenever opportunity finally presents itself, though in an environment in which shouts of too many races at too many tracks are rife, that cannot rate as a given.

There would be two desperate ironies were the floods to precipitate the closure of the track. Firstly, the whole raison d’etre of the all-weather surface was to provide a program of racing when inclement conditions elsewhere prevented it from taking place. Secondly, the course has provided sterling service in recent seasons as a replacement venue for other tracks, successfully hosting renewals of Doncaster contests such as the Skybet Chase and even as recently as late March picking up a meeting at – would you believe it – a flooded Worcester at short notice.

The hope is that the practicality and logistics of trying to absorb Southwell’s meetings (just under 70 originally scheduled for 2007) within the rest of the group would be enough on its own to dissuade Arena Leisure from calling time on the course. Given that the criticisms leveled at Wolverhampton during its ghastly run of jockeys’ falls and equine fatalities in 2006 included plenty questioning the wisdom of racing on the track somewhere in the region of 100 times in the space of a year, transferring former Southwell AW fixtures to Dunstall Park would run the risk of reopening old debates and possibly – if the worst came to the worst – inviting further accidents.

However, Arena must have a figure in mind beyond which it is not prepared to go to restore the course to a horse- and spectator-fit condition, and coming as they do hard on the heels of a profit warning, events of the last couple of weeks in my favourite little corner of Nottinghamshire leave the track’s owners with some unenviable decisions to make in the very near future.

2007-07-03T00:24:00.001+01:00

WHO'LL TAKE THE DROP FOR TAKING AWAY THE DROP FENCES?

Tellwright, Tellwright, lama sabachthani?

You may remember that the very first That Racing Blog post of the lot, back in mid-October of last year, meditated on an evident sea-change at Haydock Park, the first sign of which appeared to be the substituting of a number of portable fences for permanent obstacles down the back straight. At the time I wrote that:

The Lancashire venue will never not be a galloper's track, but let's hope its status as a proper jumper's track need not be placed in too much doubt hereafter.

Sadly, events since that posting have confirmed that those three portafences simply represented the tip of the iceberg, and National Hunt racing at Haydock as we have known it for decades came to an end over fences at Easter, and over hurdles with the Swinton meeting a month later.

The 2007-8 season will usher in a revised program consisting of a reduced number of meetings, and – as utterly inadvertently predicted in that October posting – one strip of turf only will be used for both hurdle and chase races on the inside of the course, so that two Flat tracks may be maintained outside of it. To that end, even my hope that the course will “never not be a galloper’s track” looks a slightly forlorn one now.

Clerk of the Course Kirkland Tellwright is not the first bearer of his surname with a bit of “previous” where contentious racecourse decisions are concerned, Bill Tellwright having presided over the closure of Woore, one of the slew of Rules tracks to disappear during the 1960s. Heavily involved with the North Staffordshire Hunt point-to-point fixture, then run at nearby Mucklestone, Bill essentially bought up the assets of Woore when it was given an Easter Saturday fixture that was given to pool so extensively from the same local spectator / horse base as Mucklestone as to decimate patronage.

That was over 40 years ago, however, and simply concerned killing off an infrequently-used Rules racecourse so that a point-to-point venue – which, to be fair, survived until 1982, before all concerned moved the meeting to a new site in Sandon – could flourish. Kirkland Tellwright’s presiding over such a seismic alteration to one of the premier jumps courses in the North, if not the entire country, constitutes iconoclasm on a greater scale altogether.

He has cited welfare issues for both the replacement of all the incumbent stiff fences and also the work now in progress to flatten out the drops on the landing sides of many, yet to this pair of eyes few courses in the country have jumped as well as Haydock over the years. A proper, galloping track with time in between the constituent fences in its two rows (home and back straight) for horses to get into a rhythm, the big, stiff fences compel chasers to learn and maintain good habits of jumping.

It is that compulsion which has so endeared the place to the likes of Gordon Richards, both generations of McCain and owner Trevor Hemmings over the decades. Indeed, the last-named’s buying policy could almost be regarded as one of finding “Haydock Horses” as much as it is “Aintree Horses”, both venues having always been the preserve of his favoured big, strong chasing types. The annoyance expressed by the likes of McCain Snr and Hemmings in the trade press after the full extent of the changes was revealed in late February clearly registered as no surprise, therefore.

Nor, sadly, did the rather less voluble support for the old course from the likes of Paul Nicholls and Philip Hobbs when interviewed at the same time. I've long despaired of certain of the top trainers' complaints over how few opportunities there are for high-class animals (particularly in novices' chases), yet when some such are presented to them at Haydock and Wetherby, courses where - horror of horrors - they'd need an animal which can, you know, jump a bit, they are conspicuously absent.

Haydock's chases have always deserved to be better patronised numerically than they have been for a long time, but not even appearance money or the covering of travelling expenses has been able to bolster turn-out in these as often as not. Suggesting the failure of Hobbs, Nicholls, etc. to support the track better directly lead to the changes at the venue would, of course, be extraordinarily unwise, but their patronage of it has certainly left a bit to be desired. Further, any mitigating argument that Haydock is too far away from their respective Somerset training bases to encourage the trip to it pales when it is considered that:

- Haydock’s location hard up against a prominent junction of the M6 could hardly be more ideal,
- Peter Bowen and Evan Williams will still entertain trips from South Wales to the Sedgefields of this world all year round,
- Team Pipe has been a regular visitor for many years.

Speaking of visitors, the Racing Post article of February 27th outlined the economic case against staging so many National Hunt meetings at the track. Evidently not even 3,000 visitors attended the latest Peter Marsh Chase meeting, and competition from football and rugby league matches was cited.

However, these other distractions have always been there – if not more so then than nowadays, given that the Super League is primarily a spring and summer contest – but Haydock managed to pull bigger crowds for renewals of that and other winter meetings previously, including in some of the filthiest, coldest, wettest winter days imaginable. There were far more than 3,000 present when I first visited the course back on Red Square (or antecedent) Gold Cup day in 1999, and there was no reason to believe the "Clash of the Anti-Titans" between Quixall Crossett and Monaughty Man on the undercard that afternoon had swollen the crowds to anything particularly unusual for the course for the period.

Could there be another reason for the decrease in numbers through the turnstiles, therefore? Has there, perhaps, been a misplaced confidence in recent times that a card containing Graded contests sells itself without further recourse to promotion; that the Haydock half of the North West Masters double-header (with Aintree), Betfair Chase and all, automatically offers a greater attraction for the leisure pound than a routine Premiership match at Liverpool, Everton, Bolton, Wigan or the two Manchester clubs?

Few are the racecourses outside of the big Festival and Classic venues - probably only Towcester (free) and Cartmel (quirky and endearingly picturesque) - that could genuinely afford such a casual attitude to self-promotion; not that Towcester, with its frequent advertising on Attheraces does, you understand.

Whatever the causes of the drastic changes visited upon Haydock, the effects of those changes are likely to take a year or two to become fully apparent. The first change is only too apparent – the new jumps season at the Lancashire track will not commence until November 24th, Betfair Chase day itself and almost certainly the latest such start ever (certainly all of five weeks later than last season). With online fora and certain sections of the press alive with suggestions earlier in the year that a Grade 1 chase simply cannot be run over portable fences, it seems reasonable to assume there will be some very critical eyes cast over events that Saturday afternoon.

2007-07-02T22:11:00.001+01:00

RUMOURS OF THIS BLOG'S DEMISE HAVE BEEN GREATLY EXAGGERATED, ETC.

Rather more through accident than design, it has been the best part of five months since That Racing Blog was updated last. A couple of offers I simply had not seen coming, namely to perform point-to-point race reading for the venerable Mackenzie and Harris, and to offer my services as a pundit to the nascent Betfair Radio service, augmented the workload of the freelance articles I write for Racing Ahead magazine beyond all expectations during this period. Only in the last couple of weeks have things calmed down to any particular extent, but with another deadline looming large the respite will be temporary.

Not that this should be taken as a complaint (far from it!), and it is my earnest hope that all these engagements endure for months and years to come.

The blog has remained in my mind throughout, not least on account of the small but steady trickle of correspondences pursuant to blog entries that I have received. A couple of these have been posted as comments against entries rather than emailed to me directly, so it is only right and proper I acknowledge them during the course of this post, however late in the day.

A thank you, therefore, to comrade Aranalde, who was particularly taken with my November 7th-dated piece on the process of pre- and post-race analysis as performed during my time at the Sportsman. You are right, Aranalde, yours wasn’t the first time I had read or heard someone say it was a shame about the paper’s demise, but I genuinely do not tire about discussing it in print – relatively few of those associated with it have to this day, after all.

The mystery horse whose owners’ letter of complaint inspired that posting in the first place did finally win again the other week, by the way, and – as promised – hearty congratulations to all concerned for keeping the faith of it so doing, though it took it eight goes and another race with a softly-acquired lead for it to do so. The Racing Post, to its credit, did not go overboard in its praise of what is essentially now a pretty exposed animal.

Thank you also to Andybfc for your kind words regarding my tipping of Voy Por Ustedes as the Champion Chase winner as early as last October (in my Sportsman Ten To Follow piece, more on which shortly). If the truth be told, that particular piece of tipping went far, far better than I had ever dared hope for – not just in the sense that he won, but also that he was returned at a very good value price on the day.

Few people, I suspect, could have envisaged him being sent off at 5-1 following his routine dismissal of all rivals in the inaugural Desert Orchid Chase over Christmas and the news that Kauto Star would be heading for the Gold Cup rather than Champion Chase, but the timely reappearance and victory of the long-absent Well Chief in the Game Spirit six weeks later was impressive enough to garner him all the market support thereafter at the expense of Alan King’s six year-old.

There was enough that I disliked about the Newbury contest for me to keep faith with Voy for reasons other than professional integrity. Whilst the race was a truly-run affair given the soft going, a couple of Well Chief’s major rivals – from both of whom he was receiving weight, incidentally - failed to get involved (Voy himself and also Foreman, who ran lifelessly and pulled up distressed), and he therefore only had Ashley Brook, who had run with the choke out up front from flagfall, to pick off as he pleased.

Clear from the third last, Well Chief’s win didn’t constitute the sort of hard reintroduction that was going to tell us much about how much ability – or indeed appetite – he retained for or in a fight at the highest level, and this even before the risk of the “bounce” factor striking was considered. Moreover, I suspect some may have made too much of Voy’s unseating at halfway, which was a silly, soft departure and certainly nothing that should have been taken to indicate a deeper underlying problem with his jumping. He had, after all, made short work of the Old Course in winning the Arkle the previous season.

We all know what happened subsequently, of course, and whilst any accusations leveled that the Champion Chase was similarly too blighted by the failures to finish of several likely contenders – Oneway, Ashley Brook and Well Chief himself – to count as a wholly satisfactory race are hard to dispute, I would still have to regard it as the result that gave me the most satisfaction of the entire 2006-7 season.

Voy was one of only a couple of horses from my Ten To Follow list that managed to return a profit to a £1 level stake in all its races from the article’s publication date, October 3rd, through to the end of the season; and this rates as a bit of a disappointment for me because, as I mentioned in my December 8th posting, the raison d’etre of this feature was not to find readers ten Festival winners at all costs, but rather the biggest level stakes profit possible. Notwithstanding that, the final analysis reveals that I did return a little bit of a profit…

Grecian Groom …………………. + 27.13 points from 8 races
Voy Por Ustedes ………………… + 3.67 points from 4 races
Mr Nosie ……………………....……. - 0.00 points from 0 races
Corran Ard ………………………. – 0.17 points from 2 races
The King of Angels ………...... – 1.00 points from 4 races
Moncada Way …………………. – 1.00 points from 1 race
Ossmoses ……………………....…. –3.00 points from 3 races
Sovietica ………………………….. – 3.75 points from 6 races
Bothar Na ………………………... – 5.00 points from 5 races
Knowhere ………………………… - 6.67 points from 8 races

FINAL SCORE …………………… + 10.21 points from 41 races.

I would be the first to admit, however, that the picture would have looked far less rosy had Grecian Groom not popped up at 33-1 at Lingfield halfway through the winter. Even this I would count as a bit of a pyrrhic victory, to be honest, as it salvaged the season of a horse that had crashingly failed to convert his taking debut bumper-winning form to hurdles as much as it salvaged mine.

He, along with The King of Angels, did not progress over the season as I had intended, whereas the combination of over-keenness and soggy ground checked Sovietica’s development all winter. Ossmoses, Mr Nosie and Corran Ard were all compromised by injury to varying degrees; Bothar Na and Knowhere were set some hard tasks and were found wanting; and Noel Chance kept Moncada Way’s powder dry after an unprepossessing debut.

Of all of the ten listed, I would give some consideration to choosing Mr Nosie (unexposed over fences, albeit with fitness to prove, but then so did Knowhere last season) and Corran Ard (one big handicap hurdle win at rewarding odds should be attainable if returning the same horse) in repeat circumstances next season. Sovietica would rate as fairly tempting as well given her usually chase-oriented connections (Stewart and Monique Pike), but I am not convinced she is quite the same old-fashioned stamp of an animal as most of the animals they are associated with. A judgment on Moncada Way, meanwhile, would have to be reserved until it becomes apparent whom is likely to get the stable jockey’s position at Noel Chance’s yard following Tom Doyle’s return to Ireland.

Not that this need rate of particular importance right this moment, of course. I have a good few months before anyone needs to put the gun to my head for a list of suggestions. Jumps tipping contests are seldom won in July.

Ah, it’s good to get the first post in a long while under my belt. I suppose I had better think of doing the same for my Brancepethfan blog, untouched by human hand for nine months now….

2007-02-02T23:48:00.001Z

GEOS - VERY SAD, BUT NOT A STICK TO BEAT POINTING WITH

Despite its uncommonly early start in the UK this time around, with a handful of fixtures in December, the point-to-point season is still very much in its early throes with the thick end of 175 meetings still to go at the time of writing. In what racing there has been so far, however, we have already lost a few faithful servants to the racing game; and none more high profile or keenly felt as GEOS, one of the smartest horses to mix hurdling and chasing in the last quarter century (highest rating over each of 165 and 153 respectively) and the winner of two Tote Gold Trophies, a Christmas Hurdle, a Bula Hurdle and a Castleford Chase.

A million miles away from the Grade 1 tracks and big purses, Geos was taking part in a novices' riders' point-to-point at Tweseldown in Hampshire on January 7th under Nicky Henderson's daughter Camilla and was, as you might expect, marching all over the opposition when falling at the water jump - an obstacle rarely seen between the flags nowadays - with fatal consequences for himself and a fall resulting in a broken collarbone for Miss Henderson.

Whether they express it openly or not, doubtless there'll be a few in racing who will be wondering what the hell the Hendersons were doing persisting with Geos at this level, when he had surely little else to prove after a glittering career (see also Door Latch, Vodkatini and Djeddah among other high-profile fatalities in point-to-points, the first two at the same fence in the same race). As far as I know, however, the fact is that Geos was a horse who didn't want to retire.

It was never the intention for him to go pointing when he was officially retired by Team Henderson in August 2005, but rather that he'd just enjoy himself at Seven Barrows for the rest of his days. In the end, though, he was clearly giving so many signs that he was still up for competing that they got him qualified with the Old Berkshire a few months later and opted to let him take his chances between the flags.

He ran three times in 2006, winning the last of these, a Confined Novices' Riders' event at Lockinge on April 17th (good). Although primarily associated with exploits over far shorter, he saw out the 3m trip pretty well in the end, emerging victorious after a being held up early on to score in the second fastest time of the day. This was Camilla Henderson's first ever winning ride, and the gelding had proven a tolerant and giving schoolmaster in the face of her fairly nervous first forays into race-riding in public.

Without necessarily pulling up many trees outside of Confined or Novice Riders' class, I would still have expected horse and rider to have developed an increasing understanding over the course of this year, but sadly we will never know now. That it ended this way doesn't make the returning of Geos to competitive action any more ill-advised or cruel, just very, very unfortunate, and God knows there's animals in the pointing field half his age who continue to present a greater danger to themselves and others than he would have done if he'd continued to run many more years into his dotage.

To that end I am hopeful that another top-class hurdler COPELAND, who has recently returned from nearly two years out of action, will defy the advancing years and make an impression in the point-to-point arena this winter. He is certainly in good hands to do so: trainer Emma Leppard and rider Cynthia Haydon managed to coax five wins out of five in the amateur sphere (including the big ladies' hunters' chase at Stratford) from CARRYONHARRY, the former Martin Pipe inmate and one of the laziest animals ever to walk the earth, and picked up where they left off with him by asking him nicely to win a ladies' open at High Easter last weekend by a very comfortable 3/4l.

Copeland turned out in the same company at Cottenham the following day in his pointing debut, and still held a slender lead at the last before the lack of race-fitness told. He had no discernible form beyond 2m5f under Rules previously, but then Geos didn't really either, and for the time being at least the view is taken that he can improve on this first effort and develop into a major player between the flags before too long... and it takes a very hard heart, or some of the less palatable myopia that a small number of pointing fans insist on exhibiting, not to wish that for him.

2007-02-02T22:44:00.001Z

ALL THAT'S MISSING IS STUART MACONIE

If it's the start of the year it must be time for the Racing Post to run another "100 Greatest..." poll, and this time around it is greatest rides the paper has been asking its readership to nominate.

These polls are never entirely satisfactory, with the races most recent in the memory or most frequently repeated on the specialist TV channels always likely to enjoy more elevated positions in the final countdown than some of them might ordinarily (however much assurances to the contrary may be made). To that end, then, it's heartening to see that Fred Winter's scarcely credible feat of not only staying, but winning on board Mandarin in the 1962 Grand Steeple-Chase de Paris having jumping the last 21 of the 25 fences with his bridle in bits, has made the final shortlist of 1o. And this despite - unless anyone knows different - the race not having been shown on UK terrestrial or digital for decades, if ever, and only (admittedly a big "only") Lord John Oaksey's evocative report of the achievement to go on in print.

Everybody will have their favourites among the 100 races to have made the cut and I have mine, too, including the race that just made the cut in position number 100, John Goulding's pillar-to-post victory aboard humble novices' hunters' chase winner Astral Charmer in the 1981 Scottish Grand National. I would have been about six and a half years old at the time and it was certainly the first horse race I ever saw that left an indelible mark in the memory. Big-priced horses don't go running off like that in front and stay there, I thought, especially when they really want to go back in their boxes instead (Astral Charmer tried to run out with a circuit ago but Goulding gathered him in most adeptly). Well, young Master Grayson, one of them did that day.

I'm not sure Astral Charmer is solely responsible for my enduring love of the marathon chase, the marathon chaser, the "little guy" winning, or some, all, or none of the above. Even now, though, I can still picture this unprepossessing animal popping Ayr's big, wide fences in splendid isolation whilst a big field lumbered and ultimately floundered behind him.

Another marathon chase performance I am pleased to see in the list is at number 61, and if Astral Charmer could be regarded as a little bit of a thinker judged on that mid-race antic at Ayr, then Rith Dubh has to go down as Albert Einstein. One of the most intelligent, and consequently least generous animals ever to grace a racecourse, he nevertheless found himself in the winner's circle at the 2002 Cheltenham Festival; almost certainly not by his design, though.

A gelding who routinely stopped as soon as struck with the whip, he was given the last word in quiet rides in that year's National Hunt Chase by the tremendous amateur John Thomas McNamara, dropped right out the back for the greater part of the race before being asked nicely, over and over again, to put his best foot forward until produced on the line in to win by a head.

To complete the marathon triumvirate, I am delighted to see that the assorted tribulations, travails and controversies surrounding Richard Guest in recent months have not entirely served to dissuade people from remembering just what an immaculate piece of horsemanship his getting Red Marauder home to win the 2001 Grand National in borderline unraceable conditions actually was. This, lest we not forget, was a horse far better at 2m4f than beyond it, who had bags of ability but at the same time the robustness of a piece of China, an oxygen deficiency and - most insurmountably of all, one would have thought - all the jumping prowess of a fridge freezer.

No horse will ever take so many of the big green fences at Aintree so awkwardly and win a major prize there, let alone do so leaping out of such desperate going; and the fact that Red Marauder did owed so very much to the degree to which Guest knew the gelding's every foible in his then role as trainer-in-all-but-name at Norman Mason's Brancepeth base. The What's A Filly incident will have hit Guest far harder than any of the withdrawals of owners' strings or sponsors from his yard in the last 15 months or so, as it has inevitably called into question the treatment of troubled animals in his care - arguably the thing which he has always held the most sacrosanct and never more in evidence than during Red Marauder's finest hour.

2006-12-22T11:01:00.001Z

WHERE TO GO RACING... IF YOU DON'T LIKE RACING.

Back in 1937 John Betjeman immortalised the line “Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!” in print. Nearly seven decades on, the temptation to suggest he should have directed his apocryphal payload nine and a half miles further down the road to Ascot racecourse instead is all too great for your correspondent.

Of the hundred or more trips I have made to a racecourse since resuming my racegoing activities in 1998, I have little hesitation in nominating my trip to the Berkshire venue for the first day of the festive meeting last Friday as the least satisfying of the lot… and bear in mind that this itinerary has included everything right down the food chain to thinly-contested late Spring Midlands point-to-points in driving rain.

Windsor had proven a most capable substitute for Ascot when I partook of this two-day meeting two years ago, comfortably playing host to the swollen crowds eager to see the likes of Baracouda and Crystal D’Ainay slug it out around the figure of eight’s tight track and soft - but perfectly acceptable, and accepted – racing surface. As Friday afternoon wore on, I couldn’t help but increasingly dwell on how sadly missed as a National Hunt venue the Thameside track undoubtedly is.

I never went to Ascot before its highly publicised and widely criticised rebuild, so to a certain extent I have to take the word of the semi-regulars I bumped into who decried that, not for the first time in recent months, getting on for half of the advertised food, drink and entertainment outlets were not in use.

Likewise an ex-Sportsman colleague, back with his previous employers Timeform following the demise of the short-lived daily paper, assured me that the venue was always among the very worst for getting a good view of horses long enough to take the physical conformation notes required of him (even when not especially full as on this occasion), and that since the rebuild it has got worse still.

My problems with Ascot, however, include some that I suspect have been extant since before the rebuild.

The National Hunt course’s situation inside the Flat equivalent, itself of course necessarily wide to cope with the sizeable fields come the Royal Meeting, renders watching racing there a notably detached, impersonal, alienating spectacle. I didn’t have the foresightedness to gauge the distance from the foot of the stands to the far side of the Flat track, but learning it to be 100 metres or further away would not have surprised.

The knock-on effect for viewing (or not viewing) the rest of the jumps circuit, not much short of 1m6f in length, is easy enough to guess, therefore, and dependency on the giant video screen beside the winning post – itself requiring binoculars to view to any great extent – becomes all the more so, or on a gloomy day such as this maybe even absolute.

Little of this would matter so much were the excessive distance away from the action the spectator has to contend with compensated for by a place in the stands of suitable trajectory, a compensation fellow Berkshire track Newbury offers in spades. Not Ascot, though: never have I encountered a racecourse that guards its best views of the track with such zeal.

“General Admission” (for which read Tattersalls) customers are afforded a stand in name only, barely higher off the ground at its highest than other noted low-slung equivalents at smaller tracks in the country, e.g. Stratford. Swinley Bottom, of course, has its name for a reason, and as the ground falls away down the back straight, so it becomes absolutely impossible to draw even the most tentative ideas from the General stand as to what is occurring as the runners reach that part of the course.

Several attempts at getting even the most fleeting of glimpses from a higher floor of the main stands complex were all thwarted by either the strategic positioning of boxes (Royal and corporate) and the manifold posses of civil but utterly unbending security people.

All in all this was far from the best or most rewarding use I’ve ever put £21 worth of entry fee to (inclusive of a staggering £7 car parking charge), and that’s before the stellar prices for even a simple sausage baguette and chips from what looked to be the cheapest of those eateries – of those that were open - is taken into account. At least the hot toddy seller was contrite enough to label his larger glasses of mulled wine (£7.50 a pop) as “obscene” rather than just “large”… at least, I hope it was contrition.

2006-12-09T00:09:00.001Z

GRAYSONSCOLUMN VERSUS THE WORLD - SCORING DRAW AT HALF-TIME

There will be any number of grander, more significant races run during the course of this jumps season, of course, but the maiden hurdle on Taunton’s otherwise innocuous card on November 27th had more of my integrity and judgment as an analyst / tipster riding on it than most.

Some of those 25,000 or so worthy souls who had ratcheted the Sportsman up to its highest ever paid-for sales figures in the few weeks immediately before its demise (the irony, the irony!) may have happened to notice that each member of the racing team was in the throes of nominating his or her “ten to follow” during its last week of trading. My ten sneaked into issue number 191 of 193, on October 3rd.

The remit for our choices was emphatically NOT just to try to find ten horses likely to be vying for Championship honours come March, as it was reckoned that:

- the season is far bigger than the four days of the Festival, and
- pinpointing animals likely to show a healthy return on a £1 level stake was more in keeping with the raison d’etre of a betting paper.

I’d no quarrel with either assertion. Therefore, with the exception of Voy Por Ustedes (whom I’m hoping won’t have to watch the backside of the terrific Kauto Star disappear from view too many more times this season) and the now-sidelined Mr Nosie, my list remained relatively short of real or aspiring superstars. Just the way I like it.

One of my ten was Corran Ard, the happiest accident of a great summer for Evan Williams. Originally intended to be given one spin on the Flat to restore confidence after two years out, he instead won three handicaps, including a £20,000 0-100 at Pontefract.

My thinking was that he’d be good enough to land a small novices’ hurdle at least, but become a more rewarding proposition when pitched into a big handicap contest, and in particular the Imperial Cup at Sandown – two game Flat wins at up to 10f indicated an ability to handle the track, and his form in Ireland included a win over the same easy ground conditions as the Esher track is still well capable of producing in early March.

In the same article, as in common with all my colleagues, I was given the opportunity to nominate one horse to avoid for the season, and whilst there other animals out there that were opposable on the grounds of being poorly handicapped or getting on a bit, I didn’t have to think too long and hard before opting to bury Paul Nicholls' ex-Flat recruit Ouninpohja, writing:

Good luck to all concerned, but it’s far from guaranteed that a switch to hurdles will see the Ouninpohja who stormed to a five-timer and a triple-figure Flat rating in 2005 re-emerge to replace the frustrating, head-tossing, unwilling Ouninpohja of 2006 – and certainly not worth the 165,000gns his new connections paid to find out.

That Ouninpohja turned out in a small West Country contest for his hurdles debut, as so many from his yard do, registered as no great surprise, but the pounds signs lit up in my eyes when I saw that Corran Ard was in opposition for his first try over timber also. Vaunted Nicholls animals in 2m1f Taunton novices’ hurdles do not go off at working man’s prices, and a win for Corran Ard at the SP of 5-1 over an Ouninpohja by then trading as the 4-6F jolly would have counted as a very nice boost to my level stakes running total (not doing desperately well so far, to be truthful) as well as a vindication of my judgment.

We know the rest, though. Despite still being only two months on from his final catastrophic display of pratting about under pressure to snatch defeat from victory on the Flat, Ouninpohja looked a calm, confident and altogether different animal throughout here. He was ultimately unextended to win by a length having picked off Corran Ard at the last, instantly catapulting himself into the leading half dozen or so for the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle betting off the back of a performance the Racing Post rated just 6lb inferior to Noland’s in taking that Cheltenham feature earlier this year.

Not quite the outcome for which I was hoping, then, and maybe the change of scenery and discipline were going to help Ouninpohja realise all the potential that, really and truly, something formerly rated as high as 110 on the Flat should be capable of displaying if switching to hurdles, making my decision to oppose him look very foolish indeed on the way.

Back over the same course and distance yesterday, however, there were the first signs that maybe, just maybe, Ouninpohja won’t prove quite as willing or capable of finding the necessary late on all of the time over hurdles either, for whilst he looked all over the winner turning for home, the response off the bridle one flight from the finish simply didn’t pass muster.

Time may show that the 11l winner De Soto, on only his second start for an age, is now suitably over his problems to replicate, if not better, the form of his second in the Festival Bumper 20 months ago, but Ouninpohja still had an undeniable advantage fitness-wise after a sensible enough 2006 campaign spread over both codes (nine runs in eight months couldn’t count as excessive). Moreover, whilst the ground at Taunton was softer than a fortnight earlier, the gelding has won quite peaceably with give underfoot, and indeed if we are to take one of his former trainers Alan Swinbank’s word as gospel, he wasn’t especially enjoying it on faster even when running up his five-timer for that handler in 2005.

Barring a clash with something with a huge reputation at home, you suspect it would take another reversal or two in this company for his starting odds to lengthen to any particular extent, and whilst one relative failure over hurdles may not be enough in and of itself to write him off entirely, the evidence of that run - plus my commitment in print to opposing him! – will have me looking to take him on next time out.

Corran Ard, in the meantime, was able to justify far skinnier odds than last time’s 5-1 – 5-6F this time around, in fact – in taking a Southwell maiden hurdle on good to soft this afternoon. He showed a willing attitude to outbattle Pevensey, like him a horse rated in the high 80s at his best on the Flat, by a neck, with all else well held in behind. Clearly it’s a long way from £2,600 pots at the Nottinghamshire venue to Listed handicap hurdles, and the projected target of the Imperial Cup may prove wide of the mark in several senses, but if nothing else the last 48 hours have served to reaffirm which of these two horses I’d prefer to have on my side to “win ugly” if my life depended on it.

Changing horse and venue briefly to return to my last post from a few weeks ago, the intervening period of time has seen the return to action of the horse whose connections complained to the Sportsman when my review of his win in a rotten Northern handicap chase in September was not fawning enough.

I insisted at the time his jumping out in the lead was simply as functional as it should have been given he had no competition for his preferred front-running berth. On this subsequent appearance, he once again had a soft early lead and found jumping comfortable enough for as long as that remained the case.

That he was then unable to maintain that lead to the end (on a course more suited to pillar to post victories than that of his previous victory) against:

- a horse already beaten 130l in a subsequent outing against similar opposition, and
- another – tubed – rival rated 22lb inferior and running 10lb wrong in total on the day including his jockey’s overweight,

didn’t look to me like anything other than vindication of my previous assertion that recording another victory was likely to prove beyond him.

It’s nice to be proven right sometimes. My dearest wish is to make more of a habit of it as the season progresses.

2006-11-07T10:23:00.001Z

A CASE STUDY IN POST-RACE ANALYSIS ("Hardest game in the world, son, thirty years man and boy...." etc.)

When confronted with any challenging of his calling skills, the late racecourse commentator Raleigh Gilbert's stock response was always simply "thank you for listening". In a similar vein, I suspect most of us who have performed post-race analysis or comments in running for horse races and had them committed to print or electronic newspapers would simply shrug "thank you for reading" in the face of any racehorse owners or trainers alleging a harsh treatment of their charge. "You can libel and slander horses", we were constantly reminded at the Sportsman, "just never people".

It's almost disappointing, therefore, that despite my best efforts to be as brutally, unflinchingly honest in my raining on the metaphorical strawberries of bad race winner after bad race winner, only once was any member of the racing fraternity galvanised into contacting the Sportsman in high dudgeon.... and when they did, they did so the morning after the paper had been wound up and we were already vacating the premises. A pity: I would have liked the opportunity to embark on a totally civil, but unerringly frank, succession of correspondences with the party in question.

The bone of contention was a review I did of a very low grade handicap chase (a seller in all but name) in the North of England earlier this autumn. The horse in question won it off a BHB mark in the low 70s on its second start over fences and tenth in all, beating a fairly ragged assortment by five lengths. The Racing Post's review of the race had painted the effort in a most favourable light, whereas I had marked the winner, and all other horses in the race I'd cared to mention explicitly, as "Negatives", much to connections' chagrin.

Since learning of that response I have watched the race again around a dozen times, and happily concede to the owners on one point, namely that the horse was probably travelling more akin to the Press Association's Comments In Running ("stayed on") than my assertion that he wasn't holding on by an awful lot. I don't suppose I'd be the first person ever of whom the stiff finish at the course in question has made a fool.

Thereafter we diverge somewhat in our expectations of what a piece of post-analysis should constitute. An explicit statement on the quality of the gelding's jumping was anticipated, and none was forthcoming from me. The gelding, a front-runner by nature, had seen off any other attentions at a very early stage, and we basically learned little about his jumping other than it was as functional as one would have expected given there was nothing around to pressurise him or that jumping thereafter.

Moreover, with one likely fellow trailblazer withdrawn at the start and another unusually reverted to hold-up tactics, this was a far easier time of it up front than he'd have had any right to expect before the race.

None of the post-race analysis performed by the Sportsman racing staff comprised a summary trashing of the race just gone for the sake of it, nor was any of it conducted without at least some prior knowledge of the main protagonists in each race. One of the great assets of having such a small, versatile team was that we'd regularly adopt a "cradle to grave" approach to a meeting, having performed the pre-race analysis and betting forecast on it one day, and then post-analysing it the next.

To that end I couldn't see enough about our gelding here in his previous form or his breeding profile that could logically suggest this would be the first of a string of wins.

Had I thought that his low BHB mark entering the race was indicative of a horse ill-suited to hurdling (he'd never finished within a single-digit number of lengths of the winner on any start over timber), and that he'd find significant improvement - and prove exceptionally well handicapped accordingly - with his attentions turned to fences, then that would have been made most explicit in my post-analysis. Instead, it was noted that his dam was of negligible account in bumpers and over jumps, and that none of her other foals to have raced under Rules has proved anything other than very poor - indeed, only one of them had ever completed races, and even then has never finished within 17l of the winner in any start.

All in all, the evidence to suggest that this would be the horse's "one day", beyond which he would struggle to win again, was judged to be compelling enough to inform the comments that ultimately went to print.

It must be borne in mind that the remit to which Sportsman post-race analysts were expected to adhere to was always probably a bit more critical than that of the Racing Post's, as our entire raison d'etre was to identify what would be a winning proposition next time and what would not - comments of the nature of "did it nicely", "should go on from this", etc. were actively discouraged, and over the course of the paper's life at least a third (and probably more) of all the winners of races were marked as Negatives in the respective post-race analyses.

This is no criticism of the Post, simply an assertion that we looked at things a little differently to it.

Notwithstanding any of the above, I must reiterate that one of the main joys of following this sport is to be proven wrong, and the connections of the horse - who hasn't turned out since his win - should rest assured that I WILL BE DELIGHTED TO BE PROVEN WRONG ON ALL COUNTS IF HE GOES IN AGAIN SOMETIME.

Nothing of my work for the Sportsman as a whole, or indeed this posting, should be taken as giving a kicking to low-grade jumps racing and its protagonists - far from it; I was the paper's principal champion of such meetings, was employed to cover as many of them as possible, and solely attend either these or point-to-points professionally and recreationally.

However, what I can't and won't do, and couldn't and wouldn't in this instance, is to call geese swans until such time as they prove to be the latter - racing fans deserve undiluted, unflinching honesty from those appointed to write on the sport on their behalf.

Thank you for reading.

2006-10-20T22:33:00.001+01:00

AS YOU WERE IN NORFOLK

Horses running out, omitted obstacles galore, mostly very ordinary animals pelting around tight corners at speeds usually beyond their compass... it was business as usual at the first Fakenham meeting of the autumn. It's always struck me as slightly peculiar that this venue, so much an intrinsic part of the fabric of small-scale jumps racing that it was known as West Norfolk Hunt until 1963, is the one that most resembles an ultra-sharp Flat track such as Chester - nothing it can help, of course, but peculiar all the same.

A rather less frivolous matter is the injury sustained by Adam Pogson in a bruising opening selling hurdle, when his mount Protocol was brought down. He required sedation before airlifting to hospital in King's Lynn, where he is believed to have sustained damage to his pelvis.

A regular rider for a variety of small trainers in the East Midlands, more importantly he serves as the stable jockey, assistant trainer and general brains behind the operation of his father Charles' smart permit operation in Nottinghamshire. The Pogsons have managed to tease 23 wins and in some case considerable improvement out of some decidedly ordinary animals in the last five seasons alone - could anyone really have foreseen Lord Baskerville run up a hat-trick and gain an official hurdles rating of 127 this summer after 47 straight defeats previously? - and getting wins out of something as wayward as Seymour Weld rates no small feat, either.

There must be a real risk that the Pogson family's livelihood as a whole could be placed in some jeopardy with Adam unlikely to ride out, train and coordinate campaigns for the string in the immediate term at least, and it is my earnest hope he makes a speedy recovery.

Another point of interest at Fakenham today was that it represented the first Racetech call for the "Croc", J A McGrath, for as long as I can remember. This looks like the first sign of him honouring his commitment to take in more racecourse commentary, having admitted earlier in the year that the BBC's dwindling coverage was doing the quality of his calls few favours, although I must admit I thought he wouldn't be factored back into the roster until the New Year.

Having had to put up with horses flying about everywhere, and a PA system which whistled violently every few words, this must have seemed a very different world to the Epsoms, Aintrees and Longchamps of much of his year to date.

2006-10-19T21:47:00.001+01:00

A STRONG RESOLVE AND A FEAR OF THE NEW

Nobody likes to see good chasers lose the plot, but there had to be the fear we'd seen all Strong Resolve had to offer the game after a pretty grim 2005-6 campaign.

Lucinda Russell's grey sank all of 25lb down the handicap, still essentially jumping pretty well up front as before, but giving way very tamely and recording no finish within 23l of the winner over fences during the entire campaign.

How pleasing it has been to see, therefore, that a good deal of the old resolution has returned in two starts this season, a 1/2l second to an unexposed David Pipe 5yo in Twelve Paces at Carlisle a fortnight ago being followed by a facile all-the-way success at Haydock today (both over 3m or thereabouts).

You can hardly blame connections for having aimed him at the Grand National in 2005 (for which he ultimately started third favourite), his superior jumping giving rise to the belief that he'd excel over the exacting Aintree course, but hindsight is a wonderful thing, and it became more apparent as 2006 wore on that he was still carrying a deal of mental baggage from his bad experiences in both that race and the Becher Chase subsequently.

Confidence restored, he finds himself with a great deal in hand over the handicapper, more than any raise for today's win should be able to negate, and given his preference for conventional galloping tracks he should be able to find more opportunities around the Haydocks, Ayrs and Carlisles of this world this winter.

All very heartening, and I'd not begrudge him a big run in the Scottish National if continued progress over the season makes a tilt at that contest a realistic option.

Away from the horses, much of the talk at Haydock's first jumps meeting of the autumn concerned the appearance of three portable fences down the back straight, representing phase one of clerk of the course Kirkland Tellwright's plans to phase out the course's famous drop fences.

Tellwright's interview in the Racing Post in April indicated this was a necessary development, as Haydock strives to "maintain tradition and move with the times". It is also the hope that a repeat of instances such as the omission of three fences at one meeting last year can be avoided hereafter by resiting the new portable obstacles away from false, waterlogged or frozen ground as necessary.

All well and good, and the new obstacles appeared to pass muster when schooled over by some of Ferdy Murphy's string earlier in the year. In the heat of battle at full speed, however, the early signs today are that they do not constitute the same challenge as their antecedents, with a number of animals getting away with one or two more liberties than would have been the case hitherto.

Of more alarm is the fact that a phased introduction is being persevered with. There are inherent risks in having one set of fences on the course softer (as these certainly appear to be) than others; horses don't know the difference between one and the other, and run the risk of being tricked into thinking, for example, the mistake they got away with at the last ditch in the back straight won't be any more punished if repeated at the ditch in front of the stands - which, for the time being at least, remains as big, black and stiff as ever before.

How should the introduction of the portables have been performed, assuming it needed doing at all? All in one fell swoop, preferably. Haydock's chase course is separate from the Flat equivalent solely in use from May to September, so there was surely never going to be the same issue as with some other tracks - whose jumps courses are in more continuous use around the calendar - of there being insufficient time to replace every fence between the Swinton Hurdle meeting and today's.

Another alternative might have been to have had all the portables ready at once and in use on the hurdles course - with all chases on a card being run first, a la Southwell - so that an extended period of testing under race conditions could have been undertaken, but given the course's propensity to getting very heavy underfoot, what state that would have left the ground in by the middle of a wet winter doesn't bear thinking about.

For the time being, then, we have this halfway house situation, and I'd be keen to learn what difference, positive or negative, there is to the percentage of fallers around Haydock's chase course come the end of the season, and how much that may be realistically attributable to the new obstacles. The Lancashire venue will never not be a galloper's track, but let's hope its status as a proper jumper's track need not be placed in too much doubt hereafter.