Grunting tips
Robin Oakley
If one is plucked to move on one day to joust with the bookmakers in the Celestial Beyond (well, those of them who make it there rather than the clipped odds lot who will deservedly have to make do with the Other Place), there can be few better spots to leave behind your earthly remains than atop the Lambourn grounds where Peter Walwyn prepared Grundy for his Derby triumph.
As we bombed around what are now his gallops the other morning with Nicky Henderson, we paused for a moment's respect at the slab where Jeffrey Bernard's ashes lie, buried with a packet of fags and a bottle of vodka to help him through the next world. It reminded me of the exchange when The Spectator's late Low life columnist complimented Fred Winter on how well his horses were looking. 'Well, Jeffrey, they don't stay up all night playing cards and drinking vodka,' replied the trainer pointedly.
Nor do Nicky Henderson's horses, which have been looking magnificent this season and performing even better, creaming off one big Saturday handicap after another. Stable jockey Mick Fitzgerald is being driven mad with frustration as he waits for a broken arm to heal while outside riders are scoring on the Henderson horses. All will hope the experienced rider, second only to Tony McCoy among current riders in his total of Festival successes, is back in the saddle in time to partner his yard's Cheltenham candidates, which include a number of healthy prospects including Caracciola in the Arkle, Got One Too in the Grand Annual and Go For Bust in the bumper.
It is an extraordinary year at Cheltenham, with short-priced defending champions heading the market for the four key races — Rooster Booster in the Champion Hurdle, Moscow Flyer in the Queen Mother Champion Chase, Baracouda in the Stayers Hurdle and Best Mate in the Gold Cup. Such is the talent of the four that you can get no better than a skinny 12-1 as an accumulator on the quartet and, since less than a third of the horses which have defended a title at Cheltenham over the years have done so successfully, that is not a price to tempt me.
Paul Nicholls looks to hold the strongest Cheltenham hand this year, but again at 2-7 to be champion trainer there is not much fun to be had in supporting that opinion. Take note, though, of his insistence since Moscow Flyer beat his Arkle winner Azertyuiop in the Tingle Creek chase at Sandown that he is looking forward to taking on the Irish horse again. Azertyuiop figured in one of the most thrilling races of the season when he duelled all up the straight at Ascot with Henderson's Isio in the Victor Chandler Chase, losing only by a neck when giving him 191b. That was a struggle which, as Jenny Pitman used to put it, will have grown him into long trousers'. He knows how to scrap now, and though Moscow Flyer always wins when he stands up he has been known to make mistakes under pressure.
Nicholls also trains the horse most likely to dethrone Champion Hurdler Rooster Booster in Rigmarole, who, like the champion, has worked his way up from handicap ranks and who was impressive at Wincanton, defeating the much-trumpeted Intersky Falcon. What makes for a really fascinating duel is that his trainer believes that Rigmarole also loves Cheltenham and that he, too, will be best coming off the fast pace likely to be set in the Champion Hurdle.
I am not, however, going to desert Rooster Booster, one of this column's Ten To Follow. For me his short head second in the Tote Gold Trophy was the best performance all season, carrying a massive weight of list 12Ib against the smartest handicappers around and going under only in the final stride. Owner Terry Warner, an enthusiast to whom nobody could ever begrudge an iota of success, had long wanted a decent grey horse and sent a vet to look at the Rooster in Richard Mitchell's yard. The expert reported that he should not buy the horse, who was so wild he could not get into the box to test him. 'In that case,' said the would-be purchaser, 'I'll have him. He must be a horse of real spirit.' And so it has proved, with Rooster Booster improving year by year. The faster they go, the better he finishes.
I cannot oppose the masterly Best Mate in the Gold Cup. He purred round Leopardstown in the Ericsson Chase like a Rolls slumming it at a stock-car track, but I do have an each-way fancy for Alan King's Crystal d'Alnay to make a race of it with Baracouda in the Stayers Hurdle. When he won the Cleeve Hurdle at Cheltenham on 26 January he did so idling, with his ears pricked and looking at the crowd as if he expected it to be full of fillies in bikinis. There was enough petrol left in the tank for him to go round again. And his trainer admits that if he had given jockey 'Chocolate' Thornton the correct orders the time before, his Cheltenham record would have been three out of three instead of including a second to the useful Sh Boom.
If you are looking for something at a decent price, I notice that Historic, once a 10-1 scorer for our Ten To Follow in his hurdling days, has now got his act together over fences. And for another sporting each-way I like the look of the Sandown specialist King's Mistral in the Kim Muir, although I would like to hear him in the yard a day or so before. Trainer Patrick Chamings said after his Agfa Chase victory that he knows when the horse is ready from the way he grunts. Does he, I wonder, play tennis too?
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