Back in business
Robin Oakley
Gingembre, former winner of both the Hennessy Gold Cup and the Scottish Grand National, is a natural show-off. He is a quality act and he knows it. Had he needed an alternative career, says his trainer Lavinia Taylor, male model would have suited. Stepping boldly round Newbury’s parade ring on Saturday, gazing directly at the crowd and eyeballing his opposition, you could see that he was enjoying being back where he belongs. But it had been a long haul. It was the first time ‘Ginger’, as they know him back in the Uplands yard in Lambourn, had seen a racecourse in 679 days, since he was pulled up in the 2003 Grand National, the first time the brave chestnut had ever suffered that indignity. In between, Gingembre had suffered just about everything that can go wrong with a horse.
When regular rider Andy Thornton pulled up his mount that day at Aintree, he knew something was wrong. The horse coughed and it took them a quarter of an hour to get back to the stables, where his trainer was fearing the worst. They thought he might have broken a blood vessel, but scoping confirmed he had not. Then a soft-palate problem was diagnosed. Unfortunately, since Gingembre had also ‘got a bit of a leg’, with heat in a joint, they could not put him on a treadmill with a scope to confirm the diagnosis.
A year ago it seemed he had been nursed back to something approaching good health. His legs scanned fine before he started galloping again. But then there was another setback. And last autumn the breathing problem became more apparent. This time it was confirmed by galloping on a treadmill. Gingembre had two breathing operations last October, hobdaying and a ‘tieback’. Towards the end of November, he started work again. But then, after just one serious gallop, he picked up a ‘mucky lungs’ infection which had affected most of the horses in the yard. ‘We had to stop them all,’ says Lavinia, ‘and, being Ginger, he got it worst of all.’ But on Saturday at Newbury there he was, looking a picture and a walking testimony to the patience and care of a couple who train for love rather than for profit, about as far away from the racing cocktail circuit as you can get. To Lavinia, Ginger remains something very special. ‘I love him and he loves me,’ she declares. ‘He has a top-class lad, but he doesn’t kiss him on his nose. When I ride him, and I ride him quite a bit because I need to know how he’s feeling, he prances and bucks because he knows I like him, though he can’t squeak quite as well as he used to because of the wind operations.’ Saturday’s big race, the Aon chase, was a potent reminder of how much of an achievement it is getting top steeplechasers to the course, let alone winning a race. Paul Nicholls’s Strong Flow, a potential Gold Cup contender, was running in his first chase since cracking a knee in a Kempton novices chase on Boxing Day 2003, although he had had a warm-up over hurdles. Valley Henry, another former Hennessy winner, was back on the track after injuries had kept him off, too, for 317 days.
Gingembre’s natural ability is such that at home they work him at his best with two other horses, one to start him off and the other to jump in. But he was not, Lavinia Taylor conceded, quite ready for Saturday. She could have done with another ten days or a fortnight, but with quality horses you have to take the opportunities when they come.
In the circumstances, she was not expecting a big run. ‘I’ve had to work him far too hard to get him fit enough. I expect he’ll need the run. He’ll get tired at the cross fence, and Mark Bradburne will have to pull him up. But, that said, I’ve told him if they’re going well, to kick on after the last ditch and go for it. You never know. He could have a leg tomorrow and it would all be over.’ In fact, Gingembre kept company with the leaders until four out and, despite hitting one fence and tiring in the strong headwind up the straight, he finished an encouraging fifth. He was blowing afterwards, but not excessively, and had the energy left for a few kicks as he was unsaddled. Lavinia’s husband John was delighted: ‘We couldn’t have hoped for better.’ The trainer herself, fussing round her charge after his exertions, had the quiet exultation of a mother whose child has come a plucky third in the egg-and-spoon race only a week after spraining an ankle.
With returning equine invalids, though, it is the morning after which counts. I called the Taylors next morning, not at mucking-out time, which keeps them busy, but as they drove the horsebox down to Devon and Exeter with the novice chaser Laskari. ‘Good news,’ said Lavinia. ‘He’s fine. His legs were cold this morning and John’s had him out for a walk.’ Gingembre is back in business. And business for this year is a return to the Scottish National and an attempt at the French Champion Hurdle. Not the Grand National itself? ‘Not this year. He’s our one and only star. He’s too precious. He’s got Grand National written all over him, and he might go for it in 12 months. But I haven’t forgotten going round the Aintree stables after a National and seeing the number hobbling lame or with broken blood vessels... ’
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