The turf
Hons and rebels
Robin Oakley
I do, occasionally, find myself bothered by the sort of people with whom you would be careful not to share a railway carriage• Conspiratorial chaps with cigarettes cupped furtively behind their backs sidle up to offer a tip. Red-faced fellows with whisky fumes not quite obliterating the halitosis stop to utter wild threats about disasters to come' Staring-eyed fanatics advance upon you bearing texts. But that is the Members Lobby of the House of Commons. SurveY- ing my fellow dregs in the Epsom branch of Stanley Racing on Saturday they appeared a great deal more normal. Their judgment was sound. When the 1:4 favourite Cariboo Gold was turned over In the first at Doncaster there were no groans. None present had been fool enough to back a four-to-one-on shot in a novices chase. And, unlike MPs, most were happY to rejoice in others' success. When Board- room Shuffle won the first at Cheltenham there were smiles for the chap who'd got up the first leg of his double. Notably from me since I had invested too, having been told by a local taxi driver that Boardroom Shuffle had been leaving good horses for dead on the gallops and was fancied by the 'stable for the Champion Hurdle. The consolation of being unable to get from Brussels to Cheltenham on time had some compensations in a vintage day's rac- ing on television. At Doncaster the feature was the riding of Paul Carberry, whose brave but risky refusal of a job with Kira Bailey was followed by a long spell out with injury. He is riding at the top of his form again. His perseverance on the 20-1 shot Woodbridge gave Ferdy Murphy a well- deserved change of luck in a miserable sea- son. He galvanised Dual Image into a renewed effort to win the handicap hurdle after the horse had begun to idle in front and he brought home General Command a worthy winner of the Great Yorkshire for Gordon Richards. Carberry is performing with the kind of confidence which transmits itself to his mounts.
But at Cheltenham there were cheers for three horses which we all like to see win, whether or not we are cheering from our pockets. Who could not thrill to the sight of Tim Forster's big, bold Dublin Flyer, quick in the air and quick away from the fences, taking the Ladbroke trophy with an exemplary display of front-running under Brendan Powell. His pricked ears and noble head carriage told it all. He is good and he knows it. They've slashed his odds for the Gold cup, although this was over 2m 5f, not over three miles plus. If he does stay the Gold Cup distance and wins they'll take the roof off the Cheltenham stands for him and Tim Forster, Then there was Large Action, who may now run both in the 2m Champion Hurdle and in the 3m Stayers Hurdle at the Festi- val. He has now won 15 of his 22 races, in which he has only once been out of the first three. He has been third and second in the Champion Hurdle and who is to say now that at nine he could not improve on that? He could scarcely have been more impres- sive in winning the Cleeve Hurdle. He saw off Pridwell, who was having one of his co- operative days, and he comfortably held the young pretender Castle Sweep. What struck me, though, was that this is a horse who always responds to a jockey's urgings and Jamie Osborne never had to ask him a serious question. The real conundrum, though, was posed by One Man's win over Barton Bank in the Pillar Chase. No summary could improve on Alistair Down's five words: 'Won com- fortably but scraped home'. One Man has laid the Cheltenham hoodoo. He can act on the track. But we will all be pressing the replay button again and again to answer the additional question, 'Yes, but does he get the Gold Cup distance?' He came to the last, as Gordon Richards said, in a canter. Richard Dunwoody nursed him tenderly, stealing several looks at Barton Bank as he came to challenge, and went ahead up the hill. But then there was that urgent flurry of activity in the last strides when it turned out Adrian Maguire had still kept a little in the tank on Barton Bank and One Man was clearly stopping. If I was Gordon Richards and had alterna- tives in the yard as good as Unguided Mis- sile, Addington Boy and The Grey Monk then I would go for the shorter Queen Mother Champion Chase with the spectac- ular One Man. Over the Gold Cup distance up the Cheltenham Hill I think there is always going to be one ready to come at hum with more left in the tank than he has.
Robin Oakley is political editor of the BBC.
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