The turf
Age benefits
Robin Oakley
We have the most boring football team in the world and the most boorish fans. But English racing, thank God, still shines with quality and good fellowship. It is full of people to whom nobody could possibly begrudge success when it comes. The ever- courteous John Gosden is one of those and when a Gosden winner is led in I always look forward to the post-race comments. Served up with all the style of a Chez Nico entrée, they invariably contain a gem of good sense, and usually I feel I have learned something too.
On Saturday, Richard Hills had found himself stuck at the back on Gosden's Port Vila in the Milcars New Stakes with nowhere to go, but sensibly bided his time and was lucky enough to find a gap when it mattered to come through and win. A sym- pathetic John Gosden told us afterwards that at Ascot, with its short finishing straight, a jockey tends to look either a genius or an idiot, never anything in between: 'At Ascot when you get shuffled back to last you have one choice: stay on the rail and pray for a gap, because if you attempt to come round the field you will always be the unlucky third.'
Luckily, Sheikh Ahmed's horse Bezzaaf rolled off the rails and let Port Vila through to help the trainer to a double, later completed by Hymn in the hands of Kevin Darley. Port Vila, said his trainer, had run well first time out after showing them nothing at home and was a much more relaxed character this year. 'Horses seem to get very relaxed at Manton [his new base] even if their trainer doesn't!' The idle colt is now likely to be rewarded with a trip to France for the Prix Eugene Adam.
Amanda Perrett, too, was all smiles after Blue had followed up her first Royal Ascot win with Give The Slip by winning the Lad- broke Handicap. You can imagine that the fresh-faced Pulborough trainer, who looks as fit as her horses, was captain of hockey and voted Most Popular Girl in The Sixth in her schooldays. Instead of revelling in her training success, she was full of delight for the owners, Ken and Sylvia Buchanan, who had kept their horses on with her and husband Mark after her father Guy Har- wood retired. She was full of praise, too, for jockey Pat Eddery: 'Pat put me right. We went too far at Newmarket last time out [where they had run Blue over a mile and a half]. He said go back to a mile and a quarter and he will definitely win. Thanks to Pat again.' The trainer reckons there is more to come with Blue, who had had a good two-year-old career and then lost his way at three with a series of niggling little problems. All the family, she said, get bet- ter with age (Captain's Best won the Cesarewitch). But one feature of this sea- son is that there is clearly more to come from the remarkable Eddery too.
As William Jarvis said, after the veteran jockey had won the opener on the brave and improving filly Papabile, 'Pat was bril- liant on her. He is the ultimate professional and still riding as well as ever.' Those of us who had watched him swoop the day before on Brian Meehan's Royal Ascot winner Autumnal would go along with that, and the sad injuries to Kieren Fallon and Frankie Dettori raise the intriguing possi- bility that Eddery might yet become cham- pion jockey for a record 12th time at the age of 47. The veteran whom they call The Iceman has already equalled Lester Pig- gott's record of 11 championships, and his chance of going one better looked to have gone, since he has been freelancing these past few seasons and concentrating more on quality than quantity. But he confessed in his autobiography that the sense of hon- our and achievement he felt from being champion did not diminish with age or rep- etition and was still the biggest thing on his mind at the start of every season.
There is no question about the continued determination of the man whom Joe Mer- cer once nicknamed Polyfilla (because he can fill any gap which appears on a race- course), and there are plenty of trainers who reckon that Eddery's presence on a horse is worth an extra three or four pounds. Now to add to the rides he gets from the likes of John Dunlop, Meehan and Perrett, he will be coming in for some of those Kieren Fallon cannot take for Sir Michael Stoute (no American substitute this time it seems). The other day Eddery was riding out at Newmarket on 2000 . Guineas winner King's Best, who missed Epsom but could be lining up in the Irish `This cat followed me home. Can we keep him?' Derby on Sunday. Since as I write Eddery is already running second in the jockeys' table to Kevin Darley, with 58 winners to his 59, and Darley has no big 100-horse- power stable behind him, an Eddery victory in this year's championship has become a real possibility. In the meantime, let us all hope that Kieren Fallon's complicated shoulder injury following that hideous fall at Ascot (a reminder that it is not only the jump boys who run risks) is soon on the mend.
Robin Oakley is political editor of the BBC.
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