The turf
Rising above it all
Robin Oakley
Two years ago Luca Cumani's High Rise won the Lingfield Derby Trial and went on to win in Epsom. In 1997 Silver Patriarch won at Lingfield and finished a close sec- ond at Epsom and last year Daliapour was second in both races. But though I could see Gerard Butler's colt Saddler's Quest battling on into a place at Epsom, I do not believe we saw the Derby winner at Ling- field this year.
You could not fault Saddler's Quest for courage as he wore down Sean Woods's Going Global. But the race was run in a downpour, the going was much softer than it ever gets at Epsom and the bookmakers were neither shaken nor stirred by the race, with Ladbrokes leaving Saddler's Quest as long as 40-1. It just did not have that feel of quality about it. All credit, though, to a progressive trainer who is firing on all cylinders in a year which has had many of his rivals in despair.
I watched the Oaks trial alongside Barry Hills, for my money one of the complete masters of the art, and he was bemoaning `You've got Saturday night fever.' weather that had made it such a stop-start year for young horses. The danger, he said, was particularly with those horses that had had little racecourse experience as two- year-olds. The less they know, the more trainers have to do with them early on in their three-year-old careers, and there is a danger of pushing them too hard when the weather curtails the preparation time before their target races. That is a factor I will certainly include in making my big race selections this year.
The fillies race, in which Barry's Banco Suivi ran disappointingly, was certainly no guide to Epsom. It was won by the Queen's Film Script. But she is not entered in the Oaks and will not be supplemented for it. Trainer Roger Charlton said straightfor- wardly that she was not good enough. The race was often not that strong, he said, so they had seen a chance of getting some `black type' (i.e., a victory in a Listed race) on her record. It was not just that victory, though, which had pasted the smile on the face of Lord Carnarvon, the Queen's rac- ing manager. She has now had five victories and 11 seconds this season.
I was not quite sure who to feel sorriest for on Saturday. There was poor Frankie Dettori, whose third race mount AuratuM reared up on leaving the stalls, causing him to lose his irons and bounce about on her back all the way up the straight. It left him with a pain in a sensitive part of the anato- my which comes in pairs. He had to give up all further rides for the afternoon, and, presumably, other pleasures later. There was the Lingfield executive, who saw a sunny afternoon turn to a sodden down- pour just as his televised feature race was due to start. And there was the young lady in the thin white trousers, who had obvi- ously sat on a wet chair soon afterwards. All, I fear, was revealed. But the crowd enjoyed the elegant rear view. They all helped to take my mind off learning abruptly the night before that the BBC wished to hasten my retirement from the day job. I had planned to go after cov- ering the next election. They want the new man in to cover that. As my friend Jamie Osborne would put it, there is no point in flogging to Folkestone on a wet Tuesday if you are not going to get to ride in the Grand National, so in consequence I will now cease my main BBC duties at the end of August and do rather more racing. I had been coping with the sudden change to MY life, but when troubles come they tend to do so from every angle. Just before the 4.10 Tote Scoop 6 Handi- cap a friend telephoned to offer commiser- ation. As a result, I missed placing my bet on San Salvador, which would have been my only winning wager of the day. Jeremy Noseda's sprinter won by nine lengths, and it could have been more. He'll have to go up in class now, but back him until he gets beaten.
Robin Oakley is political editor of the BBC
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