Counting the loss
Robin Oakley
Racing folk know you can't always believe what you see. But it seems a lady in Arkansas, whose story has been sent to me by a friend, didn't know this. She was one of many in those parts awaiting the Second Coming. Observing a number of bodies floating in the sky and then passing a man she took to be her Saviour with his arms beseechingly outstretched at the roadside, she reckoned she would join the fortunate. She opened the car roof as her husband sped along a motorway and launched herself into the air — only to meet an immediate death in the teeming traffic. Her 'Jesus', sadly, was a man wearing a toga on his way to a fancy-dress party. He had realised the tarpaulin covering a dozen blown-up sex dolls in the back of his pick-up truck (don't ask) had come loose and was standing on the hard shoulder with his arms aloft in reaction to his now airborne loss ...
knew when I last wrote about my Ten to Follow for the Flat this year that it was going to take a miracle for us to come out with a profit. (It takes an unusual talent to pick five Flat horses of whom one never makes it to the racecourse, two are dead halfway through the season and another two are retired prematurely to stud after setbacks.) Alas, as the lady from Arkansas found out, miracles are in short supply. Our Ten managed just four more runs —two seconds and a third — so we finish on a £10 level stake with a loss this year of £125.
But racing and betting are the constant triumph of hope over experience, and when the chunky little parcel containing this year's Timeform Chasers and Hurdlers 2003104 (Portway Press, 166) arrived with this year's essential raw material I was, as ever, soon lost in its 1,001 pages. (Mrs Oakley swears she will go away next time it comes, rather than endure a weekend of grunts.) The Timeform volume's essays on top horses' achievements over the past year are a model, colourful yet measured, and its judgments are the perfect cool antidote to those racecourse moments which sweep one away in pure emotion — Rooster Booster's narrow failure to win the Tote Gold Trophy, Best Mate's third consecutive Gold Cup, Azertyuiop going down by a neck to lsio, giving him 191b in the Victor Chandler.
Let us start this season's ten again with Azertyuitip, one of our profitable ten last year and the winner of the Queen Mother Champion Chase, the two-mile championship, at Cheltenham. He has already shown his wellbeing with a sparkling victory at Exeter and Paul Nicholls's star will surely capture a series of top races.
I would have liked to have included Nicholls's Strong Flow in the Ten once more. If he retains the quality he showed before injury last season, he could he the Gold Cup threat to Best Mate. But, as Nicholls says, he has not had to bring one back before from a broken knee and I would hold all bets until the impressive Hennessy winner has proved himself again on a racecourse.
My second choice is the novice chaser Fundamentalist, a winner again on Sunday, who is one of the horses demonstrating the strength in depth this season of Nigel Twiston-Davies's yard. The Gloucestershire trainer is positively flying — without the accompaniment of blownup dolls. Chasers and Hurdlers reveals, incidentally, that Fundamentalist's owners acquired him in a deal done at the Hollow Bottom pub in Guiting Power, TwistonDavies's local. Who says you always regret a deal done over a drink?
Next an Irish brace. Tom Foley's Royal Paradise, formerly with Francois Doumen, was fourth in the champion bumper at the Cheltenham Festival, having already won a classy 21-runner contest at Sandown, and should pay his way over hurdles. Then there is the gutsy mare Solerina for the long-distance hurdles. James Bowe's yard may be small in numbers but as the handler of Limestone Lad he knows what to do with quality when he has it. Solerina was a leading novice hurdler in Ireland, with this year's Champion Hurdle winner Hardy Eustace among her scalps, and has won on the Flat as well.
One I am looking forward to seeing over hurdles is Hughie Morrison's Secret Ploy. Unbeaten in bumpers (National Hunt Flat races) last winter, he beat a class field at Newbury.
Chasers and Hurdlers tells the tale of this year's Grand National better than anyone, listing all those horses and riders such as Clan Royal and Liam Cooper who have lost the race on the 494-yard run-in after leading at or soon after the last fence, Sadly Cooper, who has had to retire with head injuries, won't get another chance after this year's second place. Clan Royal, I hope, will. Don't rush to back him elsewhere, but at Aintree he is a real specialist, having won the Topham and the Becher over the National fences.
Lambourn trainer Noel Chance is having a fine season with a current strike rate of over 40 per cent. I like his River City but for the Ten I will go for Murphy's Cardinal, now unbeaten in five starts including bumpers, hurdles and a novice chase. Nicky Henderson scooped most of the big Saturday prizes last year and I believe his French import Steep Hal could prove profitable to follow this year. From Nicky Richards's northern stable I like Monet's Garden, an impressive hurdler last season who should take well to fences. And nobody surely can compile a list of ten hopefuls without including one of Martin Pipe's. Having won the Paddy Power Gold Cup last Saturday with substitute Celestial Gold he suggested that had Our Vic been able to run he would have been five lengths clear of his stable companion, so he will do as number ten.
Previous page
