The turf
Looking ahead
Robin Oakley
Does anybody in racing know Geoffrey Robinson, so aptly titled, it seems, when he was still the Paymaster General? After the bad news about the failure of the Tote to get the Corals' betting shops at a price to make them viable, a handout from the Benefactor-General may be the only answer. Racing certainly isn't going to get the money it would like from the Chancellor.
But after Ascot's pre-Christmas meeting I am looking forward in pleasure, not back- wards at those 1998 Tote placepots that got away on the sixth leg. If we see again in 1999 a sight like Richard Dunwoody on Princeful and Tony McCoy on Deano's Beeno battling out the finish of the Long Walk Hurdle then it will be enough in itself to make it a good racing year. The courage of both mounts in the holding ground was something to stir the blood. And Jenny Pit- man's announcement that Princeful was to be aimed at the Sun Alliance Chase at Cheltenham and the Gold Cup in the year 2000 was enough for some heavy underscor- ing in my notebook. It isn't often she men- tions other horses in the same breath as Garrison Savannah, Royal Athlete and Bur- rough Hill Lad and she listed him with all three for his courage.
That Ascot card was notable in that vir- tually every winner had either led or con- tested the lead all the way. The comparatively short finishing straight at Ascot is a help to horses which round the bend in the lead or hot on the heels of the leader. And I have always been of the belief that it is a lot harder for waiting horses to peg back a front-runner in really testing conditions.
Mick Fitzgerald may have been nick- named the Bank Robber for the races he has stolen after sitting in behind. But he won the Handicap Chase on Get Real and the Novices Hurdle on Hidebound by mak- ing it all. There is, it seems, no other way of riding Get Real, who was being allowed to play with the big boys for the first time. He will win again. Any horse which can take that kind of lead out of Celibate within two fences has real speed. As for Henderson's Hidebound, he gets a triple under-score. His trainer had thought of sending the big six-year-old son of Buckskin straight over fences. But after the way he pulverised a field including Renzo, Salamah and Hoh Invader they will have to let him win some more hurdles first. Deano's Beeno so nearly won after mak- ing all that he must now be favourite to take the Stayers Hurdle at Cheltenham which Princeful won last year. And Torduff Express, an easy winner of a sub-standard Betterware Cup, was another in support of my point. He was in the first two through- out.
If you do want to warm yourself with rec- ollections of times past, let me recommend the late Aubrey Brabazon's Racing Through My Mind (Vota Books, Curragh, Armore, Co.Waterford, £1895) for those Christmas book tokens. The man who rode Vincent O'Brien's first jumping winners (but who wasn't allowed to take part in schooling his horses for fear that his chatty ways would endanger the stable's betting prospects) has a wonderful tale to tell, not least of his three successive Gold Cups on Cottage Rake and two Champion Hurdles on Hat- ton's Grace. Before the first of those Gold Cups trainer and jockey went into a race- course bar and ordered a couple of port and brandies to calm their nerves. Not quite how it is done these days.
The great Irish rider was certainly of the old school. He rode hard and well, and he partied all night. At the end of one Chel- tenham week he rode a 1-7 shot called Tsaoko for Sam Armstrong at the now defunct Hurst Park. Winning easily, he dropped his hands and was caught on the line for a dead heat. Armstrong was appar- ently quite reasonable about it, unlike the press. He commented, accurately says the author: 'Poor Aubrey — it was the only sleep he had all week.'
After he became known, The Brab used to get the hall porter of a Dublin hotel into Cheltenham each year by letting him carry his saddle as a temporary valet. In return it got him a supply of tickets to Irish rugby internationals. And he gives us both sides of the picture too, admitting his admiration for jockey Tommy Burns but acknowledg- ing 'The Scotchman', as Burns was known, did not always give every horse a ride in a career interrupted by suspensions and retirements.
When he once pulled a communication cord on a race train and set off across the field, Burns was pursued by shouts of `We've seen you stop plenty of horses, but this is the first time you've stopped a train.' And when in a bar some Irish jockeys were watching the first Russian spaceship careering off into space and someone No madam, your fish does not have asthma.' inquired 'Is there no way of stopping it?' Brabazon records the inevitable reply: `Send up The Scotchman.' Just as well, per- haps, that they don't make them quite like that any more.
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