Winning smile
Robin Oakley
Ihad backed Best Mate in the King George on Boxing Day. But, like countless thousands nationwide, I cheered home Adrian Maguire on Florida Pearl as the hope of Ireland held off Henrietta Knight's six-year-old, despite all the urgings of champion jockey Tony McCoy on the runner-up. For Best Mate and for McCoy there will be many big race victories to come. But time is less on the side of Adrian Maguire, who has had such cruel luck in recent years, three times missing the Cheltenham Festival through injury or family misfortune and who remains the best jockey never to have won the championship.
Maguire had set off early from Faringdon to ride at Wetherby for Ferdy Murphy, who has provided him with a new phase in his career. Having got as far as Leicester when Wetherby was frosted off. Adrian rerouted for Market Rasen, only to learn that racing had been cancelled there too. Then came the call from Willie Mullins, to tell him he could ride Florida Pearl if he could get to Kempton on time. Despite some fretting on the M25, Maguire justified the trainer's faith with a bold and adventurous ride, pushing his mount into the lead on the final circuit and stretching the remainder of the class field. I am sure his winning smile was matched all over the country by race fans delighted to see his talent for once rewarded with good fortune. I suspect there will be a particular pleasure for Maguire in that he lost the King George in 1994, after the pair had triumphed the year before, when Barton Bank blundered and unseated him at the last, and I hope that those who doubted Maguire in the latter days with David Nicholson were there to see such a brave and confident ride.
Although only a nine-year-old, Florida Pearl seems to have been around for ever and I certainly don't want to knock him but, whether it is McCoy or his regular partner Jim Culloty on board at Cheltenham, I would certainly back Best Mate, ridden less tenderly, to beat him in the Gold Cup. McCoy rode to sensible orders at Kempton for a horse tackling the distance for the first time but now they all know what Best Mate can do I am sure he will be ridden differently in future.
Boxing Day, for some reason, is never McCoy's luckiest. He was probably disappointed to ride only a brace of winners on Maximise in the novice chase and Perfect Fellow in the handicap chase. But how lucky we are to have him was amply demonstrated at Ascot on the pre-Christmas Saturday. Assessing his chances in his Daily Telegraph column that morning, the modest McCoy said of Westender. 'You'll probably remember him as the horse I nearly fell off at the final flight at Cheltenham last month.' No, Tony, what we remembered was the miracle you performed to stay in the saddle after Westender's terrible blunder, and the way you then went on to win a race almost any other jockey would have lost given the circumstances. In the event that day at Ascot. Westender was not a winner. But all McCoy's other five mounts were, an astonishing achievement on a highly competitive card with all the glorious uncertainties of the jumping game.
The weather being equally uncertain and Mrs Oakley having grabbed the car (some nonsense about buying a turkey), I had to do a Maguire and recommit when at 11.45 they still couldn't tell me if they would race at Ascot. I headed for Lingfield instead and to several very pleasant surprises. First, I backed a few winners in the five remaining races. Second, I was able to enjoy a reminder of the pleasures to come next season in the shape of Jamie Spencer's talents. He rode a treble on Status, Goshin's Lad and Siena Star, in each case holding his mount up in the rear and coming with a superbly timed run in the straight. On Siena Star he showed the confidence, not to say downright cheek, of a jockey riding at the very top of his form by squeezing through the tiniest of gaps on the inside rail to steal the race in the last two strides. Try such a manoeuvre when you are out of form and gaps like that will shut in your face and make you look silly.
Other trainers, I know, were on the lookout for Goshin's Lad, who was a very easy winner of the seller for Gerard Butler, and the yard had to go to more than 11,000 guineas to buy him in. There must be more victories to be had with him as there will be with Simon Dow's Burgundy, who had a gap of several lengths to close in the last furlong and only failed by a neck under Paul Doe's driving to get up and catch Amaranth over a mile.
The final pleasant surprise was to see the sheer quality of the new Polytrack racing surface at Lingfield, which has thoughtfully provided a model near the weighing-room to demonstrate the layers of materials involved. Jockeys and trainers alike are delighted with the new surface which seems to avoid both jarring and kickback problems and which enables riders to employ much more variety in their riding tactics than we used to see on all-weather surfaces. Lingfield is racing every Saturday until 2 March with a single enclosure price of /10 and a feature race of £20.000-plus every weekend. It has improved the quality of its fare and it deserves bigger crowds. I haven't always been the Surrey course's greatest fan and I still wish they would offer a more informative racecard. But I won't hesitate to head for Lingfield now on any Saturday that jumping courses can't race.
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