The turf
Summer treats
Robin Oakley
6 Let us divide the potential audience into two categories,' a lecturer invited a BBC seminar the other day. On the one hand we have politicians, pollsters and journalists. On the other, we have human beings ...' For the moment, though, even politicians are more concerned with pools than polls. Their departure to fish them or swim in them, on the whole according to party, frees those of us who are forced to fashion our lives around their eccentric working hours to do the things that ordi- nary human beings do, like going racing at Epsom on a sultry summer evening and taking our wives out into the country ... well, to Goodwood, actually.
My first experience of evening racing, in the comforts of Colonel Pinstripe's box the Wednesday before last, certainly convinced me of its potential. The crowd was big enough to register a buzz of excitement at the finish of a race, small enough to enable one to get a bet on and collect a drink in comfort. To me it brought something of the National Hunt friendliness to the normally more frenetic flat-racing scene. And a few winners helped.
Simon Dow had won the opening apprentices handicap the previous year with Soviet Bride and had entered her again. I met his good apprentice Alan Daly in the lift, wearing a sling and a rueful expression, after a fall on Edan Heights at Goodwood the day before had already cost him a good two-year-old winner at the Sus- sex track. The fact that the trainer had replaced him not just with any young rider but with the talented Robert Havlin indi- cated that he was serious about the prospect of a repeat victory. The pair led all the way to come home comfortably at 9- 4. Soviet Bride won so easily there must be another race to be won with her soon.
Alec Stewart's horses are really firing at the moment and, although Simon Whit- worth left it late to swoop down the centre of the track, he picked up the maiden handicap with Budby. It was a close tussle, though, with Richard Hannon's Sharp I've had a better offer.' Shuffle, who should be placed to win before long.
Reg Akehurst, too, can do little wrong at the moment and his Balance of Power just touched off my fancy, Joe Naughton's Yo Kiri-B, close home in the feature event of the night, the Ring and Brymer Handicap, before his Norsong suffered a similar fate, going down narrowly to Supermick in the last. Doubts whether Norsong really stays a mile and a half seemed to me to be settled by that run, and he, too, could repay future interest. Watch out too, though, for Roc- quaine Bay, twice a previous winner of the race and backed down to favourite again. The mare didn't quite last out on this occa- sion but did not have a hard race. And though Tony Newcombe's Missed the Boat, sent all the way from Devon, lived up to his name on this occasion he, too, should make the frame next time out.
But, if Epsom on a summer evening is a pleasure, Goodwood in August is a pure delight. We are a nation addicted to our summer rituals: beating the retreat on Horseguards Parade, complaints about the price of Wimbledon strawberries, the axing of Graeme Hick from the England eleven. Sometimes some of the summer treats dis- appoint. But never the panama paradise on the South Downs.
There can be no more beautiful back- drop for equine contest. The staff are friendly, the catering is as good as I have encountered on a racecourse anywhere and the racing, with more than a million in prize money for the five festival days even without owners' entry fees, was pure quali- ty. It will be a long time before I forget George Duffield's cool confidence in wait- ing so long to unleash Last Second's finish- ing burst in the Nassau Stakes and the courage showed by both horses in the epic struggle between the stayers Grey Shot and Tear White in the Goodwood Cup.
I understand entirely the sentiments of Middleham trainer Mark Johnston when he says that Goodwood's festival meeting is the one race meeting he would go to even if he did not have a runner. I would say that it is the one flat racecourse I can attend with unalloyed pleasure even when I don't back a winner. And it is Mark John- ston I have to blame for that. I ignored my own advice from Epsom and rejected Alex Stewart's Fahim for Friday's Globetrotter Handicap. But, worse than that, I fancied Johnston's Green Barries for the Seeboard Handicap and left him alone, despite the 10-1 on offer, because I recalled a newspa' per column in which the trainer said he had nothing much to bring to Goodwood with a chance this year. It just goes to prove the truth of the old adage that there are three things in this life you should never believe: 'Don't worry, sir, our cheque is in the post', 'I am from the Government and I am here to help you' and advice on a horse's win- ning prospects from a trainer.
Robin Oakley is political editor of the BBC.
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