Glowing with pride
Robin Oakley
It was time to accept the natural rhythm of the seasons. Newmarket offered vast fields of largely unraced two-year-olds pitched in by trainers desperate to get a first run into the backward ones and of overtired handicappers sent out by owners anxious for contributions towards the winter keep. Ascot was staging its first jumps meeting of the season, so I had no hesitation in becoming Berkshire-bound. The cars were muddier, the suits were not so sleek, the breast-pocket handkerchiefs were second generation. Women wore comfortable skirts and every variation known on the black fur hat. The human faces were that little bit more lived-in, and the equine countenances around the parade ring had that 'seen-it-all-before' look too.
Thank God for autumn, and for jumping. Most of us, of course, switch our attention to the National Hunt scene rather too late, only to find that nothing much has changed. When Tony McCoy dismounted after winning the first on Turkestan there were particularly cheery smiles from trainer Martin Pipe. Two weeks earlier than even he has managed the feat before, it was Pipe's hundredth winner of the season. McCoy, of course, had chalked up his century even earlier and he produced two more cracking rides, including one for Pipe, to complete a treble. But the champion jockey, cross that he hadn't been allowed to go to Wetherby to ride Jonjo O'Neill's top prospect Legal Right, was not in the best of moods. He had kept Turkestan in the thick of the action all the way. After he had won the third race, by contrast, after settling You're Agoodun at the back and then coming with a perfectly-timed challenge, I was unwise enough to remark to him that maybe he wasn't so sorry not to be at Wetherby after all. The response was one of those Margaret Thatcher kill-at-seven-paces glares. His lips didn't even open.
In fact Legal Right failed at Wetherby, and even the perfectionist McCoy must have taken pleasure from his third success at Ascot on Mark Pitman's Father McCarten. There was considerable confidence behind the Nicky Henderson-trained Arctic Jack in the novice chase. Mick Fitzgerald brought him over the last in front and would have won the race, I am convinced, against almost any other jockey. But the inspired and relentless McCoy drove Father McCarten past him to win by three-quarters of a length with the rest of the field 16 lengths behind. Both horses look excellent prospects and will win again.
It would have been nice to have continued my recent profit-making run into the winter sport too and things began well when I espied Romero, on his first outing for Emma Lavelle, run fling off a decent mark in the handicap hurdle. 'Horses which develop a liking for Ascot tend to go on winning there and, remembering the three juvenile hurdles Romero had won on the course when he was well-handled previously by John Akehurst, I had a go. Romero obliged at 6-1, giving his new trainer her first Ascot winner, An honest sort who might well be better over longer than the two miles of the United House Handicap, Romero made virtually all the running and pulled away again when challenged.
Sadly, it was all downhill from there. A mutual friend had assured me that Mick Fitzgerald was convinced he would win on Arctic Jack and I plunged solidly, only to be frustrated by the brooding McCoy. And when I encountered the in-form Charlie Mann, the trainer was so convinced that his Hawkes Run was unassailable in the last that I stretched my racecourse limit and backed him solidly too. Hawkes Run duly slaughtered eight of the ten runners, coming home 14 lengths clear of them. But unfortunately it was in second place. This time Mick Fitzgerald, on Nicky Henderson's Greenhope, was not to be denied, Diana Henderson had indicated they had hopes. But, like many, I had assumed the ground a little too soft for a horse who seemed not to like it that way when trained on the Flat by former jockey Jamie Osborne.
Nicky agreed afterwards that Jamie had been 'suspicious' of Greenhope on the soft, but ruminated that what constitutes soft ground for Flat horses and for jumpers is a different thing: 'Mick thinks this is good jumping ground.' Nicky, who has been spending some significant money at Newmarket lately as well as on his French imports, is confident he has several nice three-year-old prospects. I told the disappointed Charlie Mann that — thanks to Hawkes Run — Mrs Oakley would be dining that night in Pizza Express rather than Orso, provided I could raise the train fare back to meet her.
It was clear that he and his wife Susanna would not be dining out in style that night either. But they had enjoyed earlier consolation. Not many ten-year-olds run in novice handicap hurdles at Ascot; even fewer are ridden against the likes of McCoy by the trainer's wife. But Susanna Mann had partnered their Jolly John into fourth place at a rewarding 16-1. with 25-1 available earlier in the 17-runner field. He had talked of each-way hopes. But it was only after the race that Charlie confessed that on the gallops this week he and the veteran Darkie Deacon, both on decent horses, had been shaken to find Jolly John cruising past them. Mrs Mann had by then already been promised the ride and ungallantly he joked: 'I was ready to try anything, even getting the dog kidnapped, to get her off . . (Their miniature Staffordshire bull terrier, Lupin, is, pound for pound, the most expensive animal in the yard.) In fact, after his wife's tidy ride and well-timed finish, the trainer was glowing with pride.
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