The turf
Could do better
Robin Oakley
It wasn't Charlie Swan's week. At Ascot Sound Man gave him a nightmare ride in their much publicised confrontation with One Man, jumping like a drunken duck as the young pretender Strong Promise assert- ed his authority over both of them. Then at Newbury on Friday we saw Swan trans- formed into goose before our eyes. Riding the hot favourite White Sea in the juvenile hurdle, a key trial for the Triumph Hurdle at Cheltenham, Swan was coasting in the lead two hurdles out. It seemed only a mat- ter of how much he would win by, and how much of a stiff neck he was risking as he looked around at his pursuers. Then on the run to the last hurdle Carl Llewellyn brought Kerawi with a rattle. The two jumped the last hurdle almost together, but all the momentum was with Kerawi. It was only after the last hurdle, which White Sea jumped flat-footed, that Swan belatedly sought to galvanise his mount into action, and Kerawi swept on to the line to win by nearly two lengths.
Quite rightly, in my opinion, the stewards called in the Irish champion to explain himself. Wrongly, I believe, no disciplinary action followed. Careless riding in my book includes carelessness with the owners', trainer's and punters' money and I would love to have heard what words trainer Mar- tin Pipe exchanged with the rider after that race. Swan is a top-rate jockey who will be out to redeem his reputation at Chel- tenham. But between now and then I sus- pect there will not be quite so many offers of return tickets across the Irish Sea, not with freelance Richard Dunwoody and Norman Williamson riding like men inspired, Paul Carberry showing the old family magic and a hungry Jim Culloty showing all the dash he revealed as last season's amateur champion on his return from injury.
One riding performance of the week which was not sufficiently marked was that of the recently married Chris Maude (he had a one-day honeymoon then his wife drove him to Fontwell on the Monday) on Pipe's Make A Stand in the Tote Gold Trophy. Everyone has commented on the bravery of the gutsy chestnut, a bold-jump- ing front-runner whose high cruising speed leaves his rivals struggling from the first hurdle onwards. But when you are going out eight, ten, 12, lengths ahead of the field you are there to be shot at. It requires con- fidence and judgment from the jockey too. And if Make A Stand had come back to his rivals instead of proving the runaway win- ner we grandstand riders would soon have been blaming the jockey for making too much use of him.
The six-foot Maude, who has no trouble doing ten stone, rode his first treble in the West Country the other day. This column noted last May that he was a jockey at the turning point of his career who only need- ed a break to join the top flight. Now, rid- ing regularly for Martin Pipe, he is making the most of that break. Last season Chris Maude had his best-ever winning total of 38 winners from 250 rides. This year he has already scored 34 winners from 210 and there will be plenty more.
The quickening political tempo as we rev up to a General Election is nothing to the quickening of racing pulses as we approach the Cheltenham Festival. And there have been hints a-plenty of the delights to come. Jenny Pitman may have lost her Mark, off to set up on his own, but she has found her form just at the right time. Martin Pipe's Cyborgo has already won at Cheltenham as a hurdler and he added to his unbeaten record over fences in convincing style at Newbury. And Andy Turnell's Squire Silk, last year's winner of the Tote Gold Trophy over hurdles, was a convincing winner over Pipe's useful Eudipe in the Aldermaston Novices Chase. He'll go now for the Arkle. But the key performance of the week was that of Champion Hurdler Collier Bay, winning his comeback race at Towcester.
Jim Old is saying that he won't run Col- lier Bay at Cheltenham unless they water the course. He is supported by David Nicholson, who won't risk Relkeel on ground as firm as it is at the moment, and other senior trainers. Edward Gillespie, Cheltenham's managing director, must surely hear their plea. The 'Cheltenham Festival is the jumping championship, the showplace of the sport. It needs to be con- tested be the best horses. And if the ground is too firm for the best horses to be risked we will see a sub-standard Chel- tenham which is a championship of noth- ing. Either that, or we will see a whole series of good horses whose trainers have been pressured into running them against their better judgment come to grief. None of us should forget that ten horse boxes came to Cheltenham last year with potential champions aboard and went home empty after the worst series of fatali- ties on record. No one is asking for the odds to be rigged in favour of soft ground specialists but jumping championships, for the sake of the horses, should be run on ground which is no firmer than 'good'. If I want to watch the kind of horses which are so happy to hear their hooves rattle they would hurdle up the M40 I will go to West Country gaffs in August, not to Chel- tenham in March.
I know Edward Gillespie would be taking a risk. If he waters copiously now and there is a non-stop deluge in the week before the Festival, turning the ground into a bog, he will be howled down for giving way to pres- sure. But Cheltenham does have an expen- sive draining system and we have, after all, just had the driest January since records began.
Robin Oakley is political editor of the BBC.
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