The turf
Happiness is . . .
Robin Oakley
Iate a second lunch on Saturday. As the rain bucketed down on the course that likes to call itself 'Lovely Lingfield' and two umbrellas nestled companionably in the car boot half a mile away, there was really no other option. And, after six weeks of poli- tics, then sausage, egg and chips, with the Sporting Life propped on one side of the plate and the Racing Post on the other, takes a great deal of beating.
Happiness comes in different guises. If you lived behind the Iron Curtain in the old days happiness took the form of having the secret police knock on your door at mid- night inquiring 'Ivan Stravinsky?' and being able to say 'No, Ivan Stravinsky lives next door'. In the House of Commons last week, Labour happiness was being one of those who received the telephone call from Tony Blair, especially if, like the new sports min- ister Tony Banks, you were convinced he did not know your number and would not call if he did. Tory happiness was being one of the battered few with your boots up on the table in the hushed mess room, noting the empty chairs of the fellow pilots who had flown their last sortie in the general election and would not be coming back.
At Lingfield, too, there was happiness in many a form despite the rain. Among the exuberant connections who greeted Gary Moore's Supply and Demand after he had won the nine-furlong HSBC James Capel Handicap Stakes was an attractive redhead. As she welcomed winning jockey Keiren Fallon in an ecstatic embrace, a nervous marketing executive was heard to murmur, `Can we restrict it to kissing, please. We don't have a licence for sex.' Gary Moore himself was grinning like a Cheshire cat, and no wonder. Since he moved from Epsom to take over father Charlie's Brighton stables he has had 34 winners.
But visible at Lingfield was another kind of happiness, too, the serene pleasure of a man doing what he enjoys, in the way he chooses to, beholden to no other. The owner-trainer Brian Gubby has made his money, plenty of it, from the motor trade and hotel business. He could afford to have some fancy horses trained by a fashionable name. But instead there he was saddling up the also-rans Utah and Tulsa in the two divisions of the Testers of Edenbridge Maiden Stakes, instructing the jockey, fold- ing up the blankets, checking over his charges when they returned. He was not among the back-slapping champagne swillers. He was unbothered by racecourse gossip. But you could sense his real plea- sure in the simple physical acts of prepar- ing his horses and sending them out. The business done, he was due to drive the horsebox home himself as well.
The son of an Epsom-based jockey whose 1926 licence he still possesses, Brian Gubby took to handling horses after he had finished with his previous love. He used to race saloon cars and sports cars and even had a couple of goes at Formula One. He trains all his own horses, and only his own horses, on an 88-acre estate in Bagshot where he has installed a one-and-a-quarter- mile all-weather gallop. He has another mile on turf in what he calls his 'little bit of paradise'. Naturally, he takes the tractor out himself to keep it in trim.
At 63, the quiet, silver-haired Gubby, who has been a licensed trainer since 1976, has decided to cut back somewhat. He recently sold off his jumping and all-weath- er horses. But he will still keep 10 to 12 for the flat. Bagshot may not be the most fash- ionable training centre. But Gubby is no hopeless idealist rattling up form-book duck eggs with a string of no-hopers. He has won at least four Group races and scored major successes with his best horse, the sprinter Gabitat. Other useful stable inmates have included Omaha City, Queen's Bidder and Green Dollar. Last year he had seven winners and 13 seconds with his small string. He says quite simply, `I love what I do.' You know he means it and every movement when he is with his horses shows it.
Other satisfied customers around includ- ed Michael Stoute, John Dunlop and the French jockey Olivier Peslier, whose week- end raids on British prizes are becoming a feature of this season. Stoute had booked Pedlier for his Oaks Trial entrant Crown of Light. Noting that he had put up Michael Kinane the previous weekend when she ran in the Pretty Polly Stakes at Newmarket, I reckoned Stoute must be serious about this one's chances and took the 11-2. Peslier again rode a beautiful race around the inside and won convincingly from Book At Bedtime and Ukraine Venture. As he dis- mounted, mud-spattered, a bystander who'd watched one commercial too many remarked that she had never seen anything so white as the back of Peslier's breeches. I don't know what his valet uses, but she was right, and that rear view is going to become a familiar one dazzling some English jock- eys this summer.
Sadly I played up my winnings on the Stoute/Peslier combination in the Derby Trial, too, only to see their candidate Tanaasa comprehensively beaten by John Dunlop's Silver Patriarch. The grey won with his ears pricked as if he could have gone round again just for fun. Ever the realist, his trainer said afterwards that the form wasn't up to much. Tanaasa had only won a Leicester maiden. 'I doubt if Entrepreneur will now be sleepless in his box.' But Silver Patriarch certainly made a convincing job of what he had to do. He may not have the beating of Entrepreneur at Epsom. But Pat Eddery is keen to take him on in the quest for his fourth Derby success. Whatever happens at Epsom, Sil- ver Patriarch is a horse I would be keen to have on my side for the St Leger.
Robin Oakley is political editor of the BBC.
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