Looking to the future
Robin Oakley
Was that the chairman of Coutts I saw emptying his pockets of wads of twenties round the Ascot betting ring on Saturday? Was that the CEO of HBOS in front of me in the Tote queue investing exclusively on 100–1 shots? Illusions, of course. It must have been the unaccustomed glare of sunshine which greeted us punters on Willmot Dixon Group Day. But in a world in which only sock and mattress salesmen can be turning a profit it scarcely seemed like gambling any more to be going to the races. Who could say that a 7–2 shot like Emma Lavelle’s muchtouted Champion Hurdle hopeful Crack Away Jack at Chepstow was not a wiser investment than an Icelandic government bond or a promised 8.5 per cent return on an ISA with the Grab the Bonus and Run Investment Trust? Interesting too how quiet those cruising City sharks have become. They used to tell us there wasn’t a politician capable of running a whelk stall. Now they are all running to the Treasury to ask them how to put the wheels back on and what temperature to keep the whelks.
The present is too painful to contemplate. The only thing to do is to look to the future. And the truly enjoyable thing about autumn Flat racing is sorting out the prospects to put in your notebook for next season. Two already pencilled in mine are Henry Candy’s sprinter Amour Propre and Michael Jarvis’s middle-distance hope Kite Wood.
Amour Propre’s trainer Henry Candy is one of the most amiable figures on the racecourse. But his habitual expression tends towards the natural lugubriousness of his pack of black labradors at Kingston Warren. He is not one of nature’s optimists. So although Amour Propre had beaten the twoyear-old record time for five furlongs in winning his last two races at Bath and Warwick the Paris House colt was allowed to start at 10–1. He was stepping up in class to Group Three and his trainer had worried publicly about softer ground and about Amour Propre having possibly gone off the boil.
In the event Amour Propre broke fast and jockey Dane O’Neill deliberately brought him up the stands rail alone, except for the dogged attentions of Waffle, worried that if he had raced him with the classy pack of juveniles the instinctively competitive Amour Propre might have done too much. It was an exhibition of blistering speed and Henry was quite happy to have Amour Propre mentioned afterwards in the same breath as his past top sprinters Kyllachy, Airwave and Corrybrough, ‘He is a very, very fast horse.’ Explaining his earlier doubts, he declared, ‘He likes concrete and this wasn’t concrete.’ And, no, he wasn’t worried by Amour Propre running virtually on his own in the race. ‘He’s used to being on his own. He doesn’t see many others on the gallops.’ You can see why.
The best goods do sometimes come in small parcels and when the trainer first showed Amour Propre to a group of wouldbe owners as a yearling he admitted he was embarrassed. ‘He was no bigger than a dog. They just stood and looked, thinking I was taking the piss. One thought I was joking and showing them a children’s pony.’ Since then, he says, Amour Propre has made unbelievable physical progress. He expects him to train on and to remain a five-furlong specialist next year while his ‘uncle’ Corrybrough contests the best 6f prizes.
The fortunes of trainers like Henry Candy will be a good barometer next year of how badly the recession is biting in racing. He has years of experience and has trained Classic winners. There are few more attractive yards in Britain. But he has only 45 horses. Already some City syndicates are disbanding and owners pulling out. The big yards, he reckons, with their super-rich international owners, are effectively recession-proof. ‘At lower levels the effect could be massive.’ Like Henry Candy, Newmarket trainer Michael Jarvis is not a headline-chaser or one whose life you will find chronicled in the gossip columns. He, too, lets his achievements do the talking and in Kite Wood he may have a serious Derby contender in his hands. Before the Group Three Deloitte Autumn Stakes over a mile there was quite a word for Marcus Tregoning’s Taameer, winner of his only previous race at Newbury. But while Taameer was struggling to get free from a pocket on the rails to make his challenge Kite Wood was turning the screw, having led all the way. He showed he could go through the gears, quickening well for Philip Robinson a furlong out. Neither Robinson nor Kite Wood’s courteous owner Thomas Barr were worried that the colt, a son of Galileo, had sweated up in the preliminaries. ‘It’s just the Galileo coming out in him,’ said his rider. ‘It doesn’t seem to take anything out of him and he switched off nicely in the race.’ Mr Barr, a cool assessor of a race, was well pleased with the resolution his colt showed in staying on and reckoned that even if Taameer had got to him his jockey ‘had a length or two up his sleeve’.
All ten in the field were previous winners and we should hear a lot more of the first two, who were well clear of the Queen’s Four Winds in third place. ‘Tameer,’ says his trainer Marcus Tregoning, ‘has a good head on him.’ As for Mr Barr, whose Osana was second in this year’s Champion Hurdle and who has just spent something over £1 million at the sales buying colts by Pivotal, Montjeu and Dubawi, good luck to a man with the courage to be injecting capital at a time like this. ❑
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