The turf
Cheltenham takes its toll
Robin Oakley
In an increasingly monochrome world, thank God for glorious technicolour Chel- tenham. Every minute you hear Ted Walsh speak, racing's vocabulary is extended. `There's nothing really sticky-outy in this race . . . oh, he'll ride the eyeballs off that one . . . ' You could take away from the three days of this year's National Hunt Fes- tival the plots for a dozen novels and the characters for 20.
Look, for a start, at the trainers of the two big races. Fergie Sutherland, of the poached-egg eyes and florid face, trains the Gold Cup winner Imperial Call along with just a handful of others on the banks of the River Lee, beneath the Derrynasaggart mountains in County Cork. Once a New- market flat trainer, who turned out a win- ner of the Queen Mary Stakes at Ascot in his first year with a licence, and coming from a wealthy Scottish family, he has been based in County Cork for nearly 30 years and has not visited Cheltenham before in all that time. An Eton and Sandhurst man who had a leg blown off in Korea in 1952, he is said to travel with three artificial ones: one for shooting, one for riding and one for dancing.
Jim Old, the mop-haired trainer of the Champion Hurdle winner Collier Bay, by contrast, would not look out of place, with his dangling cigarette and light mac, scratching the numbers on a bookies' pitch at one of Britain's lesser tracks. But few Champion Hurdle victories have been more popular. Old has long been held by the racing community to be a man of worth, but he has rarely been one of means. Only loyal owners like Wally Sturt have enabled him to beat off hovering bank managers through periods of cruel luck and persistent viruses.
And the start was hardly auspicious. Old admits that after his first year training with- out a single winner, the Jockey Club called him in and hinted heavily he might be bet- ter to hand in his licence. But so effectively did he make his case, it is said, that when shortly afterwards he did score his first suc- cess, most of the racing Establishment were `on' the animal concerned.
Pointedly, as he rode into the winner's enclosure, Collier Bay's jockey Graham Bradley looked at a non-existent watch, a reminder of another human story. Booked for a 'getting to know you' session with the Champion Hurdle favourite Alderbrook one morning, after his regular pilot had been ruled out by injury, Bradley had over- slept, thanks to a fellow jockey's birthday party the night before and a power cut which immobilised his electric alarm clock. Trainer Kim Bailey promptly sacked him and engaged another jockey for Alder- brook's big day. Everyone thought that an extra hour in bed had cost Bradley a moment of glory. But then came the book- ing for Collier Bay, rejected by another jockey in favour of the misplaced Mysilv, and the best Alderbrook could manage was second. Thank you, Southern Electric.
I hope, incidentally, readers followed my February recommendation and got the 14-1 available about Collier Bay as the going turned soft.
Amid the glory and the laughs there were tragedies, too, at Cheltenham this year: ten horses did not make the journey back from the course. Martin Pipe lost three, including the spectacular front-run- ning mare Draborgie, who had looked another Tingle Creek in the making. Some- how it often seems to be the supreme equine athletes who are struck down, like Dunkirk, Buona Notte, and the last Irish winner of the Gold Cup, the gutsy Dawn Run, ten years ago. But, whatever their quality, ten is a terrible toll.
Of course, at a top championship for human athletes a similar number of com- petitors will break down with serious injuries. But at least they live. Sadly for a ABS, airbag, side impact bars ... so its quite safe to drive like a maniac.' horse, a broken leg almost invariably means the end. The problem is that Chel- tenham is the jumping Olympics. These are highly tuned performers contesting at the highest level and probably going, in some cases, that little bit faster than they have ever gone before.
Those of us who take such pleasure from the striving in concert of horse and rider must acknowledge the cost of lives. Even in a 'normal' year at Cheltenham there are likely to be three or four fatalities. Some die, racing or not. This year his jockey reckons that the doughty jumper Monsieur Le Cure was dead before he hit the ground in his Gold Cup fall, and at least three of the other injuries were sustained on the flat.
We have to hope that this year Fate was in a particularly malign mood. But if there are another ten empty horse boxes leaving Cheltenham next year, then we shall all have to ask some serious questions.
Robin Oakley is political editor of the BBC.
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