The turf
Irresistible lure
Robin Oakley
Arecent survey of trainers by the Rac- ing Post found them pretty disillusioned with the racing game. It is not an easy life. First, the horses you handle are not the robust animals they look from a Saturday afternoon armchair. They are frighteningly delicate creatures bred over 300 years to install the maximum engine in the most streamlined frame, a recipe for constant injury and breakdown. It is an achievement to get most of them to the racecourse, let alone to win a race with them. Even when you do have quality horses, viruses can sweep in from nowhere and lay your yard low for a season. On top of that you have to be able to finance and manage a labour- intensive business with a restlessly itinerant workforce.
Newmarket's racing chaplain said the other day that he had encountered one lad who'd been in every stable except the origi- nal one in Bethlehem. And, with the com- petition for the leisure pound as hot as it is, you have to be a marketing director and public relations whizz, patrolling the race- course bars and figuring on the dinner- party circuit in the hope of increasing your orders for the sales. Sometimes it goes fur- ther. One comely female trainer was reck- oned by male colleagues to increase her stable numbers by services of a strictly after-dinner nature for one elderly patron. I am sure it works the other way too. I did once overhear one elegant female whisper to a companion, as Francois Doumen went to saddle a horse, that she wouldn't mind at all if he'd been coming to saddle her too.
At the end of the day few trainers are making significant profits. Many of them are frustrated that they cannot pay more to staff who are being expected now to look after four or five horses where once it would have been only two, and to travel to evening and Sunday meetings that did not exist a few years ago. But four out of five of the stable staff who leave racing for a bet- ter wage are back in a yard within a year or two, drawn by the irresistible lure of the racing life. And comparatively few trainers quit, despite the difficulties in making a go of it. Winners cure most depressions, and I did not see many sad expressions in the Sandown unsaddling enclosure on Saturday afternoon.
The happiest face I saw was that of New- market trainer Paul Howling, who was on the phone to his wife inquiring what price she had got as his 10-1 winner Mise En Scene came back in after an impressive performance in the European Breeders Fund maiden fillies stakes. This was one they had expected. The delighted trainer told jockey Philip Robinson that he owed champion jockey Kieren Fallon a bottle of champagne. Fallon had ridden the filly at work a couple of mornings before. She had given an older horse 8Ib and picked him up as if he was standing still, but Fallon was claimed by the Balding stable to ride another filly in the race and so Robinson got the ride. It won't be Mise En Scene's last victory, I am sure.
The cheerful trainer's comment, 'There's a bit of improvement left in her', was some- thing of an understatement, given that Robinson had reported the filly had run green, backing off the other horses at one stage and then trying to pull herself up when she did hit the front. Paul Howling says he has an even better two-year-old at home. And don't forget either to back David Elsworth's Foodbroker Fancy next time out. The runner-up to Mise En Scene, she too was learning on the job and she fin- ished even faster than I do when the 159 is pulling away from the stop with an infuriat- ing grin on the conductor's face.
I was grinning too, having been tempted to back Bryan Smart's Don Puccini in the five-furlong John Egginton Conditions Stakes. In the end, choosing between him and the eventual winner Bishops Court, I went for the latter, but I am somewhat ashamed to admit the reason why. I desert- ed Don Puccini because I had not seen the Piccolo colt, who has a mind of his own, dump jockey John Stack at the start. Twice before I had seen him do so and twice before he had won. As. John said coming back in, 'Every time he does it, I win.' File it under useless information, but the mem- ory might just help one day.
And if you come across a horse and do not fancy it because the rider's name is P. Dobbs, claiming 51b, and you have never heard of him, do not let that put you off. Young Pat Dobbs rode the 25-1 Choto Mate for Richard Hannon to win the rich- est race of the day, the Tote handicap. He does not get many rides. His last winner was on the all-weather months ago but he was put up on Choto Mate because the horse, once a useful two-year-old, had started messing about at the start, climbing under the stalls, and Dobbs had put in the work at home teaching him to behave. He rode a beautifully cool race, coming with his challenge in the final furlong, and deserves more opportunities.
Robin Oakley is political editor of the BBC.
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