The turf
Short changed
Robin Oakley
There are some problems that just can't be solved, like that of the Aborigine who was given a new boomerang and spent the rest of his life trying to throw the old one away. But surely we can find some better way of running horseracing. Never mind that it meant getting up at 5 a.m. in Brussels, I was full of the joys of autumn last Saturday knowing that I was heading to Kernpton for my first day's jumping of the winter season. For the moment I have had enough of the sleek whippets of the flat. I needed to see some big hairy steeplechasers standing off and soaring over their fences. I was itching for the spectacle of a cluster of battle-hardened hurdlers clattering over the last, with the race going to the one who kept his momentum best on landing. And the racing certainly had its moments. We will not see a cheekier ride all season than the one Norman Williamson, over from Ireland for a day, gave Philip Hobbs's grey, Rooster Booster, winner of last season's County Hurdle. He looked set for a duel with Martin Pipe's Mr Cool, on an almost identical rating.
Mr Cool was made favourite for the Platinum Security Hurdle, not just because he comes from a yard that produces so many winners or because Tony McCoy, the man who trashes previous racing records like others crumple crisp bags, was riding him but because he had won on his first outing for each of the last four seasons.
In the event, Norman Williamson stalked the champion all down the back straight on an ominously full of running Rooster Booster. Still on the bit three out as McCoy was beginning to send out distress signals, Rooster Booster cruised up alongside Mr Cool like a Lagonda drawing beside a Mini. Long and hard Norman eyeballed the toiling McCoy. Heaven, or more likely the other place, knows what words he used, but the body language could not have been more explicit to those of us in the stands. 'You may be McCoy,' he was indicating, 'but just take a look how much horse I have under me.' Then, the taunting over, between the last two flights he eased Rooster Booster to the front and strode away to win, still hard-held. Though Rooster Booster wasn't foot perfect at the last two hurdles it was a very impressive performance by a horse who, owner Terry Warner indicated, could now become a candidate for the Champion Hurdle. Train er's wife Sarah Hobbs said Philip reckons the eight-year-old is bigger and stronger this season and they are aiming next for the big handicap at Cheltenham's Thomas Pink meeting. On this form he will take some beating. Get on as soon as you can.
What was demoralising, though, was that there were only five runners in the .£12,000 added race. For the Nic Wellington's 40th Birthday Chase, with £16,000 added, there was a six-horse field. And for the skybet.com Novices Chase with £7.000 added there were just two entrants listed on the card, Owners and trainers whinge all the time about poor prize money and lack of opportunities. But they are not going to collect any cash if they don't run their horses. And the punters who are needed to fund the sport are not going to turn up to watch a series of five-horse races. For their entrance money they want a spectacle and a decent betting opportunity.
In fact at Kempton it got worse. The two-horse race became a walkover for Comex Flyer when Henrietta Knight withdrew Impek from the novice chase, leaving us for an hour in the middle of the afternoon with no contest. The Wantage trainer looks after her horses. If they were children they would all be well wrapped-up with tapes on their gloves and an extra hanky tucked in their top pockets. But she had good reason for pulling out all her three runners at the meeting. When I asked her husband Terry Biddlecombe why she had done it he pointed at the tarmac and said, 'The ground out there is just like this. It's a disgrace. There's no grass at all.' Impek's owner Jim Lewis echoed the criticisms, saying that there was no grass on the landing side of the hurdles and that the ground staff had failed to fertilise in the warmer weather. 'I was hoping for a nice little school here for Impek but I'd rather go home with a horse which has a chance of running in the Arkle.'
Andrew Cooper. Kempton's director of racing, admitted, 'It's not great, it doesn't look green enough,' but said that the course would be better in a fortnight. 'It hasn't recovered as well as we'd hoped from the dry spell in September.' All well and good, but sometimes Nature has to be given a hand. And you could not help but share Henrietta Knight's suspicions that, with Kempton flirting with the idea of becoming an all-weather flat-racing track, there is not the same attention being given to the jumping course.
A top-class track skimps on ground preparation. Owners and trainers won't produce their jumpers horses to run in late October. And once again this week the Jockey Club has displayed a contempt for punters by taking an age before finally insisting that cheekpieces, an item of equipment just as effective in altering a horse's running as blinkers or visors, must be declared in advance. Is it any wonder that those of us who love our racing are sometimes thrown into despair?
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