The Eliminator's Axe (Part ...)

Mmm - the Eliminator's Axe. Yes, I'm afraid it fell again this week, meaning that the day we went to Bangor became the day we didn't go to Bangor. But there's always succour in numbers, and we were just one of thirty sets of connections to have their horse eliminated needlessly. You'll have noticed that 12 was the maximum field size at Bangor yesterday, to allow all 22 horses declared for the juvenile hurdle to have a start (in two divisions of 11), and to ensure that that there was no congestion in the course's small stable yard. Since starting to use this blog as the forum for my ruminations, I've almost ceased annoying the 'Readers' Letters' department of the Racing Post, but I was moved to put fingers to keyboard on Friday once it became apparent that carrying saddle-cloth 13, and 10 stone 9lb, in a race for which the safety factor was 18 meant that one would be eliminated. That's why I know that there were 30 horses needlessly eliminated on the card, because I did the math for my epistle. No doubt it won't be published, but you can probably guess the direction in which it headed. What was particularly sad was that there was a £20,000 handicap hurdle, a race for which people might have set their horses months previously, and again there were several horses needlessly eliminated from this; and as the bottom weight of the 12 who were allowed to run was 10 stone 12lb, it is fair to assume that the eliminees weren't horses whose sights had been set unrealistically high. Of course there would still only have been one winner irrespective of how many ran, and obviously it was nice for the 12 who did run that they had fewer opponents, but to tell several other sets of connections that, even though they fell within the course's safety limit, they couldn't run because there weren't enough stables on the course, and because 22 of the few stables that there are had been allocated to the 22 horses declared for the juvenile hurdle, made no sense at all.

Oh yes, and Jill didn't go into the stalls at Newbury on Friday, so our aiming for a mighty double really did misfire badly. I don't foresee Jill's stalls test presenting any problems because she isn't a problem at the start, but that's scant consolation. She does have a tendency to stand and stare on occasions, and Friday looked to be one of those. Of course one always worries when a horse who isn't frightened of the stalls suddenly doesn't go in, as one fears that the horse might be developing a physical problem which is making him or her fearful of running - and, as you'll gather from the fact that Jill is so lightly raced, she has had one or two minor setbacks along the way, as so many horses do - but Jill's gait doesn't seem significantly different to how it has been all year, and she certainly didn't appear to be in an anxious frame of mind at the track: far from it, in fact, as she seemed even more unconcerned than usual, which is saying something as she is always remarkably laid-back in the preliminaries anyway. To lighten the tone, though, I'm pleased to say that there was one funny story concerning her refusal to enter the stalls. Before the race, I was passing the time of day with Sam Avis, the assistant starter, in the weighing room. Sam, as some of you will know, is doing very well in his apparent aim of going through life from one cushy job to another even less taxing position, having moved from travelling head lad to Luca Cumani to filling the same position for Saeed bin Suroor, and now being employed by the BHA. I reminded him that the last time I'd seen him at the races had been the day that Milton's Keen was boxed in in a six-horse race, so I said that I was hoping that there would be no cock-ups today. He, justifiably, pointed out that he couldn't really be held responsible for the horse being boxed in, but of course my retort was, "Well, I was just thinking about the jinx factor of your presence ...". So Jill then duly failed to enter the stalls - which again was obviously no fault of Sam's - and when the senior starter was subsequently getting me to sign the statutory form saying that I acknowledged that she has to have a stalls test before she will be allowed to run again, he threw into the conversation something like, "This really is rather unfortunate, because Sam was saying that he appears to be a bit of a jinx for your horses ..."!

To less cocked-up matters, I'm pleased to say that we managed to fit in another schooling session for Jack today. Tom Greenway had an early start to his Sunday to come down here for 9am, and we just got away with it before the rain set in too badly. The problem we've been having is that the only schooling fences currently available are on a strip of plough, which is basically unusable in wet weather - or unsuitable for jumping in wet weather anyway. There are miles and miles of all-weather gallops on Newmarket Heath, any small section of which would be great for jumping; and there are thousands of acres of grass, ditto. But unfortunately set amidst this huge area of suitable terrain there is a couple of acres of plough - which is a great surface when it's dry but completely unsuitable for jumping when it's wet (which is nearly all the time) - and all the fences are there. Unbelievable. We were lucky with his initial session, because that took place in the week which was our summer, but now that we seem to have lapsed prematurely into autumn, we've had to postpone a couple of schooling sessions in the hope that we'd have a few dry days. We'd had a couple prior to this morning and, although it wasn't ideal, because the ground was still rather too deep, the conditions were relatively excellent, compared to earlier in the week and compared to later in the day. After Tom had jumped maybe sixteen fences on Jack, he let My Obsession have a reminder of jumping hurdles, and that was good to watch, because Mobs does jump well. And, like a satisfactory schooling session, that's a nice note on which to end.