The fourth ageless horseman - plus some more

It's good that, since his appearance in this blog alongside his contemporaries Neville Wilson and Robert Thompson, Richard Sims has been making regular contributions to the comments section. When I came up with the three horsemen of the antipodes, I thought I'd have to find the fourth sooner rather than later, and this was duly achieved when Garry Murphy rode the Empire's three-year-old Miss Freelove in her debut at Edenhope; yes, the same Garry Murphy who rode Karaman to finish second to Manikato in the Blue Diamond thirty years ago and who nowadays seems to look younger every day. Are there any hoops over here who were riding in the '70s? I don't think so; at least none as senior jockeys. Kevin Darley would probably have ridden out his claim pre-1980, or maybe not, but he retired last year; Richard Quinn and Dean McKeown would both have been claiming well into the '80s, and Philip Robinson would only be of similar vintage. Mick Kinane was only a young jockey when he rode Carlingford Castle to be second in the Derby in 1983, so he'd definitely have been claiming at the start of the '80s. The jockey who kept riding for John Oxx forever would have been a senior jockey by the mid-70s (Dermot Hogan?), but I haven't noticed him having a ride for a year or two; and I doubt if Pat Shanahan is any more senior than Mick Kinane. So, anyway, hats off to Garry Murphy, who by all accounts provided a very satisfactory service on Miss Freelove.

All the older horsemen I've seen here recently have been ex-jockeys - and you can't go very far in this town without bumping into several of them. I paid my first visit to an ex-jockeys' enclave yesterday, visiting Colin and Eileen Casey in the flat at the bottom of Side Hill into which they moved last week. It's a lovely flat in a lovely setting, and yet another tribute to the good work the Injured Jockeys' Fund does in keeping former riders safe in their retirements. They are next to Jimmy Uttley - forever remembered for riding Persian War to three Champion Hurdle victories - and just above the former Royal jockey Willie Snaith, alongside whom Colin started his apprenticeship with Sam Armstrong near Middleham during the war, before that stable relocated to Warren Place in 1947.

I'd started the day by bumping into Ian Watkinson at the bottom of Exeter Road - he was loading one of Jonathan Jay's horses into his lorry - who happily told me that he'd sent his latest comment to the Racing Post Chatroom expressing his disappointment over Sam Thomas getting lost at Fakenham. In Sam Thomas' defence, I would say that navigating one's route around Britain's National Hunt courses is now much more complicated than it was when Ian was riding (or even than it was in the very brief, more recent, period when I was riding) because nowadays the course maps are littered with contingency plans for bypassing jumps, but Ian does have a point; and one wonders how a jockey who could take the wrong course during a race would cope if he ever became a show-jumper - particularly during a shortened-course jump-off! And from one off-the-wall ex-jockey to another, I then bumped into Richard Fox in Waitrose on my way back from Chateau Casey, who took great delight in asking me whether I'd heard that racing at Ayr (the latest going debacle at the track) had been abandoned because they had discovered a patch of soft ground ("Imagine saying 'I don't want to ride today because there's a patch of soft ground over there'!"). Again, I think it's not quite that straightforward - I'd feel that it's more an issue with safety for the horses than the jockeys, as galloping a horse from firm ground onto a brief patch of very soft ground and then straight back onto the firm is a pretty good test of whether he's likely to break down - but you had, as always, to smile at Richard's style of delivery. Certainly the woman on the check-out did: as he walked away, she turned to me and said, "He's a very funny man". And I don't think you'd find anyone to disagree with that.

And from one very funny man to one very funny thing. (And I don't, in this second instance, mean funny in the humourous sense). Our former inmate Marvin Gardens ran at Yarmouth for the Wigham/McEntee training team. As some of you may remember, Marvin arrived here as a four-year-old maiden last year, rated 40. We ran him twice, in which races he finished third of 16 in a selling handicap (off the minimum permitted mark of 45) at Yarmouth, recording his best ever Topspeed figure of 44, and then finishing unplaced in a non-selling handicap (again off 45) at Musselburgh, recording his second-best Topspeed figure ever (34). He then left the stable. And then he reappeared at Yarmouth last week, in a 0-55 Classified Stakes, in which common sense would dictate that he had not much chance. The 20/1 quote in the Racing Post seemed fair enough - except that he started the 7/2 favourite! I actually took this quite badly, because anyone who could have backed him in that race must have a very low opinion of me as a trainer. I'd fancy that, if we'd been able to keep him, he would have won a race eventually, but it would have needed to have been a very weak one, and certainly not off a mark as high as 55 - so whoever backed him must think I'm a useless trainer to believe that he could have improved so much for leaving here. Anyway, the punch-line is that he finished 12th of 14, beaten 23 lengths, recording a Topspeed figure of zero and a Postmark of two. That made it slightly easier to see the funny side.

Let's hope we can get better runs than that from Brief and Imperial Decree at Newmarket this weekend. Despite having won seven times, Brief has never won two in a row and never won at single-figure odds, which suggests he won't win this weekend; but even so he ought to have the better chance of the pair. But as long as we get two competitive runs and have two sound horses afterwards I'll be happy.