Golden days

We might have lost the proper summer conditions of the start of the week because of the nights getting chillier, but we've still been blessed with a further couple of lovely days. Friday and Saturday both dawned cool and beautifully foggy (Friday) / misty (Saturday) before the sun burnt the dew from the ground and the mist from the sky to leave wonderful cloudless blue skies and temperatures in the 20s. Glorious conditions, and we were lucky enough to enjoy them in two lovely spots: Bangor (pictured) and the Berkshire/Oxfordshire Downs. The trip to lovely Bangor was great in every way bar the most important one (the result of our race) while the trip to Berkshire was just perfect.


We took Anis Etoile to Bangor on Friday and I thought she had a good chance. She started favourite, but ran fifth - which wasn't actually a bad run, but it felt like one because I'd been very hopeful of better. However, she has come home in good form - as she has been proving while I write this by cavorting round the field outside the window with Ethics Girl and Stardust Memories, who both seem similarly unharmed by their recent racecourse exertions as this photograph of them playing shows, which is very good - and that is the main thing. The race actually was rather unsatisfactory all round. I'm rather cross with myself because, despite the lovely weather, I was too lazy to walk the track, so I can only rely on the jockeys' verdicts when commenting on its state. However, what happened was that I watched our race with consternation to see our jockey William Kennedy riding Anis as if his instructions had been to minimize the chances of her winning: ie he was the widest runner throughout.
I generally work on the assumption that on fast ground you want your horse on the rail throughout and, while on the Flat the draw sometimes renders this aim unfeasible, in jumps races where there is no draw this should not be an unrealistic aspiration if one is using a good jockey, which we were. So I was very non-plussed to see William going so wide, and thus ensuring that the mare wouldn't do as well as she might; it is not just the extra ground which the horse covers which causes the trouble, but also the fact that every time the horse comes to a bend, he/she has to make a bit of a run just to hold his/her position. And in the majority of cases there are only so many runs a horse can make in a race - usually one - without reducing his/her chances. Inevitably, therefore, she struggled in the latter stages of the race. (Although in fairness I'd probably be kidding myself if I claimed that it made the difference between victory and defeat).

However, having digested events, I'm very pleased that William rode her as he did. After the race he volunteered the information that he had deliberately taken her wide because the ground on the inside was unacceptably rough and, particularly bearing in mind that he was riding a particularly immature and gangly (ie fragile) animal, he felt that going on the bad ground would present an unacceptable danger. The validity of this view was supported by the fact that Tony McCoy, a jockey who would always be on the rail unless there was a good reason not to be, made the running on the second favourite four horses wide of the rails. We were then wider still. Both horses duly finished out of the first three (McCoy's horse was fourth) with the winner, completing an up-and-down day for Graham Lee who won the first and last races but had two falls in between, having a dream run on the inside throughout. Conspiracy theorists might believe that the race was fixed, but it wasn't: William and A P McCoy are two jockeys whose honesty is beyond suspicion, and it was just that differing jockeys reacted differently to the dilemma of whether to give their mounts the best chance of winning or the best chance of not being injured. And having spent the bulk of the afternoon by the racecourse stables and having seen the horse ambulance in action after seemingly every race and then finally having seen a horse put down in the stables after the last, I am ever so glad that William joined Tony McCoy in opting not to expose his mount to unnecessary danger.

This, of course, brings us to an interesting point, and a point which I have made on numerous previous occasions: the point that track preparation is all-important, and that it is all too often inadequate. I hate to single Bangor out because it is a lovely track in a lovely part of the country which is run by decent people, so I won't single it out; instead I will point out that Bangor is far from alone in providing the situation which pertained there on Friday. Basically, any track which is in such a state that the jockeys feel obliged to avoid the rail on fast ground is failing in its duty to provide a satisfactory racing surface. York (as anyone who watched the farce of the Ebor meeting will know - or indeed anyone who has watched any racing there since the retirement of the previous excellent clerk of the course John Smith will know) is probably the worst offender in the country, followed closely by Brighton. In the same way that it is wrong to have a rule (as detailed in the previous chapter) which allows trainers to jock a rider off on race-day and thus puts the trainer in the invidious position of chosing between what he wants to do and what he knows he ought to do, so is it wrong to put a jockey in the position of having to make the choice between going the shortest way round and going the safest way round: it's just not on that the route which maximises your chances of winning the race is also the one which maximised your mount's chances of breaking down. It's wrong for jockeys and for the horse's connections, and it's also clearly wrong for punters, because betting on such tracks just becomes a mine-field of uncertainty.

I recall a few years ago when the opening of Great Leighs was on the (more-distant-than-we-realised-at-the-time) horizon that Alastair Down wrote a piece in the Racing Post saying that the last things we needed were more all-weather racing and more tracks. At the time I put forward the opposite view in the letters' column, and subsequently debated the subject with Alastair at the races, that we do need either more all-weather racing or more tracks if we are to sustain the currently large fixture list, because all too many of our existing quota of grass tracks are currently hosting more meetings than the turf can satisfactorily sustain. If you don't believe this, then try walking some of them: you'll be horrified. As I say, York is the worst offender, and the last time I walked its track I was aghast and very worried (bearing in mind that I was due to run a horse there later in the afternoon). (In fairness, I haven't walked the track at York since it was relaid, or whatever has been done to it, but watching racing there and discussing it with jockeys who ride there has led me to believe that it has not been significantly improved). This is an important issue, because providing a safe surface for the horses ought to be the main priority of any racecourse manager - and even if, like seemingly the majority of journalists, one isn't particularly interested in the horses and instead regards the punter, rather than the horse, as the most important participant in the sport, one still should regard track maintenance as crucial, because of the reasons which I have outlined in the previous paragraph.

So that was Friday - and don't mind my rant, because I enjoyed pretty much everything about the day other than the watching of our race. And the mare came back safe and sound and lives to fight another day, probably in the near future, and that's the main thing.


Going to Bangor one goes through some lovely countryside, which we saw at its best, but we were treated to even greater delights yesterday. Emma and I were fortunate enough to be invited to the wedding of our friends Emma Candy and Rupert Erskin Crum, which took place at 2.30 yesterday afternoon in St. Mary's Church (a lovely church) in Childrey (a lovely village a couple of miles west of Wantage) with the reception taking place afterwards at Emma's father's stable, Kingston Warren, high up on the adjacent downs. The icing on the cake was that Emma's colleague Janet Anderson very kindly was happy to drive and to give us a lift, which luxury enabled me to sleep on both journeys - a real treat! I used to live in that area for two years in the mid-'80s, in East Hendred when I worked for Andy Turnell, and it's always a pleasure to go back. However, this time it was a particular pleasure: so glorious was the weather that, even being very familiar with the area, I was taken aback by what a lovely part of the country it is.
I had never previously been to Kingston Warren, one of the country's loveliest stables where Emma's parents were wonderful hosts (with wine-waiters so attentive that the only one person seemed to find the need to help himself: Tom Fanshawe, son of Emma's employer James) so that was a further treat, and all in all it was just a lovely day. Emma and Rupert are both so nice and I was so happy to be able to share their big day.


As always, when Rupert's about there is never a brahma far away, and he duly provided one in his speech. The trouble with most weddings nowadays is that they seem never to end, but this one was done the right way, with the happy couple departing at 7.00pm. Their departure was preceded by the speeches (which were similarly done the right way by being not too long and not too supposedly-funny), and the speeches were themselves preceded by a real treat: a fly-over by a Spitfire. When this appeared I thought that Rupert must have pulled a few strings to arrange it, but it transpired that it was just as much a surprise to him as it was to the rest of us,
and that Emma's father had arranged it, the plane being owned by a neighbouring friend of his who used to keep it on his farm and fly it himself but who now, in his 80s, has finally relinquished his pilot's license, so the plane now lives at Duxford and is flown by someone else. I was blown away by this display, and so clearly was Rupert: in his speech, in detailing what a lovely day he was having, he told us that the day had proved to contain five "Wows", which he proceeded to outline, starting with the Spitfire as "Wow" number one and moving on to Emma as "Wow" number two. A true brahma, and so very Rupert!


The funny thing was that the next brahma had Rupert as its victim rather than its perpetrator. Rupert is proprietor of Weyhill Horse Transport, which is one of the two principal horse transport firms in the south, the other (ie Rupert's rival) being Lambourn Racehorse Transport. As we were being shepherded out of the marquee to salute the departure of the newly-weds, a horse truck hove into view bringing the stable's two runners home from that afternoon's Portland Handicap at Doncaster - and, of course, the truck had 'LRT' splashed across the front! All in all, a really lovely day, and all the more enjoyable for my finding that I knew plenty of people there, which is a rarity because at the majority of weddings which I have attended it has seemingly been the case that I've found that I hardly know a soul.

Apart from the wedding, yesterday, of course, also featured some wonderful racing. Emma and I were both delighted by Mastery's win in the St Leger, which was doubly popular with us because of the identity of both rider (Ted Durcan) and sire (Sulamani) of the winner. Regular readers of this blog will be aware that Sulamani is one of my all-time favourite and most-admired horses, and yesterday was also a red-letter day for another young stallion whom I greatly admire, because Doyen sired his first winner, his two-year-old son Kumbeshwar winning at Chepstow. And, over and above the St Leger quinella, it was good to see Godolphin getting some great results, not least with its Dubawi-sired Group race two-year-old double and with the easy victory of the extremely exciting Medaglia D'Oro colt Al Zir.

Today's racing has started equally pleasingly, with the James Eustace-trained War Artist winning another big sprint (the Group Three Prix du Petit Couvert at Longchamp) and lovely Dar Re Mi, by another of my all-time favourite horses Singspiel, winning the Prix Vermeille, which has provided a splendid post-scipt to yesterday's festivities: she is owned and was bred by Sir Andrew and Lady Lloyd-Webber's Watership Down Stud, which is managed by Rupert's best man Simon Marsh (pictured).

Post Script - Dar Re Mi has been disqualified for a manouevre (which only caused slight interference and did not affect the result) which Jimmy Fortune asked her to make in reaction to Stacelita's pace-maker changing course in front of her to allow Stacelita up her inside, and which would have impeded Dar Re Mi had Fortune just sat there and done nothing. This was a very low act indeed by the French stewards - lower even than merely doing nothing about Stacelita's pace-maker being ridden for Stacelita's benefit, rather than her own, which is clearly contrary to the spirit of racing - and my commiserations to Dar Re Mi's connections, who have been deprived of a victory which should have been theirs.