So that's another year over. I usually enjoy the end of the year, not because it provides one with an excuse to stay up all night and get drunk (an opportunity of which I generally do not avail myself) but because we like to end the year quietly here, treating the last week of the year as a week of Sundays. As usual, the only horses whose work has continued uninterrupted have been the handful with races approaching, while the others have enjoyed a few days of relaxation. I have done so too and, while there's been enough to be done to fill the days, those days have been filled in a very unpressured manner. Which has been great. It'll be all systems go from Monday onwards, which is quite a daunting thought as we shall be very busy, and it will be at the time of year when everything seems hard work anyway. But it'll be good to be working towards several things, not least of them spring.

We had two trips to the races during the final week of the year, and it turns out that we were very lucky both that racing took place on the two times when we planned to go and that the weather was nice. Cold, obviously, but dry, sunny, windless and relatively mild. Both occasions - Huntingdon on Boxing Day when Kadouchski (first picture) ran and Leicester two days later when Ex Con (second picture) ran - were touch-and-go days because both meetings had to survive a morning inspection (in Leicester's case the meeting had to survive two morning inspections) before being pronounced just about frost-free, but as it turned out the ground was acceptable at both.

One wouldn't necessarily know that from the amount of non-runners there were - in our race at sunny Huntingdon 10 of the 17 declared runners were scratched - but I walked the track both times and the ground, although odd (basically reasonably firm but very sticky and messy on top, as is generally the case when frost goes, meaning that the surface was tiring and conducive to slow times) was safe enough. We've heard more than enough about ground over the last week or so and what I think that most of the pundits don't appreciate is that it is NEVER a case of black or white: it is never the case that the ground is either safe or it isn't. There is no such thing as a completely safe racing surface - a perfect illustration being that the lovely Crackaway Jack, who has always as far as I know been a sound horse, returned from Kempton on December 27th,

which was just about the one meeting over the past week or so which wasn't subject to ground controversy, with a strained tendon - and every time that a horse races (or gallops) it is a case of the trainer having to decide whether the degree of danger posed by the imperfect surface is acceptable. Of course there are some occasions when the track is so unacceptable that racing is just abandoned, but leaving those aside every time that racing takes place it takes place on a less than perfectly satisfactory surface. This does not apply just on frosty days: it applies every time the horse gallops, never mind races. If one only paid attention to the press, you'd think that the situation on frosty days is different from other occasions, but anyone who walks the tracks regularly would tell you that there are umpteen occasions when the ground is far less satisfactory than it has been during the last week, but that it has only been this week when anyone has noticed. If you don't believe me, ask Harvey Smith, whose stable has untold non-runners through the year because of unsatisfactory ground conditions, but who was happy to run his horses at Cheltenham yesterday when, for once, the chattering classes had woken up to the fact that not everything was tickety-boo. I'm sure that he, like me, would have been wondering what all the fuss was about

- or, put it another way, what all the lack of fuss is about on all the other occasions. Anyway, we had two very pleasant trips to the races. As I mentioned, compared to the freeze-up the conditions (as the photograph above of one of the steeplechases at Huntingdon shows) were almost balmy - although the amount of steam coming of Kadouchski after the race in the last photograph tells us that it probably was quite a cold day after all!
Anyway, that's more than enough time spent on not much of a subject, so I'll just make a quick start on my awards of the year. I'll start with Trainer of the Year. There was only one possible winner of this award: Bill Turner. Trainer of the Year tends to be badly awarded because it usually goes to someone who hasn't done anything very clever at all. I'm sure that John Oxx, for instance, would tell you that the training of Sea The Stars took far less skill than the training of numerous lesser horses whom he has had through his hands over the years and, while he trained him impeccably and made no mistakes whatsoever during the course of the year, he was dealing with what we have been told was "the perfect racehorse" and as such was a horse that pretty much anyone would have sent out to land a few Group One races. This is, of course, in no way a criticism of John Oxx, who is a wonderful trainer and a great man - but it is a fact of life that, from a trainer's point of view, the real tests of skill are not posed by the sound horses and by the horses with plenty of ability. If you don't believe me, ask John Oxx; I've never discussed this with him, but I know what he'd say.
No, the one trainer in 2009 who did something to make his peers sit up and take notice was Bill Turner, who broke in a zebra and rode him down to his local pub. In common with any trainer who has confidence in his own ability, I find that there are very few occasions when I look at what another trainer has achieved with a particular animal and think, "Gosh, I really don't think that I'd have been able to do that" (there are, of course, some, and one example which springs to mind in recent years was Mark Johnston's handling of Attraction, whose success, despite her great ability, came largely thanks to the trainer's skill). Anyway, I really don't think that I could have done what Bill did with that zebra, and for that he is the runaway winner of my Trainer of the Year award. I bumped into Bill when Anis ran at Bangor and had the pleasure of quizzing him about the job and I am full of awe and respect for what he did.

Leaving Bill Turner aside, those highly commended in this category include John Oxx (pictured) for his flawless handling under the pressure of the mighty Sea The Stars; Aidan O'Brien for his flawless handling under pressure of the quadruple Gold Cup hero Yeats; Stuart Williams for yet another year of consistent, deserved (and largely unrecognised) success; Chris Dwyer on the same basis; John Ryan for turning his stable on its head so that, horse for horse, he was the most successful trainer in the British Isles in 2009 bar none; and Jonjo O'Neill for bringing the immensely brave Wichita Lineman back from the wilderness to land a thrilling success at the Cheltenham Festival and for his modesty afterwards - as 'The Old School' noted in the Racing Post Chatroom afterwards, Jonjo was being too modest afterwards when he joined the chorus which maintained that only Tony McCoy would have won on the horse. Jonjo was, of course, overlooking the fact that, great jockey though AP is (and he genuinely is a great jockey as well as a great man) we have yet to see him win on a horse that Jonjo wouldn't have won on. I know that we have short memories but, while everyone is saying how great are the current jumps jockeys (which they are), we should not forget what a bloody superb jockey Jonjo was - least of all when he has just proved himself to be very adept as a trainer too.
Jockey of the Year to follow.
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