Wincanton

I can't believe how lucky we were to find a window of good ground in which to run Ex Con on Sunday. Although the country had seemed to be drying and warming up, wet weather returned with the end of Cheltenham (although not particularly to this area) and so we seemed to have missed our chance to run Ex Con on some decent ground. However, I hazarded a guess that Wincanton (pictured) might be doing itself a disservice by describing its ground on Sunday as "good to soft, soft in places" and duly headed off down there - to find that it was indeed selling itself short: I would have called the ground "good, good to soft in places" and basically it was as close to perfect as you'd get. If we hadn't run there, we'd have been waiting a while to run the horse, because that was the last perfect ground Britain will be seeing for a while, with the rains having returned (again) with a vengeance, bringing about a further rash of abandonments and bottomless conditions on the tracks which get off (relatively) lightly enough for racing to take place. So it was a pleasure to visit Wincanton, a lovely track which I could only remember having twice visited in the past. Both times were in the '80s - once to lead up a winner (the Andy Turnell-trained Andrea Dawn in a novices' hurdle) and once to ride a faller (the Cyril Luxton-trained Tudor Mark in a novices' chase) - so it was almost like going there for the first time. Consequently I took what I suspect was the wrong road into the racecourse, going through the town rather than around it, but I'm pleased that I did so: it's a lovely little town which I really enjoyed seeing, particularly as we had Liam Tidmarsh, visiting the UK from Brisbane, with us, and it would have been interesting for him to see a town centre in which the newest building is probably older than the oldest building in Queensland. The only down-side of the trip, of course, was that Ex Con (pictured looking by his ultra laid-back standards extremely perky in the parade ring beforehand under the excellent Peter Toole) failed to make the frame, which isn't ideal when one is racing nearly 200 miles from home. However, he showed enough to keep the fires of optimism burning: it is fair to say that he would have have finished in the money but for sprawling badly on landing after making a mistake at the fourth last hurdle, an incident from which he did well to recover well enough to rejoin the leaders before understandably weakening in the closing stages. Thankfully no harm was done (one always worries when they have mishaps in a race) and, if nothing else, we were able to take home with us the satisfaction of knowing that we have a very brave and genuine horse, because of a horse of less than 100% determination would have just thrown in the towel there and then after such a jolting mistake.

Last weekend, of course, didn't just feature Wincanton, because we had the 'Start of the Flat' here while the UAE had Dubai World Cup night. The start of the Flat, of course, doesn't really work any more because what it starts turns out to be a phoney war, with the vast majority of Flat racing in the couple of weeks after the opening Doncaster fixture being on the all-weather anyway, so really one is hard pressed to remain aware that we have gone from the winter season to the main season. Dubai World Cup night was exciting, though, with several very memorable moments. We'd had a good build-up to it, thanks to the Racing Post publishing a remarkable photograph of Simon Crisford looking impossibly excited in the company of the less enthused pair of Saeed bin Suroor and Mahmoud al Zarooni a couple of days beforehand, as well as an equally brahmatic front-page shot of dozens of labourers "working" through the night (ie standing around doing nothing) to ensure that the new grandstand was completed on time. After such a build-up the racing just had to be exciting - and it was. The highlight for this particular neck of the woods was the victory of Joy And Fun, ridden by our friend Brett Doyle, who has ridden many winners for this stable in years gone by but who is currently the only British jockey riding in Hong Kong. Brett is from Newmarket so that can count as one victory for the town, and Dar Re Mi's Dubai Sheema Classic victory for the in-form John Gosden stable ranks as another - and as another which I was really pleased to see, because I like the mare and I like her trainer.

I was also pleased to see Gloria De Campeao win the big race because I admire his durability and genuineness, and because I am pleased to see a Brazilian jockey do so well. I was less pleased to see Musir win the UAE Derby because, although I like the horse and am pleased by the idea of a Redoute's Choice horse winning a big race internationally, I don't like to see a race won because of a jockey's indifference to the safety of his fellow riders. I love to see daring rides by jockeys, but when the daring manoeuvre is one which, but for the grace of God, would have caused a fall, then I do not rejoice in the resultant victory. As you might have probably gathered, I was barracking for Willie Supple in the non-fight which was caught on the changing room camera, but I was pleased to see that at least a modicum of common sense prevailed in the stewards' room in that Soumillon's punishment for dangerous riding was more severe than the small fine levied on Supple for his post-race behaviour. (In the UK, I suspect that Supple would have been penalized more harshly than Soumillon - I used to say that here you have actually to cause a fall to be reprimanded for dangerous riding, but I now know, following the three-mile novice hurdle at Cheltenham, that not even that gets you into trouble nowadays). Even so, I think that Soumillon got off very lightly with merely a four-day ban for his actions: I'd have thrown the book at him, and many racing jurisdictions would have justifiably disqualified his mount. Incidentally, on the subject of Musir, we have another Redoute's Choice to keep an eye on in Newmarket this summer: a two-year-old colt trained by Michael Jarvis and pictured recently on the Severals - note, by the way, the interesting brand: 1 over both 8 and 7, which I presume denotes the fact that the horse is bred to northern hemisphere time and thus was both born in the year beginning 1st August 2007 and in the year 2008. Let's hope that he does better than his paternal half-sister ex Catnipped who was with John Gosden last year and who was sold for very little as an unraced three-year-old at this year's Tattersalls' February Sale.

On the subject of (in)justice, Richard Hughes' recent 10-day ban for cantering a horse which had been scratched at the start back to the enclosures takes the biscuit. We were all delighted to see Ruby Walsh, after he had remounted, cantering Kauto Star back towards the stands after his fall in the Gold Cup, despite the fact that Kauto Star had had such a horrible fall that he would clearly have taken some significant level of harm from it and that, a week later, he would still be described by Paul Nicholls in the Racing Post as "stiff and sore". Walsh used his initiative and did nothing to add to the horse's woes, so that's fine - so what exactly is Hughes supposed to have done wrong? Particularly when one bears in mind that the only reason why anyone knew that there was anything amiss with Hughes' mount was because the jockey himself had reported to the starter that he hadn't felt right cantering down. The horse had walked around the parade ring in front of the stewards, the vet, the public and the horse's connections without anyone noticing that there was anything wrong with him, so I think that Hughes should be congratulated for being the only person on the track awake to the horse's welfare, rather than punished for supposedly showing no concern for it. If he'd taken the easy way out - ie had said nothing at the start and just got on with riding the race - he probably would have done harm to the horse and nobody would have minded; but as it was he put the horse's interests first and ensured that he merely cantered back in an unpressured and safe manner, and has been punished for it. He will, one would like to assume, have his conviction quashed on appeal, but that doesn't solve the matter of what on earth the stewards were thinking of in giving him his ban in the first place. If Richard Hughes' concern for his mount's welfare was two and a half times more reprehensible than Christophe Soumillon's disdain for Willie Supple's (and his mount's) safety, then the lunatics really have taken over the asylum!