Thank you little one

A massive thank you to Karma Chameleon, whose plucky victory yesterday at a damp, dark and windy Southwell has ensured that what has been a very successful year for the stable has kept going almost to the end. We'll actually have one more runner (Frankie at Newbury tomorrow, 31st December) but, while that, being an 8-runner introductory hurdle at a lovely fair track, is a nice race for Frankie to start off his hurdling career in, it would be silly to predict him troubling the judge, bearing in mind that two of the runners (the Newmarket Listed winner All The Aces and the Cheltenham Championship Bumper runner-up Destroyer Deployed) stand out head and shoulders above the others. So we can say that Karma Chameleon has brought the curtain down on our year in the best possible style. Bearing in mind that he was racing off 66 and is set to go up to 72 tomorrow, and that he won very easily last week, I was expecting him to be odds-on. (He actually went off as the 13/8 favourite). But expecting a horse to start at odds on certainly does not equate to being confident that that horse would win: I am never confident and, while there was little doubt that the horse remained in great shape, a first trip to Southwell is always a step into the unknown. As I said to Hayley Turner (who stood in for the indisposed Seb Sanders, who unfortunately had suffered a nasty kick in the parade ring at Lingfield the previous day)beforehand, it's not a case of how to ride the horse, but how to ride Southwell, which can be a law unto itself. And it duly proved that the victory was not totally straightforward. Hayley knows Southwell much better than I do (and not just because she rides there regularly - it's also her home town) so I left her with a fairly loose plan of action. Predictably, she used her nous. It would have been nice to have kept out of the kick-back all the way, there was such a dash for the lead that she wisely let the horse settle behind the leaders after a furlong or two. It was a rough enough race and getting up out of the ruck was easier said than done, but the horse was tough and genuine, and so was his rider - and once he had got to the front, he was always able to do just enough to win by a length and a half from a Mark Johnston-trained Cape Cross filly to whom he was giving a whopping 21lb. So that was just really, really lovely - and a lovely end to the year for the Emirates Entertainment Racing Club too, who have now had six winners from their past six runners (three in England and three in Dubai) over the past three weeks, which is a terrific run of success. I just count myself fortunate that they chose to send this lovely horse here at a time when he was poised to strike form - and all that he has done since has been a great tribute to upbringing which he had formerly received in Richard Guest's stable, and on the Somerset farm of his breeder Richard Tucker before that.

I was at Southwell from before the first race yesterday, but stupidly I did not take on board all that was happening prior to our horse running in the fifth. I was, therefore, delighted to read in the results that Richard Guest had trained the winner of the second race. Richard is an proper horseman - as Karma Chameleon's ongoing success is continuing to demonstrate - as well as a hard worker and a really nice man, so I was very glad to see his name on the score-sheet too. I was pleased also to note that that winner (the 11-year-old Dunaskin) was ridden by his nephew Charles Eddery, formerly of this parish (he grew up in Newmarket and was apprenticed through the past season to our neighbour Mark Tompkins) who I believe has gone up to South Yorkshire to work for Richard. I'm sure that Charles (pictured with his grandfather Charlie Guest in Stewart Leadley-Brown's colours at Yarmouth three years ago, prior to riding Lady Suffragette in an apprentices' race) will do well there. Another good apprentice to ride into the winner's enclosure at Southwell yesterday was Danny Brock, who is continuing to further his career since returning to Chris Wall's stable after a long stint with John Jenkins, in whose employment he will have learnt plenty. Another upwardly-mobile local apprentice to salute the judge yesterday was Ryan Clarke, who is following in William Carson's footsteps by showing the benefit of the tutelage of Stuart Williams. Ryan won the race before ours on the Pat Eddery-trained Storm Hawk, which was a nice result. I'm always pleased to see Pat (pictured supervising the unsaddling) train a winner. It can be hard for jockeys who have been at the very top of the tree for an extended period to settle into the training routine, where the effort:reward ratio (leaving out the issue that they can at least eat what they want once training) can prove to be so much less satisfactory. But Pat seems very happy in his role of a middle-of-the-road trainer, and that's just as it should be: if you are a horseman, which Pat surely is, then you appreciate the involvement with horses, whether they be champions, handicappers or platers. And that's lovely to see.

I ought to mention that there were also some very pleasing results when Karma won at Wolverhampton last week. Chief among these was that Jason Ward trained a winner. Jason has only recently taken out a license and is doing very well, having already sent out three winners. Mind you, that's only what one would expect, because he has a wealth of experience under his belt. He rode a few winners in the '80s when apprenticed to Lester Piggott, who had previously featured prominently in the life of Jason's father Bob (who had trained near Doncaster and who had been warned off after Lester had ridden a horse for him somewhere - I forget the details but you'll find them in Lester's biographies). Jason (pictured in the cap being interviewed after Eastward Ho's victory at Wolverhampton last week) then worked for James Fanshawe early in James' training career. I don't know where he's been more recently, but I do remember something about him at one stage possibly being in line for the training job in Scotland which Ian Semple landed and which Keith Dalgliesh now holds. Anyway, he's now training in Middleham and doing very well. That same day at Wolverhampton also saw local apprentice Michael Murphy ride another winner (on the George Prodomou-trained Reset gelding Trip Switch), saw George Margarson send out the 20th winner in what has now been numerically his most successful season, and saw Hayley Turner ride the first winner (pictured) since returning from breaking her leg when winning the two-miler on the Swedish-bred Jonjo O'Neill-trained 8-year-old Dream Catcher. That, too, was a win which I enjoyed watching - if, admittedly and understandably, I enjoyed watching her win on Karma Chameleon yesterday even more!