They don't only jump at Aintree

I'll be spending quite a lot of tomorrow on the road, so let's hope that the trip is worthwhile. Which it will be as long as Jamie enjoys his ride: we're running Asterisk in the amateurs' novices' hurdle at Sedgefield, and she'll be giving Jamie a day to remember, as it will be his first race-ride. Jamie, as regular readers of this blog will know, is William Kennedy's nephew, and he rides out here regularly. One couldn't say that he is truly ready to race-ride, but that's because the only people who are ready to race-ride are those who have already done it. John Francome, of course, won on his first ride (on Multigrey at Worcester) but I didn't see that race - and about the only jockey whom I can remember who really did look the finished article on his first ride was Jamie Mackay, whose first outing resulted in a very polished victory on the Roger Spicer-trained Sound The Trumpet on the AW at Lingfield. I asked William if he thought that Jamie would be ready, and he was happy to give the plan his blessing; so off we shall go. One thing I will say for Jamie is that he's more ready for his first ride than I was for mine - which is pretty good going as I was a year and a half older than Jamie is now, had been working in racing full-time for a year (whereas Jamie is still at school, preparing to post some very poor results in his A-levels, I believe) and had a background of regular riding throughout my childhood, which Jamie hasn't had. So really he's done well to have progressed as far as he has at this early stage of his riding career. Anyway, let's hope that they get on well. Certainly Asterisk should be a good horse for a first ride as I have never seen her make a mistake at a jump, either on the racecourse or in her home schooling; and she has a place chance on form tomorrow in a race in which Donald McCain's horse looks a moral, but in which her form looks as solid as any of the others'. Anyway, as long as I can ensure that Jamie rides with longer stirrups than he did when schooling her on the Links on Monday alongside his uncle (on Kadouchski), all ought to go well. As the first photograph of the chapter (taken in the field on Sunday, with Kadouchski in the foreground and Asterisk frolicking in rear) shows, she seems in good heart.

I haven't been to Sedgefield since I was a child. The last (and possibly only) time I was there, Jonjo O'Neill rode a winner, which tells you that it's been a while. We have had runner or runners there - I remember J P McNamara riding Colonel Kurtz there a few years ago - but I didn't go. So the trip will be interesting. Not that I remember that much about the place, but if I did I'm sure that I'd find it largely unrecognisable - not least because white plastic rails, which are the basic furniture for modern racecourses, didn't exist when I was last there. And it's always nice to go to a jumps meeting anyway. This won't be the first (semi-) jumps meeting I've attended this month, because there were two hurdle races on the card at Warrnambool when we were there during our holiday, Warrnambool (where the wedding reception had been held) by a happy chance holding a meeting two days after the wedding. As Warrnambool has such a strong jumps heritage, I was glad that there were a couple of jumps races on the card on my first day's racing there. One of the things that pleased me was seeing an Aus-bred but, obviously, Japanese-conceived son of Sunday Silence (about whom I have a sort of obsession) running in the maiden hurdle, a lovely old (nine-year-old) chestnut gelding gelding called Goldtown (first picture in paragraph) who had won over quarter of a million dollars on the Flat. He finished third behind the Patrick Payne-trained and Steve Pateman-ridden favourite Lord Of The Song (second picture in paragraph) - and then provided a nice post-script to the outing by winning a hurdle race at Oakbank on Easter Saturday, five days later, as I enjoyed watching on ATR back here. He finished third in his race at Warrnambool, a race in which three of the Irish jockeys currently living in Australia had mounts, one of whom (Robert Molloy, third picture in paragraph) finished second. They seem to be doing very well there. Goldtown was not the highest earner running over jumps on the programme: that honour was held by the former Perth Cup winner Cats Fun, whose victory in the first hurdle race (fourth picture, leading the field mid-race) took his earnings above $850,000. Arguably the most interesting horse present, though, (and certainly the most interesting from a British perspective, was Dhaafer, an ex-Hamdan horse formerly trained by both William Haggas and Alan King. He's best known for finishing third in the Fred Winter Juvenile Handicap Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival last year. By happy chance, I bumped into a man whom I'd met in Newmarket last year, Peter Collie, and he took me to watch Dhaafer galloping on the course between races (fifth picture). Dhaafer is trained by the very successful young Warrnambool trainer Aaron Purcell (whose former charge Ginolad is now with Venetia Williams) and has yet to run in Australia, but obviously high hopes are held for him, for such races as the Grand National Hurdle. I hadn't previously been able to put a face to the familiar name of Aaron Purcell, but it turned out that I knew him too, as he used to work around the corner from here in Mark Tompkins' stable. Small world.

So that's a little snapshot of the embattled jumps scene in Australia. I hope that it might be of slight interest to one or two readers.