Very, very special

We can't turn the clock back as we know, so we do what we can do: we keep calm and we carry on.  That meant sending out four runners in two days during the week, two at Yarmouth on Wednesday evening and then one each at Brighton and Yarmouth on Thursday afternoon.  And, thank God, nothing went wrong - and, even better than that, plenty went right as they all finished in the frame, with one of them, dear little small brave Ethics Girl, fighting her to the front (pictured) in the Brighton Challenge Cup, which was a mighty win (and huge trophy) for a little battler to land.

Our up and down (but more down than up) summer seems at last taken a turn for the better, so ground was always going to be the key, with the forecast being warm, dry weather from midweek onwards.  Two of the three Yarmouth runners (Batgirl and Zarosa) we believed not to want it too firm, so it was a huge relief, therefore, from our point of view that Yarmouth copped 22mm of rain overnight Monday into Tuesday.  That turned the good ground on which Batgirl (pictured under Hannah at the start) had been declared into soft, so she was now definitely going to run, which had been a doubt in my mind.

The ground dried out to good to soft and again on raceday eventually to good (which probably wouldn't have happened here as we had four hours of light rain on Wednesday morning, which made it a particular pleasure to find the sky above us turning blue as we neared Yarmouth) but it genuinely was perfect good ground, so we had no worries on that score.  Anyway, Batgirl, as she always does when she enjoys the underfoot conditions, ran a lovely race, going really nicely for Hannah and only losing out in the shadows of the post to the admirable course specialist Dannios (pictured under Noel Garbutt at the start) whose record at Yarmouth now stands at four runs for four wins - so it was clearly no disgrace to make him pull out all the stops.

Next up was Grand Liaison (pictured before the race under Robert Havlin).  She ran another nice race, taking her handicap form to 233.  The only difference was that she was favourite this time, and it's not quite so good filling one of the minor placings as the favourite rather than as an outsider.  Particularly when, as on this occasion, the horse is still travelling like an extremely likely winner halfway up the straight.  Still, she did run well again, and the winner was a filly whom I'd given a lot of respect to in advance when going through the race (until, bizarrely, discovering that there seemed no confidence behind her at all, hence her drift out to 16/1).  So this dear little filly, who is still far from the finished article, continues to perform with credit and promise.

So that was OK - and what was particularly nice was that the majority of the winners were particularly pleasing.  Peter Chapple-Hyam had a double ridden by Robert Havlin and Ashley Hamblett, James Eustace trained the wide-margin winner of the last race, and Chris Dwyer won with Sarah Berry (no relation, and pictured walking back in flanked by Chris and Shelley) who was ridden by Mirco Demuro, the very good feature on whom in that day's Racing Post must surely have done him quite a lot of good.  He came across as a very likeable fellow in the article who is surely worthy of some support, so it was good to see him riding a winner that evening, and particularly for the stable which I am most pleased to see enjoying success.

In the same way that we were lucky that Batgirl's race was the first race of the first day of a meeting at which the (beautifully maintained and produced) ground was drying by the hour, we were unlucky in that Zarosa, who also appears better suited by some cut underfoot, was in the last race of the last (ie second) day.  She still ran well, though, finishing third behind the horses had appeared her main dangers.  She's a wonderfully spunky little competitor and one can rely on her to do her best, whatever the conditions.  At Brighton the same day, though, everything fell into place.  Having had the (rare) pleasure of setting out in sunshine, I was somewhat taken aback to find that the downs above Brighton were shrouded in 'sea fret', which wasn't too bad when we got there and when I walked the course, but which intensified rather than disappeared as the afternoon went on and which was pretty thick by the time that Ethics and Darryll Holland set off into it to canter the mile and a half to the start (see below).

Watching the race was bizarre.  From the stands one could only really see for a furlong, but one got glimpses of the field as they sped past the two or three cameras at different points along the course.  However, as we were in sea fret in the stands, the view of the big screen was not good because of the amount of fret in the air in the 50 metres between stand and screen.  Any time I got a glimpse of what might be happening, I struggled to see her at all, and when I did it seemed as if she was in an impossible position.  However, having jumped from barrier one, she eventually came into view right on the stand's rail, surging home from well back to snatch the lead close home, finishing so fast under a superb ride from 'The Dazzler' (riding the third of his four winners that afternoon) that she won by a length.  It was just really, really thrilling.

A good result is great at any time, but this was particularly welcome considering the way that the week had started.  And I should explain just why this result was so good.  Firstly the horse is wonderful.  She's a proper little fighter and it was wonderful that she was the one to come to the rescue, and to do so in such gutsy circumstances.  And the race: this was a proper big race.  This Brighton meeting is historically the sequel to the previous week's nearby Glorious Goodwood; and the Brighton Challenge Cup is its centrepiece.  The roll of honour is impressive, with the likes of Operatic Society, Illinois and Park Top, some of the best horses in the land, having won it in the '60s.  Nowadays, of course, it's a 0-80 handicap and such horses are ineligible, but it's still an abnormally valuable race for the grade - as was the previous day's Brighton Mile, won in a masterpiece of good training by Stuart Kittow with a horse rated 63.

But over and above everything was the fact that she won the race in the colours of the 1997 Partnership, whose principal Lawrence Wadey has been a tower of friendship throughout my adulthood, over and above being as supportive a patron as any trainer could ever have.  Lawrence has lived in south east Asia for about 22 years now but he's a Brighton boy born and bred and spends his few weeks back home every summer there.  The first runner I saddled for him at Brighton was Lorelei Lee in 1995; the following year we had Seaside run second there in the 1997 colours (ie Lawrence plus Gerry Grimstone and Bill Benter) - but until this week we'd still been waiting for Lawrence's first home-track winner.

So for it to come in Brighton's biggest race, with Lawrence and his mum both there, was truly wonderful.  Ethics had contested this race unsuccessfully two years ago and had been rated too high to get into it last year; but once she dropped back below the 80-mark again this year's race was always her aim.  After she'd run fourth at Epsom first-up five weeks previously, I'd decided to keep her fresh for her main target and go straight there without another run - and I'm very glad that I did because, as she was under pressure for most of the race as it was, I believe that she wouldn't have won had she had another race, because she was clearly already looking for farther as it was.  It's nice to feel that one's got something right, and the satisfaction of setting a horse for a race months, if not years, in advance and ultimately have him/her end up winning it is enormous, all the more so because it is something which happens only very, very rarely.  So, all in all, you might be able to understand why, for many reasons, this victory was very, very special.