Surface reflections

Best night of the year!  We leave British Summer time to revert to Greenwich Mean Time, gaining an extra hour.  In this instance it's particularly useful as I'll have an early start tomorrow as I'm on the Racing Debate (formerly Sunday Forum) on Sky Sports Racing (At The Races).  I'll need to leave home at 6.45 and I'll have quite a lot to do outside before I leave, so I'm very glad that the clocks are going back.  (Mind you, if they weren't going back, the programme would be starting at 11.00 rather than 10.00, so I wouldn't need to be leaving until 7.45.  So I suppose it isn't really a factor after all!  Still, the idea of the extra hour in bed is a nice one, however it works out).

The crucial factor in the morning, actually, is that it'll be a rare Sunday when I don't have to ride out, as we have no entries until the end of the week (when The Simple Truth and Ethics Boy are both entered) so I can get away without exercising anything tomorrow.  I'd have struggled to do that and still be finished work by 6.45, not only because of lack of daylight but also because of lack of sleep.  It was a late night back from Wolverhampton on Wednesday and then I had another late night on Thursday (when I wasn't home until 11.00 but for an excellent reason: an evening with the Norfolk Cricket Society where Mike Brearley gave a really good talk, with Pat Murphy as compere).  We were actually in a relatively early race at Wolverhampton (6.25) on Wednesday but even that meant getting home quite late (10.15) which in turn meant getting back into the house even later (11.30).

It wasn't a productive trip to Wolverhampton.  Hope Is High didn't run particularly badly but she didn't run particularly well either.  She just isn't the same horse on the AW as she is on a sound surface on the turf, but that's no surprise as I could count on the fingers of one hand the horses which I have trained who have been as good on the AW as on turf.  Don't ask me why, but that's how it turns out.  Fortunately the handicapper now recognises that she isn't as good on the AW so her mark is lower.  If it drops again and she becomes eligible for 0-65s on the AW (as it should) then we might keep her going as there's a suitable 0-65 at Chelmsford in about three and a half weeks' time.  Otherwise she could go on holiday straightaway.

On the subject of AW v. turf, I see that the Vertem Futurity might be going to be run on the AW at Newcastle at the end of the week.  My thinking was that the obvious option would have been to run it at Doncaster two weeks today, on November Handicap day.  I'd seen Newmarket next weekend mooted, but that wouldn't have been an option.  It's a northern race, sponsored by a northern sponsor, and to run it in the south (or midlands, as technically we are) wouldn't have been on.  Running it in the north was the only option - and it's a Doncaster race, so Doncaster would have made perfect sense.  However, Newcastle is a good idea too, particularly as it has undeservedly lost most of its good races, eg Northern Free Handicap, Beeswing Stakes, Seaton Delaval Stakes, Virginia Stakes.

It's particularly good in this instance as John Dance comes from round there, and it's not only a great racecourse but also his local racecourse.  But I only hope that it's run on the turf track rather than the AW.  It's a turf race, and transferring a Group One race to another surface isn't quite the same as transferring a lesser contest.  When Newcastle became an AW track, the initial plan had been to run the Northumberland Plate on the remaining turf track (ie hurdles track) but that was shelved as it would have meant watering the turf track through the summer for the benefit of one race, which would have meant both spending a lot of money and, more pertinently, spoiling the course for the winter.  It was felt that the Northumberland Plate wouldn't be the same run on the AW (and it isn't) but that would have been too big a price to pay.

In this case it would be an even bigger dislocation to switch a Group One race, rather than merely a great handicap, from the turf to the AW; and the way of avoiding that doesn't in this instance come with any price to pay at all.  Newcastle has a very good AW track, but it has a very good turf track too (as we'll be reminded every time we watch a hurdle race there this winter).  And, as Ascot demonstrated last Saturday, there are many more pluses than minuses (there are no minuses) in running a big race on what will be just about perfect ground on a hurdles course, unused since the spring, at this time of year.  We'll see what happens, but a trick will have been missed very badly if this doesn't happen.