Relief, elation ... and the inevitable brahma!

Anyone who has read recent chapters of this blog, including the most recent, will have worked out that our trip to Uttoxeter yesterday was really special. For most of the members of the Tri-Nations Partnership, Anis Etoile is their first horse, so to have asked them to wait two and a half years for her first run was not something I felt comfortable doing. Happily, though, none of them made me feel uncomfortable whenever I issued another "another slight delay, I'm afraid" bulletin. Even so, it was a colossal relief when we finally did get her onto the track - and, as you can imagine, it was then a huge relief and a tremendous thrill all rolled into one, and then multiplied by ten, when she saluted the judge first time out. All the way though my training 'career' (if one can describe it as such - I'm sure that our friend the Health & Safety officer would just mutter, "Huh - this isn't a career; it's just a collection of years") I have been lucky enough to train for some very supportive patrons, and collectively the members of the Tri-Nations Partnership are up there with the best of them: without their unwaveringly supportive attitude, this mare would not now be the winner and exciting prospect that, subsequent to the 5.00 at Uttoxeter yesterday, she now is.

The mare won by a ridden-right-out half a length, but in fact the victory was more comfortable than that implies - although the final two furlongs, when she was in front and starting to feel increasingly lost, seemed to go on forever! Seamus Durack gave her a cracking ride, and together horse and jockey are deserving of all the plaudits we can give them. Her crowd of supporters all watched the race together, and if you heard a faint uproar coming from some unspecified point far over the horizon at approximately 5.05, that was our collective vocal encouragement! The congregation in the unsaddling enclosure afterwards was extremely happy, and a very nice touch came when both my friend and former colleague Donald McCain and his mother, who were standing in the runner-up's berth with the beaten favourite, came over to offer their genuinely-meant congratulations. Ginger joined them later in wishing us all well, which meant a lot to us all, and thus I am sure that I was not the only member of our party who felt that the perfect post-script to the race was the fact that Donald's sister Joanne rode the winner of the concluding charity race on their stable's representative.

Mention of the charity race brings me on to the brahma of the day, which was actually bloody irritating at the time, but now that the tension has gone I can see the funny side of it. Uttoxeter in general laid on everything to a high standard, including the ground, as I discovered when I walked part of the track. However, there was one very irritating incident which should not have happened. I'll rewind to the beginning just so that you get the full picture.

As has been made clear, we had waited a long time for Anis to be ready to run. She's just been a late-developer and, while she's never been seriously lame in her life, in her younger and weaker days every time I tried to step up her work, something would go wrong. Anyway, now that she's four her preparation has at last gone smoothly. Even then, however, the first time I declared her she went lame and I had to scratch her, even though this time it was only the one-off incident of a sole cut, presumably, by a trodden-on stone. So finally we had Uttoxeter in our sights and, while logic told me that she was as ready for a race as any debutant(e) could ever be, I was naturally starting to walk my box in the lead-up to the race: it's an illustration of Sir Mark Prescott's great aphorism that "a happy trainer is a bad trainer", because it was inevitable that potential problems would be playing on my subconscious mind. So we arrived at Uttoxeter, where as soon as we walked onto the track from the stables we saw evidence of the dangers that can await: I had only three-quarters of an hour previously said 'G'day' to Christian Leech, the extremely nice husband of the trainer Sophie Leech, as he and his horse walked out for their race, so when Emma and I walked into the enclosures I was hugely saddened to see the dreaded screens up around that horse, with Christian and Sophie standing distraught alongside them. I wouldn't want to see anyone lose a horse in action, but Christian and Sophie would be about the last people whom I'd wish this upon, and this sight greatly saddened me, as well as providing a graphic reminder of the potential pitfalls. I didn't know the reason behind the horse's death (it transpired that he had completed the course and then just dropped down dead) so naturally walked the track in the area to satisfy myself that the ground was in good condition - which it was.

Anyway, finally the time for our race arrived. Anis looked tremendous and walked around the parade ring in style. Imagine my consternation, therefore, when the veterinary officer took me to one side in the parade ring and said, rather embarrasedly, "John, I'm sure that there is nothing wrong, but I'm going to have to get your horse trotted up at the start, just because of the way she is walking". I was rather taken aback by this warning, even though logic told me to disregard it as, knowing that she was 100% sound, the thought of her having a vet check was not a concern. Even so, this was worryingly odd. I should have made the connection when, as Seamus and I went to the horse, Hugh, who was leading her up, said to me, "There seems to be some problem because apparently there are two number elevens in the parade ring". As I knew that any problem wasn't our concern - we were number eleven, and were correctly carrying it - this was just another supposed problem I didn't want to know about, so didn't make the connection; which was unfortunate as I had worrying incident number two a minute or so later. As I left the parade ring, a woman stopped me to ask, "John, what's wrong with your horse?" I was actually starting to get a bit fed up with this by this time, because, being worried as hell already, I didn't want a succession of people inventing more reasons for me to worry. My reply, naturally, was "Nothing". The woman, who had to remind me that I had met her previously (she is the mother of Keith Ottesen, the clerk of the course, and I had visited her and Keith when they had Buttermilk Stud, near Oxford, a few years ago to look at a Flying Spur yearling filly), explained to me that she was wondering what was wrong with the horse because of the way she was walking! Becoming increasingly bamboozled, I just replied that the way she walked, however that was, was just the way she walked, but she is 100% sound and that she trots, canters and gallops very smoothly. At this point, Keith's mum did concede, "Well, yes, it's funny, she did walk completely differently once the jockey was on her". That should have finally made me realise that she and the vet had been looking at the other number eleven when erroneously deciding that Anis was lame at the walk, but I still didn't make the connection. I just continued on my way - only to hear, at around the time I reckoned that the mare would have been having this vet check at the start, the commentator saying something about Anis Etoile having disappeared! (It turned out that he was merely saying that, as the runners cantered past the stands on their way to post, he hadn't seen her - but that she was with the others at the start so clearly everything was OK). Even though logic was telling me to trust my own judgement that she was 100% sound and that I just shouldn't listen to these people, who ought to know what they were talking about, telling me that I was wrong, it still served to rattle me even more. All this, therefore, served merely to add to the feeling of colossal relief when she skipped clear of her rivals and passed the post in front!

You will have gathered that the reason for the confusion was that Number 11 for the charity race (which was to go off only 15 minutes after our race) had come into the parade ring while the runners for our race were still in it, rather than doing what he should have done, which was wait in the pre-parade ring until afterwards. So this old gelding, who was clearly just jarred up from the 100 or so races he'd slogged round in over the past God knows how many years, was being mistaken for our debutante! Hence my being told that our 100% sound animal couldn't walk properly, and hence Keith's mum finding that Number 11 walked completely differently once the jockey was aboard, because clearly, although there were apparently two Number 11s, there was obviously only one with Seamus Durack in blue, green and red colours aboard! In one sense it's good to know that there is rigorous pre-race inspection of the runners - but it would be even better to know that the findings are ascribed to the correct horses. I'd have acquired fewer grey hairs during the course of yesterday had this one been policed a bit better!