THE ELECTION

I first noticed Cameron when he stole Winston’s gift to Racing – the Tote – and sold it to Fred Done. After that I kept a jaundiced eye on him and couldn’t help noticing that he made endless mistakes and was (and still is) entirely charmless.

That was when I started begging influential Tories to get rid of him, but they wouldn’t. A pity.

Then Racing’s Betrayer airily announced that politics is just something he does until he finds something more amusing.

That added a certain piquance to the situation. You have a good government doing great work and the state of the nation improving by the minute for the benefit of all, and yet it’s a comparatively lame duck because its leader is a pain in the backside – and then the leader announces that he’s  not really that interested in the job.

Dilemma – how does the electorate react?  I just hope they look at the scoreboard and say, “We’re 290 for no wickets and sailing along towards an innings victory, so who cares if the captain’s a waste of time. We stand by our team!”

If they don’t play it that way, my goodness life is going to be so dreary.

 

CALIFORNIA CHROME

So the Lockinge is no longer on the schedule.  That gives a tired horse a chance to recharge his batteries. It could work out all right. His trainer, Art Sherman, who has always shown so much concern for the horse’s wellbeing, wanted to take him back to America after his gallant second in Dubai, but major shareholder Perry Martin exercised his right to call the next shot.

One would prefer to see unanimity in the camp, and we at Donec have great respect for the wisdom of his trainer, but there was always a possibility that the owners would want to be closely involved in the decision-making process. After all, they bought the horse’s dam (it was described as a “dumb ass” investment, hence the DAP on his blinkers, identifying the Dumb Ass Partners). They also selected the stallion who begat him. So CC has been “their” horse since four years before he was foaled. That fact has to be respected.

If the infrastructure of his life in Newmarket provides him with the high class arrangements that his preparation requires, his early presence in England could be a bonus. I would like to think that he has a strong American entourage looking after him, helping to make him feel at home, and providing bits and pieces of possibly vital information that his English hosts may not be aware of. Fingers crossed.

I read that he is entered for the Eclipse….. interesting!

 

STARTING

I bow to the subtlety of Mr Stier. In October the BHA’s regulator took part in a consultation about big-field starting with representatives of Cheltenham, Aintree and the PJA (the jockeys’ association).

On October 9^th he issued a 2-page Press Release. A page and three quarters was devoted to the new arrangements. The final quarter of the second page was devoted to a statement from Paul Struthers, chief executive of the PJA, in which he said how pleased he was with the new order, which included the agreement that big fields going round in small circles  ahead of the off should be discontinued.

Then the world waits and watches with bated breath, during a two-week “bedding in” period. And things look fairly good. Everything has slowed down and fields are spending more of their time walking rather than jogging or cantering during what had become very chaotic pre-race manoeuvres (which I christened the Rolling Maul). But one cannot help noticing that the “tight-packed fields going round and round in circles” is still in operation, although at a slower rate.

At Cheltenham the starts were satisfactory and likewise at Aintree, and even the start of the Scottish Grand National was acceptable. Consequently even the most entrenched opponent of the Stier regime was forced to admit that the October revolution had improved things quite a lot, but the survival of the pre-start whirlwind tendency was still a worry.

Patience is a virtue, we decided. We’ll cross that bridge next jump season, and now there’s only one more big-field start to deal with, the 3.50 at Sandown last Saturday, the Bet365Gold Cup Handicap Chase  with 20 runners and a huge prize (£85,000). At 3.49 one looked towards the start, and what did one see?  Twenty over-excited horses whizzing round at high-speed  –  and then nineteen were sent on their way and one of the favourites was left behind in controversial circumstances. The old-fashioned Stier Start had somehow risen from the dead with knobs on.

By the time the race had finished the Stier Stipendiaries had their story off by heart. The start had been perfect and the abandoned horse had been abandoned because it was naughty and through no fault of the system.

Interestingly, a number of bookmakers refunded money bet on the abandoned horse. That gesture, made by a profession that treats money with  respect, tells one that these philanthropists think that the debacle was in fact a cock-up by the authorities.Take your pick.

At Donec Towers on Monday  morning  an emergency meeting scrutinised every relevant file in order to find a reason for this disaster (or perfect start, depending on who is talking).

BHA Press Release  9^th Oct 2014, Changes to  Jump Starting Procedures – might this provide a clue?

“Jamie Stier said…..”

There were 13 elements to the updated procedure, covering one and three quarter pages and we scanned them anxiously.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven … all the way down to thirteen (which threatened that offending riders would be reported to the Stewards  – Mr Stier, I suspect, quite likes threatening people).

We went through the 12 others a second time and suddenly we realised….. at no point had the Machiavelli of High Holborn undertaken to discontinue the Rolling Maul!  And, to add insult to injury, he had persuaded Mr Struthers to congratulate him on at last dispensing with that explosive device!

The man is a genius, and the Sandown race was his act of defiance, his challenge to his detractors. “I’m in charge – and we’ll do things my way!” was his message.

A genius in the field of communications and possibly hypnosis, but a genius who apparently knows nothing about starting big-field steeplechases. I have no doubt that the BHA would make better use of his talents, if it were to remove this particular chore from his already onerous workload.

 

A.P. McCOY

“I had ridden more winners than any other jockey that season, but that didn’t mean I was the best jockey riding, and I was well aware that I wasn’t…. There were still a dozen or more who were stronger than I was in a finish…I knew that, until the day came when I was Champion and was also myself convinced that there was nobody better, I would not be satisfied. I had to wait five long years before the day arrived but when it did it was well worth the wait.”

Who wrote that?  I’ll tell you later.

I see A.P. McCoy as a man with exactly the same philosophy. In assessing his true value I prefer to ignore the numbers and the titles, and to stick to the things that really mattered.

Early on, there was a time when I wondered whether a number of unfortunate mishaps at the sharp end of important races weren’t caused by the overpowering strength of a very strong jockey coinciding with the waning resources of a tired horse, to the disadvantage of both.

Then there was a stage when he didn’t seem to have a happy time at Cheltenham, and it crossed my mind that a fair number of good jockeys over the years have been consistently outwitted by that cruel and complicated expanse of green. Could he be one of them?

More recently McCoy seemed (or was I dreaming?) to reach a plateau where he could be found in good shape, but operating at a slightly lower level than Messrs Walsh and Geraghty on the big occasion.

At about the same time I found myself thinking that the top Irish trainers seemed never to have put him on their list of “must have” jockeys when their retained riders were unavailable.

No truth in my impressions? It doesn’t matter, because I am distinctly fallible, and in addition my theory is that he spent his life aiming at nothing less than perfection, and in the second half of his career he achieved it.

In recent years no one has nursed a tired horse better, or navigated Cheltenham more intelligently. In recent years no jockey in the world could afford to give him an ounce, let alone a pound, and invitations from Ireland have been not just a trickle but a flood, and have led to innumerable victories in top-class races.

His ride in the National was poetry in motion. His horse met every fence perfectly, and that doesn’t happen by accident. The way the partnership crept into contention was just like Timmy Murphy on Comply or Die (that’s as good as it gets, in my opinion) . The horse ran out of petrol, so what? He hadn’t run since last November. To get as close as he did was a miracle, and his jockey’s performance a masterclass.

Who wrote the quote at the beginning?  Another perfectionist – John Francome (a quote from “Born Lucky”, a gem of a read).