Then and Now - Racing in 1990 and 2020

No pron at all Reg,you're a gent.

prob.

The hillary needler thats it theanorak listed race Beverley night meeting 1997 W kemp trainer horse Filey Brigg while its fresh in the mind .....
We were at York 13th May Filey brigg i seem to recall 12/1 outsider jockey keiren fallon i think 5 runners very small field id backed 2 in the race off it went and Filey Brigg hesitated and was 7-8 lengths behind at the start was still out the back with 1 furlong to go when you could see it running on without been whipped beaten 3.5 lengths watched the replay and concluded if getting away on level terms could have won it but no one seemed to agree and no write up in the press no hard luck story.

So watched with interest where next, The henry needler 4 June night meeting a wednesday night with band on playing on cheap side i recall anyway it was 25/1 33/1 in the forecast different ground tonight and w Kemp not known for listed winners J quinn jockey.

Went through every runner the previous night and still couldent believe the price if it got away with them it would not be far off, opened 25/1 went 33/1 all around the ring 3 of us 50 ew as we thought would not get a knock back at that then re group to see what happens , i went to leslie steel 50ew he would lay you but he was clever when you said your bet he would say what did you say then youd have to repeat it by which time the floor man had shot off to get the bet away of which he did, bit of a flurry saw it come into 20/1 where we went in again and it went 16/1.

The race, it shot out in front kept on, i think it was a short head lol

some things stand out and domaine de prom because it died just after the line and this one who was a no chance

know all
did lrs floorman post on here
regards
Ronnie.

not sure he was nice lad from leeds skinny fellow forget his name

any ideas Ribero

Bobby Cryle I should imagine Ronnie,he had swept back brylcreem (well i'm guessing it was that!) black hair,very thin lived on booze.

He was from York though.

Regarding C J Hill, the perils of doing a google internet search is that you end up repeating a load of bollocks posted from sources with no knowledge what so ever. As far as I can recollect John never trained a treble in 19 years of training. Martin Hill is definitely not his son. Tony Newcombe had no interest or knowledge of racehorses until he was involved in a small share of a syndicate with John, he quickly became very enthusiastic about the game and spent an ever increasing amount of time at the stables, everything he knows about training came from John.

Deccan Prince is my favourite CJ Hill winner.

Ran on the Flat in 1988 in the name of Richard (DR) Tucker, managing a third in a Bath seller. Then tailed off several times over hurdles listed as trained by Ron Hodges. Disappeared for a couple of years, before being "held up behind, some hdwy, nvr pl to challenge" in a mdn hurdle at Newton Abbot, again listed as being trained by DR Tucker.

Next appearance was in a selling h'cap hurdle at a Newton Abbot evening meeting in May 1992. Before the race Eddie Fremantle passed on the info that the Barnstaple Butcher was in fact the man behind the horse. It sluiced up, at an SP of 7/1 (opened at least 14/1 - I managed to get a £500/£35). The first horse listed as trained by DR Tucker to have won a race for what seemed like years.

The horse was tailed off and pulled up in two subsequent starts and never seen again.

Used to be fun tracing CJ Hill's horses as they apparently moved between him, Ron Hodges, Tony Newcombe and various other West Country trainers. Master Millfield was one that switched between Newcombe, Hill and Hodges with dizzying speed, winning in all their names. Beatle Song was another.

Hi Reg, as I say the internet is full of wrong information and when we put in a search we believe what we see. A search for the Southwell results on 22nd of June 1994 on the Racing Post site suggests Southwell was not on that day. Give me the full results of the three parts of any treble you think he may have landed and we will see. The closest I remember was he won all three 2yo races at a two day meeting at Chepstow sometime in early eighties (  Henry Hotfoot, Billies Pal and Just For You  )

That evening we were staying at Sampson's hotel/restaurant, and got talking to Bridgette Williams, wife of former trainer the late Billy Williams and mother of current trainer Ian Williams. She was trying to understand the point of running a horse in DR Tucker's name.

"Well," we explained. "If you thought you could get a big price about a horse because people thought the trainer was no good, which trainer would you choose?"

"My old man," she replied, with a wicked smile and without a moment's hesitation. Which was unfair to say the least about the man who trained Tom's Little Al and Tom's Little Bet.

Very good thread. Read "The Book" the other night too. Power Of Darkness certainly looks a horse to keep on the right side of for the 2020 Flat season.

Its me who should apologise to you Reg , I used to help put money on for the stable but they must missed me out that day. Its a reminder not to take ones memories as fact, I would have bet 5s on I was right. C`est la vie.  GL  Shalimah

I remember Filey Brigg too, Borders trainer Tom Kemp had landed a touch with it at Hamilton the previous season although can’t recall him backing it at Beverley. He used to back a lot of his horses though so prob had something on somewhere. After Beverley, it ran in the QM at Royal Ascot and subsequently other good races too. Sadly, it never returned to Beverley form ever again and often struggled to beat any other runner.

I think Tom packed the training in & moved down to Kent

Hamilton touch was a couple of months before Beverley, not sure where I got previous season from . . .

Good morning ribero

I should have got the front runner run and skip I had thought about it but got the colours mixed up with run for free,the 88 gold cup of course was the last we would see of forgive n forget,I saw a plack a few years later forgiven but not forgotten.

I think 1990 was the year my favourite ever flat horse was exported to America to race.  That was a disaster and he returned to the UK and won a couple of claimers before winning the same big handicap which he'd won many years before.  A great horse because he was tough, had a turn of foot and it was very easy to predict what he'd do.

The other John Hill horse at Southwell on 18/11/1992 was Grand Time, down to run in the last race, with Darryll Holland booked. One of the horses who did run in the race was last-time-out winner Hinari Video, who 5 years earlier had given his trainer his first ever winner. Earlier on the card, Suluk had finished 4th in the 2 miler, in the middle of another losing flat campaign (0/7, 6 of them at Southwell), which was sandwiched by 2 rather more successful hurdle campaigns (11/14 with 3 seconds, all at Southwell).

This reply isn't a look down memory lane - welcome and interesting, though, those posts have been - but an idea that the people on this thread are almost certainly more than qualified to discuss.

As I said on an earlier post, I've been race-going for 48 years so I do know the game. I despair how so many tracks are now run by a younger generation who really don't appreciate the traditions of their courses and are also horribly narrow-minded in their attempts to increase ever-dwindling attendances.

By the latter, I mean 'Ladies Days' etc etc - all based on alcohol consumption.

But I'd like to see tracks try to increase racing's appeal through the sport itself. I have no faith in the City Racing idea, BTW!

However, is there any merit in the BHA trialling handicap races based on distance rather than weight?

It would need separate stalls for each horse and I realise that is no easy issue to overcome - aside from the expense. But instead of horse A giving 7lbs, why not 2.5 lengths? Dog racing does it and the finishes can be very exciting.

It is only a 'blue sky' idea but races based on distance given rather than weight may have more appeal to younger generations who crave 'easy to understand' data and, of course, excitement!

Any views?

elf and safety wont like that, staggered starting stalls

How would they get the stalls of the track on a track like Chester?

The Knight - I think it would turn into a public relations disaster due, in part, to running styles.  Imagine a horse that needed to be held up starting way out in front.  Or a front runner at the back.  The shenanigans would be interesting and jockeys would be getting lynched.

They would actually be safer than the stalls of today because horses would not feel so cramped for room - a major reason why we struggle to get so many horses loaded up compared to the US and Ireland where the stalls are a fraction wider!

BTW - this idea will never happen, not because of any possible difficulties - but simply because the BHA will not listen to anyone outside their own clique-ridden little world!

I do agree with your last point the knight sadly it will never change.

The Knight,

Not really a new idea - Jamie Spencer has been riding this sort of race for about twenty years now.

Anorak...LOL.

Very astute!!

Looking forward to Trials Day, on Saturday, and inspired by all this nostalgia, I had a look back at the results from 1990, and dredged up a good number of memories.

The 2m4f handicap chase might be most immediately noteable for the horse that came second - off 143 - Norton's coin, who after a trip to Newbury in early February (3rd off 148), before returning to Cheltenham for his extraordinary Gold Cup win that March.  The horse who followed him hone in the Gold Cup, Toby Tobias, took the more conventional route, winning the 3m1f Listed chase earlier on the card.

But it is the winner of that handicap that I wanted to focus on.  Willsford, owned by Arnold Caplan, and Robert and David Johnson, was named after an Edgbaston block of flats where Arnold, Robert and their wives lived at one time. 

Trained by Jenny Pitman, he had been an impressive winner of the previous season's County hurdle, defeating Martin Pipe's gambled on Imperial Cup winner Travel Mystery (who herself had only two subsequent runs, somewhat improbably winning the Sagaro stakes before finishing second in the Chester Cup, before embarking on an unremarkable stud career.)

Willsford had won a couple of small field Novice chases, and been beaten in a couple, but in winning the Edward Courage Cup handicap chase at Warwick off 124, he had for the first time run to the level of his useful hurdles form over fences.  He went off at evens off a mark of 133, which would subsequently look pretty generous.  Although he pulled up at the Cheltenham festival that march, he won the Midlands National on his next start off 139 (a race that in those days was run over 4 1/2 miles, and was not until the end of April).  He would later win a Eider and a Scottish National off 140.

Now, the reason I keep mentioning handicap marks is because it illustrates one of the biggest differences between then and now.  When you look at the fluctuations in mark over his career, and what caused adjustments to be made, you see a far more reactive style of handicapping.

Having finished 4th in the 93 Welsh National off 138, after which came two poor efforts over hurdles, his next handicap chase start was off 124.  A couple more poor runs saw him down to 113.  Under two years later he would run off 160.

Without having any skin at all in the current Marracudja handicapping controversy, I do think Skelton is right to highlight that should the allotted mark simply prove too high, they should be a bit quicker sometimes to bring them down again.

Finally on Willsford, he provides the context for an example of Jenny Pitman's ire, as told by Robin Oakley in his 'Sixty Years of Jump Racing: From Arkle to McCoy':

"Famously protective o fthe animals in her charge, she is furious to this day about being called in by stewards because one of her horses, Willsford, who had lost his form and needed encouragement, had been marked by a jockey's four strokes of the whip at Uttoxeter.  Unusually, Willsford's coat had been clipped only the day before and she told the stewards that if he still had a full coat, there would have been nothing to be seen.  One of the stewards had a red beard, so she added 'If I smacked the face of someone with a big bushy beard, it wouldn't show the hand prints!'  The stewards secretary told her afterwards, 'Perhaps we don't want horses like him running again, Mrs Pitman.'  Willsford went on to win another five races, including the Welsh and Scottish Nationals."

I used to love Alan Kaplan (Arnie Kaplan's brother). Tall, thin, bespectacled, madly enthusiastic and relentlessly optimistic, he was always there at paddockside at Warwick and Worcester. He had a mare in training with Richard Holder around this time, called Elsa, whom he insisted was going to win a race, but the years went by and it never seemed to happen, but Kaplan's optimism about the mare never seemed to waver.

In the end, the horse had a break, moved to Pat Murphy, had a pipe-opener on the Flat, had the visors put on, and finally, one afternoon in the spring, on hard ground in a maiden hurdle at Devon & Exeter, it happened. Horses fell, others were brought down, the leader went lame on the run-in and Alan was proven right at last, at 11/2.

I wonder whether he was on. I do hope so.

I noticed he had a winner at Warwick just the other day, with Book Of Gold making all for Oliver Sherwood. Brought back a lot of happy memories of the old days.

Superb thread with proper punters and bookies  contributing. I have hundreds of memories from these days but one that stands out for myself was the 1981 Triumph Hurdle. I was working offshore at the time and my biggest bet to date was £200.

My wages were approx. 440 per month and I was home at the time and stuck £202 on Broadsword @ 15/8. We were all cheering in the pub when it jumped the last only to watch in disbelief when Baron Blakeney got up to beat it at 66s. (would have traded a 1.01 imo on here)

It ran at Cheltenham approx. 2 weeks later and was 7/4 early doors to turn the tables around with BB. It duly beat it by 11L IIRC @6/5 and I didn't have two bob on it as I was offshore and up to my credit limit with my bookie.

As for thy 202 bet I got most of it back with a 15 quid win on Current Gold in the next at 10s trained by Gordon Richards but felt it was a poor consolation at the time.

** It ran at Aintree

re Willsford - there's another oddity in his form. He got DQ'd at Bangor one day after taking the wrong course after the last. Can that still happen there? Usually, when there's a divider on the run-in between the hurdle and chase courses, it doesn't matter if a horse goes the 'wrong' side.

ged, I didn't know that - thanks.

I would think it could still happen at Bangor - according to rule 30 you do have to go the correct side of the rail.  The rail begins just after the last flight and runs down past the winning line, so all it would take is for a chaser to duck left between the last hurdle and that rail.  To complete the race, a jockey would have to turn back and go back to the correct side of the rail.  I wonder how many times it has happened.

There is a good photo looking back down the home straight here: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Bangor-on-Dee+Racecourse/@52.9929984,-2....

That's a helpful photo. I'm wondering if there is a general rule that applies to all courses (depending on how far from the line the dividing rail begins?), or whether courses have local rules. Is it just a matter of having an 'H'/'C' marker up? - if so, does that mean Ludlow (for instance) doesn't have a marker where their rail begins (because there, horses can finish on either side and be ok, I think).

While looking into that Bangor incident, I happened upon another one I had quite forgotten about.  On October 10th 1997, Charlie Brooks had a bumper debutant at Huntingdon.  Ridden by G Brace, claiming 7lbs, he bolted up in most impressive fashion, beating Nigel Twiston Davies' Gatflax (ridden by M Keighley!).  Unfortunately, Mr Brace had gone the wrong side of a rail somewhere down the back, and his mount was disqualified.  [This also boosted Martin Keighley's lifetime wins as a jockey up to 9.  I think he used to school Viking Flagship, though, so I am not going to say anything rude about his abilities in the saddle!]

The horse in question was of course the subsequent Sun Alliance Hurdle and Aintree Hurdle winner Barton, who after this setback went on to come second under Tony Dobbin, before moving to Tim Easterby and winning his next 8 starts, culminating in a string of five Graded Hurdles - the Winter Novices at Sandown; the River Don at Doncaster; the Sun Alliance at Cheltenham; the Mersey at Aintree, and the Fighting Fifth at Newcastle.  Perhaps his career best performance came in the Aintree hurdle of 2001 when he marmalised Best Mate by 14 lengths.

He also won Novice chases at a variety of distances including the Dipper at Newcastle and the Mildmay at Aintree.

He found things happening a bit quick in the Arkle, and probably needed the JLT/Marsh to have been invented a few years earlier; he was clearly at the peak of his powers in 2001 when the Festival was lost to foot and mouth.  He may have only been a couple of accidents of history from being a right Willie Wumpkins.  Nonetheless, he was a seriously good animal who won 14 of 19 races in his most prolific period. 

Sun Alliance Hurdle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1ROWr4AmXs
Aintree Heurdle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTRGZiek794

Below is what the rules say.  Based on that, ged, I can only think you must be right and courses each have local rules.

RIDING THE COURSE
A Jockey must be aware of the correct course and comply with all direction markers.

Where a horse:

runs the wrong side of a running rail or a direction marker; or

misses a fence or hurdle,

the Jockey must pull up, or turn back and ride the course correctly if continuing in the Race.

In a Race with Marker Poles located after the start, a Jockey must ride in a straight line from their draw position until they reach the Marker Poles, unless the horse is at the rear of the field.

Think that Bangor must have relaxed their rules as there have been a couple of occasions this season alone where when racing on chase course horses have finished either side of running rail and not been dqd

Let the reminiscing resume:

February Week One

Or to be precise, the week that started on Monday January 29th in 1990 - and it was one in which winter weather caused the loss of several fixtures, most significantly on Saturday, when Chepstow, Sandown and Stratford were all abandoned.

But the meetings that did go ahead, weren’t without interest and probably saw more future stars running midweek than we can expect from the equivalent fixtures this year. On Monday at Plumpton, a modest 2m 4f handicap chase was won by Multum In Parvo, his second win of the month, having scored in a 2M chase at Towcester ten days earlier. This was his first run on genuine soft ground and he relished it, winning by 30 lengths, with the form book comment ‘very easily’.

That win came off a mark of 103, reduced by the 3lb claim of Norman Williamson for trainer John Edwards. Two starts later he finished a close second in the Cathcart Chase at the Festival, which saw his mark rise to 134. Back at Cheltenham in November, he won the Mackeson Gold Cup off that mark, but sadly that was his last success. He ran in a valuable intermediate chase at Ascot under a penalty seven days after Cheltenham, finished lame, and never recovered his form when raced again after a long layoff.

Then on Tuesday at Leicester, another future Cheltenham scorer ran out a wide margin winner of a Listed novice hurdle - yes really, a Listed race at Leicester on a Tuesday afternoon. Regal Ambition (Pipe, Scudamore) made all to collect a £4k first prize by 25 lengths, and he wasn’t just beating trees, as the useful Danny Harrold (Pitman, Pitman) finished second, getting 8lbs from the winner.

Regal Ambition had already won novice hurdles by 30L at Worcester and by 15L at Chepstow, and his next run after Leicester saw him run away with the Sun Alliance Hurdle at Cheltenham by 12L. His only defeat that season came at Cheltenham in December, when he lost a photo finish to Remittance Man. After Cheltenham, he was sent on an ill-fated trip to the USA for an International Hurdle run in Kentucky, which offered a first prize almost six times what he’d collected at Cheltenham. He broke down and was pulled up, and only reappeared two years later with a US owner/trainer, ignominiously running on dirt tracks in a $4,000 claiming race and a $5,000 allowance race, again pulled up lame in the latter. Clear evidence that Yanks have zero feeling for the sport.

A quiet week gives me space to comment on something that has struck me as I’ve scoured the results from 1990, which is the extent to which the sport changes, but the names remain the same. Take the card at Windsor on the Wednesday of this week. The winning jockeys that afternoon were:

Peter Hobbs   - brother of Philip who trained that winner. Peter became a Jockey Club Inspector of Courses
Mark Perrett - later married Amanda Harwood and now part of their training business

Mark Pitman - tried his hand at training, not sure what he’s doing nowadays

Luke Harvey - well we all know where he ended up.

Mark Richards - had a successful career as a racing TV presenter in Hong Kong

Jamie Railton - a leading man in the field of preparing and showing horses at the major bloodstock sales. If you don’t want to spend two or three days displaying your horse to time wasters, or you can’t spare the staff to spend that long in Newmarket or Doncaster, you send the horse to Jamie and he does it all for you and takes a commission on the sale.

And it’s just as true in Ireland, with the winners at Naas that same day featuring the names Mullins, Taaffe, Swan, O’Grady and Mouse Morris. The Mullins team appear to have missed a trick that afternoon, as future star Minorettes Girl won the closing bumper by 15 lengths, but a 12/1 SP suggests they didn’t know what they had - Mullins other runner in the race started 9/4 fav and finished seventh!

Finally on the only surviving NH meeting on Saturday, at Wetherby. No stars on show here, but the novice hurdle was a prime example of how different that type of race was thirty years ago. It was won by Carbisdale, a 20/1 winner by four lengths in a field of twenty five (yes, 25) - as an oddity, Mark Johnston trained the third, Simply Perfect. Carbisdale didn’t win again over hurdles, but had a successful chasing career, winning three novice races and three handicaps. One of those wins came in a four runner 3M 2F handicap at Doncaster, a race the like of which you’ll never see in 2020.

This was a minor event, run for a first prize of £5,600, but the top weight was Docklands Express, running off a mark of 169 and carrying 12 stone. The other three were all out of the handicap, Carbisdale by 6lbs, Dublin Flyer by 9lbs and Polar Region by 15lbs, so they all carried 10 stone. I suspect that Docklands Express would have been running at Sandown if that meeting had been on, but the program then had the flexibility that allowed high rated horses to run in lesser races. Nowadays, a chaser rated 169 would be very unlikely ever to be seen in a handicap, apart from Newbury in November or Aintree in April.

That week in 1990, there were three AW flat meetings - now there are nine. Which is a pretty good clue as to why we don’t get twenty five runners in a novice hurdle any more!




Result of the Week

Friday Feb 2nd    Kelso    Rutherford Chase  2M 1F
Raise An Argument   R Supple  7/2

Trained by Jonjo O’Neill


Not an important race, but a chance to tell the story of a remarkable horse. He began racing in Ireland as a 4-y-old, where he was a multiple winner over hurdles and had scored in a Navan novice chase shortly before he came to England as an 8-y-old, to be trained by Monica Dickinson for owner John Poynton. He won four times for her, the highlight being success in the valuable and important Timeform Chase at Haydock, ridden by Jamie Osborne.

When Mrs D retired he moved to Jonjo, still then training at Penrith in Cumbria. The Kelso race was his only win for that yard and by the 1991/92 season, he had been ‘retired’ to the point to point stable run by the Docker family. He won two hunter chases at Stratford for them in 1992, aged 13, and also finished second in the Liverpool Foxhunters.

But he’d only just got started, as he went on winning in points up to the age 17, and finished second several times in the spring of 1997, as an 18-year old. One horse, fourteen seasons of racing, and I imagine he gave a great deal of pleasure to a lot of people. Everyone that starts out as an owner (me included!) would love to have one like him.


Video of the Week

A total cheat, as the race took place in 1995, but having mentioned Dublin Flyer above, I couldn’t resist another viewing of this amazing win over the National fences under 12 stone, giving two stone to the runner-up. A grand example of the type of old fashioned chaser rarely seen these days, and one owned and bred by one of the generation of NH supporters that were badly damaged by the Lloyds of London crash in the early 90’s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ25sAFuuOw

Remember Multum in Parvo,wasn't it the Yahoo colours? Used to like Edwards horses thinking he tried to get them ready for Cheltenham.

Pretty certain he was in the yahoo colours ribero ,regal ambition was some horse probably the easiest winner of the sun alliance hurdle I ever saw it makes you realise how good remittance man was over hurdles and of course was even better as a chaser,

Was the listed Leicester race the golden miller ?

Good Morning Foxy, Monsignor and French Holly could both be called winners of Sun Alliance at top of the hill.  off to Kelso in next hour, decent card.

Mark Perrett was one of my fav jockeys, Beau Ranger, Kings Curate, Vagador, Saxon Farm and most amazingly of all Run for Free (Scottish Grand National - on youtube highly recommended) were some of his on whom I won decent money back in the day..

nostalgia not being what it used to be - but somehow on a visceral level, going racing was more fun then....

Mrs P was convinced Danny Harrold was doped that day at Leicester, and complained loudly to the press. She said it wasn't that her horse was beaten, but that he was lifeless, both beforehand, and in the race - he made a bad mistake at the first, but Mark Pitman said that was because he was half asleep. The betting opened Evens Regal, 11/10 Danny (in a 10-runner field), but had changed to 4/6, 13/8 by the off. Her horses were in form, because she had 2 winners on the card, and she reported Danny ate up that evening and was 'as bright as a button' the next day.

foxy - yes it was the Golden Miller. Golden Miller himself won a maiden hurdle at Leicester on Jan 20, 1931. He was 4yo, went off 5/4 fav, and won by an easy 5 lengths in a field of 20. 3 races later on the same card, 11yo Easter Hero won by an easy 12 lengths from 7 others in a 2 mile chase. He had won the Cheltenham Gold Cup in each of the previous 2 years by 20 lengths, and would probably have won it for a 3rd time that year if it hadn't been lost to the weather.

I can go back much further to 1963 or 1964 at Sandown when a childhood friend turned top jockey told me that there could only be one winner of the conditions hurdle in which he was riding the favourite. Sir William Piggott Brown, then a keen amateur, was against 2 professional who were riding horses that were being tuned up for later targets. Both were under orders not to win and Sir Will was the outsider of 3. Those were the days. When people talk about non triers, they don't know the half of it. One of the non triers went 20 lengths clear until the second last and blew up while the other came from the back to be beaten a neck! They were experts at losing without anyone apart from the trainers knowing in those days. I was a student then so the money was very welcome. Things didn't always go to plan though. A Vernon Cross hurdler called Icy Wonder was backed from 20/1 to evens for a handicap at Cheltenham. All of the other jockeys knew what was up and they let the 7lb claimer on the fav go 20 lengths clear where he remained until the last flight when the horse overjumped and the kid fell out of the saddle. Hilarious scenes as the other jockeys wondered what to do next.

Thanks ged they don’t get horse at Leicester like they use to.


Enjoy Kelso Gordon may get up there myself for morebattle day,and yes both those were very good winners of the sun alliance,

Lots of people were suffering from Pipe Derangement Syndrome at that time. It may have had a bearing on Mrs Pitman's contention that Danny Harrold must have been doped for a Pipe horse to have given her one 8 lb and a 25 length beating.

Danny Harrold had been purchased from Ted Walsh's father Ruby for what at the time seemed to be an insane sum of money, so that might have coloured her reaction.

Danny Harrold had won two points and two bumpers in Ireland, and was 11/10 fav for its first run for the Pitmans, in a novices' hurdle at Wolverhampton. It duly trailed in fifth, beaten 42 lengths. No complaints then that it must have been doped in that race.

It then looked a completely different horse next time out, winning a 20-runner novices' hurdle at Chepstow (4/6 fav there, an even shorter price than it had been for its Wolverhampton tonking the time before!).

After that it went to Leicester, drifted in the betting, and basically ran to its Wolverhampton mark behind the Pipe horse.

This sort of thing used to happen day-in day-out with expensive horses from the big, wealthy Lambourn yards. They rarely ran two races alike, and when Pipe arrived on the scene, all he really had to do with the relatively cheap horses in his care was get 'em fit and run 'em straight. The results took care of themselves.

Anorak,

Great stuff again.

You briefly mentioned the type of horses owned by old fashioned owners badly damaged by the Lloyds of London crash. Yup, but I was close to just one of those very people and this person's attitude to money was quite amazingly stupid.

He simply thought that he had a complete and utter right to make money from his invisible Lloyds investment while the actual cash he had pledged worked hard elsewhere! Furthermore he thought it was a right granted to him for the rest of his life.

No thought whatsoever to the real world and that risk was now becoming very high in many syndicates. If he was typical of the Lloyds investors then it was an accident waiting to happen (excuse the pun).

February Week Two


I must have had some time off owing to me, as my diary tells me that I went racing five days in a row from Tuesday Feb 6th, 1990 - Warwick, Ascot, Wincanton and two days at Newbury. And it’s very much a recurring theme that at those first three meetings, staged from Tuesday to Thursday, I saw two future Gold Cup winners, two future Grand National winners and one all time great.

On Tuesday, Party Politics made his breakthrough over fences, winning a sixteen runner novice chase over 2m 4f at Warwick at 40/1, by 10L and 20L. They went 9/2 the field in that novice, the longest priced favourite on a seven race card. In most novice chases now, a 9/2 shot would be an outsider!

On Wednesday, Ascot saw Royal Athlete win the Reynoldstown, and a young handicapper called Cool Ground finish well beaten in the feature 3m handicap. One of the reasons I had gone to Ascot was to watch Desert Orchid carry top weight in that race, but he was withdrawn because David Elsworth thought the ground was too soft to ask the horse to give two stone to most of the others. He had a point as the race was run more than a minute slower than the standard. But his absence left one horse on 10-6 and all the others on 10st and out of the handicap by various amounts.

The beaten favourite in the Reynoldstown was the Gordon Richards trained, Carrick Hill Lad, who arrived at Ascot off the back of eight straight wins, the last five over fences. Royal Athlete confirmed the form by beating him again in a novice chase at the Scottish National meeting, the only time Carrick Hill Lad was beaten in a chase at Ayr.

And so to Thursday at Wincanton, which attracted a bigger crowd than usual as Desert Orchid was re-routed to the Racing In Wessex Chase. There was also extra press interest, as this was the week in which he was given top weight of 12-2 in the National, announced as a probable runner, then as an unlikely runner, before finally being taken out of consideration after a hurried meeting of trainer and owners in the bar after he’d won this race by 20L. Those of us present had the opportunity to laugh at the non specialist media who turned out at Wincanton to film the horse and/or talk to connections. There were two other greys in the field, who both came into the paddock ahead of the star, and got the cameramen and photographers running round in circles.

The final future star was Garrison Savannah, who trounced 18 rivals in the 3m 1f novice chase by 25L as the 2/1 favourite. His jumping that afternoon was spectacular and I was sure I’d seen a potential Cheltenham winner - an opinion that cost me a considerable sum when he was beaten later in the month by Party Politics! More on that in Week Four.

In his later career, after the glory of his Gold Cup win, Grand National second and the subsequent fifteen month injury layoff, Garrison Savannah became a Wincanton regular, running six times in conditions chases at the course, including three times on this same card in the Racing In Wessex Chase and twice in the Jim Ford Challenge Cup.

Neither of those conditions chases still survives at Wincanton, and indeed they represent a type of race that has almost completely disappeared from the program. Various things have contributed to their loss - bookie pressure for each way races - payments to the courses reduced for races with fewer than eight runners - trainers seemingly less willing to run their good horses as often etc.

But one element not mentioned often, if at all, is that under current BHA race planning rules, any such race would have to be run as a Class 2 contest. And a Class 2 weight for age chase (other than a novice chase) must offer a minimum of £22,500 total prize money. Not an easy sum for a rural track to fund at a midweek fixture. Wincanton still offers chases with good prize money, but they are all handicaps nowadays.


Result of the Week

Monday Feb 5th  Wolverhampton    Handicap Chase  3M 1F

Rubika    R Dunwoody    14/1

Trained by Stan Mellor


Watching the two runners in the Trevor Hemmings colours fight out the finish of the 3M chase at Sandown on Saturday, made this the obvious choice. Rubika was one of two horses sourced from France by Stan Mellor for this new owner. Neither won in their first season, but in the first five months of 1990, they won seven races between them and from those modest beginnings came an owner that has contributed a great deal in the thirty years since.

Rubika won that Wolverhampton handicap off a mark of 100, but continued to progress, with a second to Bonanza Boy in the Midlands National in March 1991, and a win in the four mile chase at Cheltenham on New Year’s Day 1992. He also ran twice in the Grand National, the first of many representatives in those colours. The other horse was called Astre Radieux, and he was the first to win, but it was Rubika that made the bigger impact on his owner, as I can testify from personal experience, because I had a horse with Mellor later in 1990.

Sadly for Stan, Hemmings soon decided to keep his horses at his home in Lancashire over the summer, and that led to him switching to trainers based further North as well. Within ten years, Hemmings had around twenty in training, mostly with Micky Hammond and Sue Smith - and Stan Mellor was heading for retirement!

Coming forward to 2020, the stables built by Stan Mellor not far from Swindon, which he named Pollardstown, after his Triumph Hurdle winner, are now owned by Sir Mark Todd, the NZ born champion three day event rider. He’s been located there for several years and last year, he took out a licence to train on the flat and expressed ambitions to become a leading player in this new field. You can read an interview with Mark Todd here:

https://theownerbreeder.com/features/mark-todds-transferable-talent/

Garrison Savannah one of three horses who won the Gold Cup in their career who ran in the 94 Grand National.
Also featured winners of Irish Grand National , Welsh Grand National (future) , Scottish Grand National(past and future) , Velka Pardubice  Cheltenham foxhunter , Whitbread (dual winner) ,  SunAlliance chase (two).......and Just So

February Week Three

The week commencing Feb 12, 1990, was quite different from its predecessor, with little of interest midweek, but five races with major prizes spread across three meetings on the Saturday. More like 2020 than 1990!

It was a week that had five meetings scheduled at courses that no longer stage NH racing (Nottingham x 2, Towcester, Folkestone and Windsor) - and in which the weather caused the loss of six cards, with no turf racing at all on the Wednesday.

So nothing to add about the midweek fare, other than the presence of a two day meeting at Sandown on Thursday and Friday, which attracted the biggest crowd of the week on the second day, 4,750.

Saturday was unrecognisable and would surely be dismissed by online critics as ‘ the worst Saturday ever’. The racing was at Chepstow, Newcastle and Nottingham, with Windsor scheduled but abandoned. But as mentioned earlier, there was a good spread of interesting races (the figure shown is the winners prize money):

Chepstow    John Hughes Grand National Trial  3m 6f    £ 10k
                    Rising Stars Chase                          2m 4f    £ 10.7k

Newcastle    Eider Chase                                     4m 1f   £ 11.2k

Nottingham  City Trial Hurdle                                  2m     £ 7.5k
                     Nottinghamshire Nov Chase              2m     £ 11.3k

There wouldn’t be many times that Nottingham got to stage the most valuable race of the week.
If Windsor had raced, their card included the 3m Fairlawne Chase, a conditions event worth around £7.5k. The Eider is the only one of those races to survive in the same form, and that will offer a first prize of £50k this year.

The biggest name to emerge from those races was Royal Derbi, winner of the City Trial as the 7/4 fav in a field of eight. He’d been a useful juvenile the previous season, but had struggled prior to this win. But he went on to have a top class career over hurdles, winning a Fighting Fifth and a Bula, as well as second placings in the Christmas Hurdle and the 1993 Champion Hurdle, the latter after he’d failed to make any impact in the race in 1991/92.

Royal Derbi ran in the colours of Michael Tabor, who continued to have the occasional NH horse in training over here, even as his racing interests developed elsewhere! The last good horse was the mare Refinement, trained by Jonjo, who won twice at the big Punchestown meeting and finished second in the first running of the Mare’s Hurdle at Cheltenham in 2008.



Result of the Week

Monday Feb 12th  Nottingham    Coral Hurdle Final Qualifier  2M 6F

Invasion   S D Williams  (7)   9/2

Trained by Jeremy Glover


Invasion beat twenty one rivals, winning by 25L and 20L on heavy ground, running off a handicap mark of 121. He only ran once more that season, a 3m 1f novice hurdle at Kelso that he won by 12L at odds of 5/2 on. Those two wins saw his handicap mark rise to 142.

The reason I’ve chosen to feature this winner comes in the following season, when he is switched to fences. That began with a singularly unimpressive win, when he got up in the last strides at Market Rasen to beat a maiden over hurdles and one other finisher. His jumping let him down next time at Uttoxeter, unseating at the 4th, and then he was brought down at Fakenham. Unsurprisingly, that brought about a return to hurdling for the remainder of the season, after which he moved stables to Owen Brennan.

After one more run over hurdles, Brennan put him in a handicap chase - where he was allocated a mark of 100, 32lbs lower than his last hurdle mark. It didn’t immediately help him, as his first two handicaps were no better, but having fallen to 95 and fitted with a visor, he managed a win at Market Rasen. He went on from there to record a total of seven wins over fences, but his mark never got higher than 118.

And there you have to my mind the single biggest difference between NH racing then and now. Then, if you ran three times in level weight novice chases, you would be handicapped solely on what you did in those three races, with no consideration of anything that had happened over hurdles previously. Now, the hurdle mark is automatically transferred, and if your horse turns out to be less proficient over fences, tough.

To punters accustomed to our current system, this may seem ridiculous. How can a horse that runs to 132 over hurdles be allowed to run off 100 over fences? But so long as the same rules apply to every horse, is it really a problem? Trainers then still had the option to go straight into handicap chases using their hurdle mark, as they can now - but it wasn’t compulsory. One of the best examples would be the future top class 2M chaser, Waterloo Boy, who made his chase debut in a minor handicap at Worcester from a mark of 96. Less than five months later, he won the Arkle!

Just to add, that in the best traditions of the Coral Golden Hurdle series (and it’s current replacement, the Pertemps Network series), the eventual winner of the Cheltenham final, Henry Mann, managed a well hidden 7th (btn 51L) in that Nottingham qualifier.


Video of the Week

Again with thanks to Espmadrid, the closing stages of the Nottingham Trial Hurdle, as a reminder of how Nottingham looked for NH racing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai6h-ex2z4o&list=PLfn5x2SD03q4QqATzk-Pmt5_bVs_CP1lO&index=34

At least Henry Mann put in a bit of a show in that Nottingham qualifier. The horse that finished 2nd to him at Cheltenham, Maelkar, was also in the Nottingham race, and managed an "Always behind, tailed off when pulled up before 2 out" for Jonjo/Patsy Byrne.

Invasion made his racecourse debut in the Wood Ditton for Barry Hills/Robert Sangster.

ged,i seem to recall Maelkar puuling up behind the hill at Warwick in a qualifier when the tv coverage was not as intense! The ill fated Danny Connors went rather tamely in a qualifier at Nottingham before bolting up at the festival. All those Martin Tate horses being plotted up just made the sport so much more interesting than multiple owned entries in todays handicaps.

That PU at Warwick was the previous season and the stewards did enquire as he was favourite - according to Timeform, "trainer reported the horse was suffering from a pulled muscle."

He didn't run again that season (1988/89) and the Nottingham race was his first run of the 1989/90 season.

You could always spot a properly shrewd trainer - they were the ones who won the qualifiers for the Coral Golden Hurdle final. Those were the races to have a go in, on the basis that everyone else would be stopping theirs.

At least that's what Eddie Fremantle used to say. He also used to take a keen interest in the Wood Ditton at this time, going through the declarations the evening before on the train back from Devon & Exeter. The reasoning was that we'd be seeing all those Wood Ditton runners at Devon & Exeter in 12 months' time.

Danny Connors in 1991 one of the best laid out Pertemps winners i have seen.

Sadly died at Kelso

I think shorter than 1.05 reg cruel very cruel.

with regards the pertemps, a few years later when Tindari won, I seem to recollect an irish horse travelling really well before falling a couple of hurdles from the finish. it then went on to run in the County Hurdle where it was a fast finishing second coming from nowhere up the hill. it never fulfilled its promise for the small trainer who had him. may have been steel something or something steel.

Steel dawn

cheers foxy that's the one.

3rd in the county hurdle behind dizzy

ah right, I though it was second. thanks

Correct TheAnorak, there was an enquiry and the explanation was noted I think. As for Danny Connors I saw him win at Chepstow I think before Christmas and told myself he would win at the festival. I bought a brand new Nissan Primera with the winnings and felt really smug for a while!

The race he came down was in those days the hamlet cigars final.

so not the pertemps back then but the same staying handicap hurdle

yes NWK a different game back then

Oh yes the same race just a different name.

thanks foxy "happiness is a cigar called Hamlet, the mild cigar from bensons and hedges"

have to admit I cant remember the race being sponsored by them back then, every day is a learning day

running twice in the same festival seemed to more prevalant back then, would that be fair to say?

Your old enough to get the advert spot on

One of the best races I ever saw at the festival was in the stayers hurdle in 96 between cyborgo and mysilv two days after mysilv had finished 6 th in the champion hurdle.

The Rose Ravine and Crimson Embers stewards was epic when one of the port swillers said he did not realise that they were in the same ownership! Clearly the colours must have looked a bit bleary after a bottle of Sandemans. There are other Ports on the market.

Generosa ran a cracker in the Coral Cup final in 1999 having won the finale (Stakis) on the opening day under Stormin Norman.There was a jockey change for the Pertemps which I'm convinced cost it the race.

Yes now we know a farcical decision it would have been 1.01 on here

In the then and now spirit of the thread I do think the stewarding has improved dramatically up to the present day. I do abit of running about at 2 west country courses and have some indirect contact with them and have to say they are very professional and dedicated and imo 95% in their decision making regarding enquiries. Probably because the rules have been simplified to help them!

3rd in the county hurdle behind dizzy

Dizzy (subsequently fell and died just a month later at Ayr) was trained by the late Peter Monteith who sadly took his own life just over 9 years ago

February Week Four

The week commencing Feb 19, 1990, would have been one keenly anticipated by NH enthusiasts, with a sequence of meetings offering opportunities for Cheltenham bound horses. Several factors have since come together to either eliminate or reduce the importance of this week as far as Cheltenham is concerned nowadays, aside from the obvious reluctance to run any race of significance at a midweek meeting.

My memory may be at fault here and I haven’t found any way to confirm the facts, but I believe that only the Champion Hurdle and the Gold Cup would have had their initial entry stage prior to this week, and I’m quite sure that thirty years ago, the handicap entries were made the week before the Festival. Now we have almost all the entries made early, and I’ve no idea who this is supposed to benefit, as the result is hundreds of multiple entered horses, leaving punters none the wiser than they were in 1990. I also feel that having the handicap entries made three weeks ahead of the meeting, has discouraged trainers from running during this particular week, for fear of either raising their handicap mark, or dropping it to a level that would eliminate them from the Festival races.

But back to 1990, which offered these chances to see genuine Cheltenham ‘trials’ every day:

Monday        Fontwell         National Spirit Hurdle         Vagador bt Beech Road

Tuesday       Huntingdon       Chatteris Fen Hurdle           Royal Square

Wednesday     Warwick          Coventry City Trial Hurdle     Run For Free 
                               Highfield Road Nov Chase       Party Politics bt Garrison Savannah

Thursday     Wincanton         Kingwell Hurdle                Kribensis
                               Jim Ford Challenge Cup         Cavvies Clown
 
Friday          Kempton         EBF Novice Hurdle             Forest Sun
                Kelso           Hunter Chase                  Call Collect

The week was completed by still familiar meetings at Haydock and Kempton. The latter has barely changed at all, still including the Dovecote Novice Hurdle, the Adonis Hurdle (then the Tote Placepot Hurdle), the Racing Post Chase (whatever that’s called now) and the Galloway Braes Novice Chase, that was renamed in memory of Pendil. The only real change is the switch of the Rendlesham Hurdle from Kempton to Haydock. In 1990, the Haydock meeting was run one week later than Kempton, now it’s one week earlier - another switch that I suspect is designed to fit around the desire of trainers not to run too close to Cheltenham.

So midweek, we saw four 1990 Festival winners (and remember there were only 18 races then) - Garrison Savannah, Kribensis, Forest Sun and Call Collect. Vagador and Royal Square completed a double for Mark Perrett and Guy Harwood, and Cavvies Clown was a fourth winner of the Jim Ford for David Elsworth, who also had a sequence of four consecutive winners in the Kingwell Hurdle ended by Kribensis.

I mentioned the duel between Party Politics and Garrison Savannah in an earlier piece this month - I was at Warwick that afternoon and the race made a lasting impression, with both horses high on my list thereafter. Taking the liberty to include a personal anecdote, I made a visit to the IJF facility called Oaksey House in Lambourn a few years ago, and had the good fortune to find myself talking to the lad who did Party Politics at the yard of Nick Gaselee, introduced to me then simply as Jumbo. Well Jumbo remembered that race just as clearly as I did and recalled the pleasure he and his colleagues had in the pub that evening having put one over the Pitman lads. Garrison Savannah was the 2/1 fav that day and Party Politics, despite his earlier course success, was sent off at 25/1, so as Jumbo told me, although he wasn’t a punter himself, there was enough cash to hand to make it a memorable session!


Result of the Week

Wed  Feb 21st     Catterick     Aysgarth N H Flat Race     

Mudahim     P Mcdermott (7)           Trained by David Wintle


This was the beginning of a long career under rules, that culminated with a win in the Irish Grand National. Mudahim didn’t have much luck in his three runs in bumpers, as he ran into a future Champion Hurdle winner, Flakey Dove, on debut - and a future Gold Cup winner, Jodami, on his third start, with this win sandwiched between those two races. Another legendary NH performer, but for totally different reasons, made his debut in this Catterick bumper, finishing a distant last - Quixall Crosset.

By the time Mudahim started out over hurdles later that year, the owner had moved him to Chris Broad. After falling at the last when leading at Stratford, he proved a consistent performer, reaching a useful level of form when winning the Polycell Hurdle at Chepstow, the weekend before the 1991 Festival. Chasing had always seemed likely to be his game though, and when eventually given the chance, he won four ordinary novice chases late in 1993, not something that’s allowed in 2020, when horses are forced into handicaps or Graded novice races after two wins. In the last of those he beat Earth Summit by 25 lengths at Chepstow!

The following season, his jumping went to pieces and he returned to hurdling, with considerable success, taking the Premier Long Distance Hurdle at Haydock in January 1995, then winning the Cleeve Hurdle by 7L a week later. With his confidence restored, he improved steadily over fences, finishing second to Lord Gyllene in the Uttoxeter National Trial before winning the Racing Post Chase and the Irish National early in 1997.
Sadly for his original owner, Keith Bell, and for Chris Broad, those successes came in new colours and for the stable of Jenny Pitman, having changed hands for 26,000 gns at Ascot sales in June 1996. Injury curtailed his career after that, and there was just a brief campaign, now trained by Philip Hobbs, that ended with an unseat at Bechers on the first circuit of the 1999 Grand National as a 13-y-old.

There were two other bumper winners that week who had high class careers over hurdles, Cab On Target and Ruling.


Video of the Week

The closing stages of the Kingwell Hurdle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEdK2HibKxI

But the thing to note is the number of people lining the rails, part of an official crowd that day of 4,987. That hasn’t been matched since and only once since the meeting was moved to Saturday has it come close. On February 19th, 2005, there was no other NH racing further south than Uttoxeter, and Wincanton also had an extra race, with the rescheduled Grade 2 Kingmaker Novice Chase. That attracted 4,704, but now they struggle to get 3,000. I’m sure that the increase in the number of handicaps from one in 1990, to five now, has had no bearing on that decline in the attendance!

Did Amanda Perrett occasionally ride vagador?

I know mark rode it when winning the supreme novice hurdle.

You're stealing my March plot line Foxy. Yes, she did ride Vagador in the 1990 Champion Hurdle, as Miss A Harwood, as that was before her marriage to Mark. She'd also won an amateur riders flat race on him at Newmarket as a 3-y-old.

Very careless of me to say Amanda Perrett rather than Amanda harwood sorry anorak for the March plot.

That was some weeks racing I remember the Warwick fixture I never missed it when it was midweek the giant party politics and many other good horses ,it odd really with all the money spent nowadays there seems to have been more good horses about back then,possibly rose tinted glasses.

I rated vagador and you have reminded me who rode the horse in the champion hurdle and for that reason you couldn’t back it as the thought of a lady jockey riding the winner of a championship race was unthinkable,I would have no problem now backing a horse with a certain lady rider on board in any race.

In the end I seem to think vagador ran really well.

Thanks for putting this thread together Anorak. I have recently got hold of some Odds On Magazines I don't know what happened to mine. I'm just reading Playing The Percentages in your Lateral Punting pieces.

Last week someone on Twitter asked what we need to do to improve racecourse attendances. I suggested moving some meetings back to weekdays, I believe proper racing fans would go and see class horses during the week whereas on a Saturday we have 3 good meetings clashing with each other for people that are not there for the horses.

I'm sure that Thursday Wincanton meeting was televised by C4 at some point in the early 90s.

When alderbrook won the Kingwell it was definitely on c4

Agree with your opinion about getting better racing on midweek especially in the winter.

mark perrett was my fav jock of the 80s over jumps, had great wins on kings curate, vagador, run for free, beau ranger and many others...those of us who go racing would all love to see some of the races which have been shuffled to the weekend anonymity returned to their traditional spot, as I've said many times (but no one on top listens - how can we get them to see sense??) the now typical saturday crowd wouldn't know the difference between the tommy whittle chase or the rous selling stakes

Kings Curate, what a lovely horse he was, trained by Stan Mellor if i remember rightly,
Stan never got enough credit for being a top jockey and trainer.

March Week One

In 1990, this was the week commencing Monday Feb 26th, through to Saturday March 3rd. This year, thanks to the Leap Year extra day, it runs Feb 23rd to 29th, but I’ll stay with the option of using the Saturday date in 1990 as my base.

The first two days of the week in 1990 saw all the meetings abandoned due to cold weather. Rather ironic that the courses mostly now have covers to protect against that, but are still vulnerable to incessant rain. On Wednesday, Wetherby went ahead, but gave up after three races, although I don’t know the reason - snow seems the most likely explanation.

Thursday at Ludlow on March 1st, 1990, provided something not often seen now, an eight race card with two divisions of a selling hurdle. In total that afternoon they fielded 117 runners and I doubt if you’d get too many modern jockeys volunteering to ride in a sixteen runner novice chase round Ludlow.

The week ended with the then familiar two day meetings at Haydock and Newbury, the Haydock Saturday card being the one now almost entirely moved to a slot two weeks earlier. Newbury staged the 3M Philip Cornes Saddle of Gold Hurdle Final, a race won that year by Miinnehoma, who beat Remittance Man by 12L. Who’d have guessed that in a 3M novice hurdle, a future Grand National winner would outstay a future Arkle winner?

Haydock had the Greenall Whitley Gold Cup, the Victor Ludorum and the Timeform Chase on a top quality card, but none of the winners that year (Rinus, Ninja, Tartan Takeover) stir any memories for me. There were also minor meetings at Hereford and Market Rasen that Saturday, and what jumps off the page looking at all the results, is how many horses ran on March 3rd before going on to run at Cheltenham ten to twelve days later.

From Newbury, Commandante won a 2M 4F novice chase and went on to win the Arkle. Vestris Abu was beaten 1/2L in the Victor Ludorum and he’d already run twice in February in Ireland, but still came out in the Triumph to finish 4th, At Market Rasen, Sire Nantais, who already won three novice chases in December for Pipe, hacked up at 4/1 on in a 2m 5f novice, but found the Cheltenham fences a tougher proposition in the Arkle. It was not just over here either, as Kiichi won a 2M Listed Chase at Naas that afternoon before coming over to finish second in the Arkle. Were the horses tougher, were the trainers bolder, did Cheltenham mean less - whatever the reason, racing is the poorer for the reluctance to compete in the run-up to the Festival.

But my favourite on this list is a handicap chaser who won at Hereford, called New Halen, a horse who deserves to have his full story told. He came to the UK as a 7-y-old maiden, to be trained by A P (Tony?) James in Herefordshire. His early efforts were far from encouraging, with three UR in his first six runs for the new stable. By the end of the 1988/89 season, he’d run 27 times without success, all but two of those over fences.

In the 1989/90 season, he finally broke his duck in a Warwick novice chase, followed that with a series of placed efforts, before winning two handicap chases at Wolverhampton and Hereford. He then had a break over the winter, returning to win this novice chase at Hereford, his first success on soft ground. With those four wins under his belt, it was presumably a case of ‘nothing to lose’ when he was entered for the Mildmay of Flete Handicap at Cheltenham. On the day he was running from 18lbs out of the handicap, reduced by the 7lb claim of his now regular rider, Eamon Tierney, who had been in the saddle for all his four previous wins.

The opposition included plenty with Cheltenham experience, including the favourite, First Bout, the 1985 Triumph Hurdle winner, Oregon Trail, the 1986 Arkle winner and Observer Corps, who beat Norton's Coin by 8L in the 1989 Cathcart Chase. It made no difference, as New Halen won in style by eight lengths, returned at 66/1, probably the most amazing result I ever saw in a Cheltenham Festival handicap.

On a personal note, it was also a memorable race for me, as I had my banker of the meeting in the field for the Mildmay of Flete, a horse called Aughavogue. I’d been present for all three of runs that year prior to the Festival, and had become convinced that this was the race his connections had as their prime target. I seem to be alone in this conviction, as he was freely offered at 14/1 on the day, at which price I invested £500 - the eventual SP was 10/1.

It looked an excellent bet as he jumped the third last tracking New Halen and still travelling very easily, but a few strides after the fence, the jockey pulled him out of the race and quickly dismounted. Impossible to know if he would have won, and if you know where to find a film of the race, please don’t tell me!

New Halen wes raised 30lbs for that win, but the improvement was genuine and he returned the next season to win first time out at Stratford, and he followed that with a third in the Mackeson, fifth in the Hennessey, and wins at Wolverhampton on Boxing Day and Cheltenham on New Year’s Eve to complete a memorable 1990. He had his final race at Warwick as a 14 year old and retired with a career record of 12 wins over fences from 78 starts.


Result of the Week

Sat  Mar 3rd    Haydock    Cellar 5 Novice Hurdle     

King’s Curate       S Cowley          Trained by Stan Mellor

This was the first win of his career and it came just 374 days before his greatest moment, the success in the 1991 Stayers Hurdle. That was a gruelling contest and from my connection with the stable at the time, I was aware that the jockey, Mark Perrett, feared the horse would never be the same again.

The following season was one of the driest winters ever across England, and racing was regularly taking place on good to firm even in December and January. That sort of ground was no good to the big heavy-topped King’s Curate and desperate to find races, Stan sent him three times to race at Ayr. He won the first time, a moderate contest in which he started 3/1 on - and he followed that with a decent second to Jodami in a Grade 2. But even Ayr, so often bottomless in mid winter, was only producing good going, and a third visit in April was disappointing. After that he was off the track for 21 months, and during that time, the owner moved the horse to Martin Pipe. He ran five times for him in 1994, but after a promising return in the Warwick National, his jumping became erratic and he fell in three of the other four. The fall in the fifth of those races at Haydock proved fatal.

A sad end for a smashing horse, and ultimately, it was the one he beat at Cheltenham, Run For Free, who had the top class chasing career that had looked likely for King’s Curate.


Video of the Week

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftd_8VndYB8

The final circuit of the Saddle of Gold Final 1990. Apart from the race itself, a reminder of the days when Newbury wasn’t just a green oasis in the middle of a modern housing estate. Note also the long since moved ‘cross hurdle’ halfway round the final bend.

Remember New Halen winning,it was the last race of the day and we were halfway out of the course and remember thinking how on earth could that win.

New Halen's trainer was Paul James. He also had a super staying handicap hurdler called Petty Bridge. New Halen had been a right rogue until they switched to kicking him on from the front, and the horse never looked back.

I had £10 EW at 100/1 New Halen on my Ladbrokes credit a/c. Had to be a credit bet, as I certainly didn't have a score to spare in cash after the results that year. Watched it in Brian Dite's pokey little old shop at the top of Wincanton High St. I remember cycling home praying I didn't have a fatal accident before I got the cheque.

Victor Chandler did even better and had a hundred monkeys each way twice on the rails, for much the same reason I did (we compiled our own speed figures).

Chandler's New Halen punt in his own words:

WE ALL love backing big-priced winners for fairly obvious reasons and I do not think I will ever emulate what I achieved with the help of New Halen at the Cheltenham Festival back in 1990.

Two favourites and two second bests including Kribensis in the Champion Hurdle had obliged on the first day and we were some way behind the eight-ball after Regal Ambition, the 3-1 market leader, had trotted up in Wednesday's opener and Barnbrook Again had justified odds of 11-10 in the Queen Mother Champion Chase.

The tide then started to turn the layers' way with winners at 20-1, 12-1 and 40-1.

The bookie chaps were calling their staff on first-named terms - always a sign that they are winning - and my speed-figure boys had highlighted the chance of the outsider of the field in the concluding Mildmay of Flete Challenge Cup. I instructed one of my outside men, Tommy Lawrence, to put pounds 1,000 each-way on the selection and saw him scurry off to the lower end of the members' rails to get the wager on - I believed he might secure some 100-1 about New Halen.

Neal Wilkins, now UK PR manager for Victor Chandler, recalled: "In those days I was the senior starting price reporter for the Press Association and I remember asking Tommy what he was backing. He showed me his twist card with two bets of pounds 5,000 to pounds 500 each-way on New Halen.

"I informed him that he had taken seriously under the odds before suggesting that he put an extra nought on the win figure!"

New Halen was running for the 14th time that season and had not had the ideal preparation for a festival winner, having raced four times the previous August, but he certainly was game and after leading to the sixth fence he regained the lead at the tenth and was clear jumping the last. He ran on like a lion up the hill to win by eight lengths with the whole of our staff going wild with delight.

There was a look of incredulity on the faces of the principals of the two firms who had taken the hit but it was probably the happiest exit for me from a racecourse. We had seriously over-stood the favourite, the one-time Triumph Hurdle winner First Bout, and had performed the doublewhammy in backing the winner for pounds 125,000. I will never forget New Halen, who raced 90 times over jumps and won 12 chases.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Horse+Racing%3A+New+Halen+lands+a+pounds+125,000+touch%3B+TRADING+POST+My...-a0176971273

New Halen

That Wetherby meeting you mention in Feb 1990 was indeed abandoned owing to snow. It also proved something of a revelation to Eddie Fremantle:

As Smiley entered the Wetherby parade ring for the Askham Bryan Novices Handicap Hurdle, we nodded appreciatively. After all, we were 'paddock judges' and reckoned we knew a horse trained to the minute when we saw one.

But Smiley's form figures of PPP - pulled up, pulled up, pulled up - were more Inspector Clousseau than John Le Carre. He was 100-1 outsider of a field of 18, and 100-1 shots don't win, do they? So I didn't back Smiley and his two-and-a-half-length win made the on-course bookmakers glow with glee on a freezing cold February day, so freezing that a blizzard meant racing was abandoned an hour later.

On the long journey back to London, I reflected on a missed opportunity. Not many horses approach 100-1, so when you fancy one, whatever the reason, you have to have something on.

It was more than seven years later that I finally nailed that 100-1 winner.

Read on for how he did it!

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2001/aug/19/horseracing.theobserver2

I used to follow New Halen over a cliff ......but recall not backing him at the festival as he had no chance.

It was the Hereford novices' chase which was the key. This was a horse who'd been running round the gaffs for years, had run dozens of times without winning, and had a reputation for being reluctant to race and refusing point-blank to put his head in front. Suddenly, after all those years, he was jumping for fun out in front, and when he was headed coming out of the back straight in that Hereford novices chase he rallied like a tiger to beat some decent horses.

More to the point, if you were the kind of Form-Book obsessive who rated every race from standard times (which was possible in those days, with so much less racing), the time of the race was lightning compared to that of Fu's Lady in the other chase on the card. And Fu's Lady (a beautiful big dark bay mare) was a Martin Pipe front-runner, so she wouldn't have been hanging about. Even now, you can see Tony Harbridge's Topspeed figure for the Hereford race (117) and compare it to the mark New Halen ran off at Cheltenham (119), and it's puzzling how the horse was ever 100/1. These days a couple of quid might have been available at that price overnight, but I think he would have been nearer 33s overall, even on here.

Having been away since Christmas it was a pleasure to come back to such an absorbing thread.

In terms of the various points made regarding the difference between crowds then and now, my own experience is that then you were allowed virtually anywhere on the racecourse, many people with a love for the equine rather than simply gambling, would watch from down the course. That pleasure has been completely removed now and the horse and the spectator rarely get within 100yards of each other. The thrill of the action has completely gone. No wonder those that enjoy the spectacle don't bother to attend any more.

I took great pleasure from the various mentions of Mark Perrett. One of my all time favourite jockeys and the most underrated in my time.

I share that opinion of Perrett, and I suspect underrated because he never pushed himself forward. In fact, I've never met a jockey so laid back before or since, and if you see him nowadays in his role with the stable, he still looks as if he's half asleep the whole time.

I wonder how many remember that he rode for four years on the flat in the early 90's, and may well be the only jockey ever to win at Royal Ascot and the Cheltenham Festival on the same horse. That was Balasani, winner of the 1993 Ascot Stakes and the 1994 Stayers Hurdle.

Operating under both codes also gave him the rare double of riding a winner for Dick Hern and Henrietta Knight, which gives an indication of how widely his talents were appreciated.

Well said, loper.

I always enjoyed going in the middle at most racecourses but times have changed your not welcome there ,two seasons ago me and my wife were marched off the middle by heavy handed security at Warwick in fairness to the racecourse manager he was very apologetic about the embarrassment we were caused and looked after us at a future fixture.

There are thankfully some tracks that don’t have a problem with it Ludlow and Worcester fall into that category as does Fontwell.

Cricket loper?

March Week Two

Or as it was then, just the plain ordinary week before the Cheltenham Festival. No preview evenings, no stable tours, no press days, no blogs on bookmaker websites, indeed no websites at all. Very few early entries, very few Irish trained entries, almost no doubly entered horses, just a simple clarity about which horse would run in which race.

In 1990, the week began on March 5th with the all hunter chase card at Leicester (actually there was one amateur riders handicap in the middle), where racegoers were treated to the presence of great veterans like West Tip and Lean Ar Aghaidh, as well as the first win under rules for Teaplanter.

That came in Div 2 of the Garthorpe Hunters Chase over 3M, and Teaplanter scored by 30 lengths, a margin he repeated several times subsequently in his long career. This win was the first of nine from his next ten starts, a sequence broken only by an UR in the Cheltenham Foxhunters of 1991, when he started 6/4 fav. He became a standing dish at his local track, Towcester, where he recorded nine wins from ten starts, going off at odds on in all ten of those races. The one defeat, by 1/2L, came as a 13-year-old, when he tried to demolish the second last under Ben Pollock, who had taken over from his regular owner/rider Richard Russell at the start of 1996. His career record was 24 wins from 38 starts under rules.

He ran his final race aged 14 at his beloved Towcester, going out with a win in the wonderfully named :

23rd Year of Schilizzi 1906 Sixty Years Commemorative Challenge Cup Hunters’ Chase

You don’t get races with grand titles like that anymore - if it was still being run at Towcester, I suspect it would be called the Unibet Hill Climb.

The same afternoon at Windsor, a seven race card attracted 133 runners, although the only thing of any note on the card was the appalling sequence of SP returns, which were 150%, 186%, 160%, 155%, 153%, 161% and 142%. Barry Dennis must have left before the last race (only joking Barry!).

The following day saw a Warwick card that included a Pertemps sponsored three race international jockey’s contest - two handicap hurdles and a handicap chase, each with eight runners. The riders involved were Dunwoody, Scudamore, McCourt, Dwyer, Carmody, Keogh, Stokes and Bailliez. I presume Carmody and Keogh represented Ireland and I know that Denis Bailliez was a leading French rider and I would guess that S Stokes (?) also rode across the Channel. Leaving the other four to make up two GB teams.

Anyway, the star proved to be Denis Bailliez, who won two races, including the chase on the 33/1 shot Sirrah Jay. Bailliez had ridden once before in the UK, winning a hurdle at Chepstow on Playschool in October 1984, as part of another jockey contest. I couldn’t trace any other evidence of him riding here, so he retired with perhaps three wins from five rides in the UK!

Sirrah Jay was already ten years old by then, but his best days were ahead of him and he played a significant part in establishing the career of Adrian Maguire. In the 1991/92 season, Maguire won on him five times, although two of those victories were later taken away, because Maguire had continued to claim the 3lb allowance when no longer entitled to do so, as a result of a mix up about the number of winners he’d ridden before moving to England.

His association with Sirrah Jay reached its peak when the old horse won the John Hughes Memorial (aka the Topham) at Aintree in April 1993, just six weeks after he’d been available to buy when winning a Lingfield claiming chase. He ran twice more in the race, finishing third as a 14-year-old under Lorcan Wyer (Maguire now claimed by his retaining stable, Nicholson) and then 9th as a 15-year-old, running from 34lbs out of the handicap and having the additional burden of Luke Harvey in the saddle.

After all that, the rest of the week was plain ordinary, with only the Imperial Cup on Saturday producing a memorable result - Moody Man scoring by ten lengths at 20/1 and going on to complete the double in the County Hurdle five days later.

We often hear the complaint that there’s too much racing nowadays, but my 1990 diary shows 18 NH meetings (15 turf, 3 AW) for this week, which compares to 16 NH meetings in 2020 - and two of those on Sunday. The big difference of course stems from the growth of AW flat racing, three meetings in 1990 becoming nine in 2020, mostly staged under floodlights.


Result of the Week

Sat  Mar 10th    Chepstow    Avonmouth Handicap Hurdle   

Holy Joe       J Osborne       Trained by Jim Wilson


Not an especially significant result to an ordinary handicap hurdle, but a chance to remember one of the gentlemen of the game in the 80’s and 90’s, Jim Wilson. And to note that Holy Joe left Wilson at the end of the 1993/4 season, bought by Dai Burchell at Ascot sales for 3,300 gns. Which led to him appearing in September 1994 at Worcester, the first horse ever to carry the colours of that incurable optimist Simon T Lewis, who later took out a permit to ‘train’ his own horses.

Mr Lewis may also have had a sense of humour, as one he’d acquired a full licence, his listed owners included a Mr W. E. Catstrey and Mrs S. Tickle. I suppose if you end with a career record of 23 wins from 885 runners, the ability to have a laugh is essential. I remember being present at Warwick for one of his winners, a horse called Executive Office. He arrived at Warwick with the consistent form often associated with horses trained by Lewis - PU, PU, F, PU - but proceeded to win one of the worst 0-90 chases ever staged at 50/1. The stewards invited the trainer to explain the improvement in form, but nobody ever tells them “you’re the form experts, you tell me”, so the usual line about a shorter trip and better going was used.


Video of the Week

Cheating a bit, but definitely well worth a watch to enjoy the tremendous ride Adrian Maguire gave Sirrah Jay to win at Aintree:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6wTzkkaHic