A new star in the saddle

I can always tell when Mrs Oakley has walked our flatcoat retriever. On our next outing Damson nudges my pocket every 200 yards having been encouraged to consider completion of that distance sufficient accomplishment to be rewarded with a treat (although, truth be told, it is Mrs O. who deserves the treat for three-mile dog walks just two months after breaking her hip).

Rewards were much harder-earned at Lingfield Park’s Winter Million meeting last Saturday on the all-weather polytrack surface. To my shame I had travelled there grudgingly: plan A had been to watch the mighty Energumene at Ascot, plan B to see if Bristol De Mai could do it one last time at Haydock, but both meetings were frosted off and so I settled for what I thought would be second-rate racing on the all-weather. But what the crowd got was an eight-race card with only one involving fewer than eight runners, good prize money, a series of thrilling finishes, early sight of the latest infant prodigy in the saddle and victory for a filly who could just be a rising star at four.