It wasn’t so much a Derby victory this year as an act of grand larceny. Aidan O’Brien isn’t just a master racehorse trainer. He is a master of psychology too. On Serpentine, a son of his first Derby winner Galileo, he put up a capable but little-known jockey who hadn’t had a winner for 260 days assuring him that his mount would last two furlongs more than the Derby distance. Emmet McNamara duly pushed Serpentine into a massive lead and the other jockeys assumed they would blow up well before the finish, just as two front runners had done earlier in the Oaks. By the time the others realised that Serpentine wasn’t stopping, it was too late. Aidan had won a record eighth Derby with a 25–1 shot and the 14 top jockeys who had forgotten that you should never underestimate a son of Galileo had serious questions to answer.
Talk of success and failure brings me to how our Twelve to Follow fared through the winter. No fewer than eight — Ard Abhainn, Battleoverdoyen, Beakstown, Champagne Well, Ecco, Lostintranslation, Oakley and Vinndication — did well enough for their trainers to run them at the Cheltenham Festival. The downside is that none of them won there although Battleoverdoyen (twice), Ard Abhainn, Hang In There and Lostintranslation triumphed elsewhere. With only five victories from 37 runs we showed a loss on a £10 level stake of more than £100. Okay, so we had twice as many second places but as Gary Player noted: ‘If you finish second only your wife and your dog will like you — if you’ve got a good wife and a good dog.’ Lostintranslation did finish third in the Gold Cup and Vinndication’s festival run makes him a serious contender there next year.
The other bonus is that keeping an eye on Vinndication’s progress introduced me to his trainer Kim Bailey’s blog, one of the most entertaining reads in racing, where horse talk is interspersed with ruminations on how caddies got their name, why receptacles for savings are shaped like pigs and some well-worn jokes: A man goes to his doctor and says he is worried he’s addicted to Twitter.
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