Racing for me is all about hope, although the Irish training wizard Mick O’Toole did once declare, ‘Racing is a game of make-believe. If people didn’t have horses they thought were better than they really were, National Hunt racing would collapse.’
Two weeks ago, on a snowy morning in Stow-on-the-Wold, I was trying to keep up with David Bridgwater, as much of an action man as a trainer as he was when pumping home winners in the saddle. We bumped up to the gallops with a group of owners to watch wife Lucy, jockey Tommy Phelan and conditional Jake Hodson put a few of the inmates of Wyck Hill Farm through their paces up the stiff all-weather gallop. ‘This used to be a dirty old farm,’ said Bridgy typically. ‘Now it’s a dirty old farm with gallops. It’s only four furlongs but it’s an effing long way when you fall off at the bottom and have to chase the bastards home.’
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