It helps to have a sense of humour when handling horses

Clive Cox, once a conditional jockey in Lambourn, fell at the first fence one year in the Grand National. ‘Mind you,’ he told the owners, ‘we were going well at the time.’ It helps in handling horses to have a sense of humour and there is nothing conditional now about Clive Cox’s presence at the trainers’ top table. Once again a man who struggled to make it pay as a rider is proving that he knows how to bring the best out in horses as a trainer, and it was a significant moment when Cox’s Lethal Force went to Newmarket last weekend and in the hands of Adam Kirby scored a one-and-a-half-length success in the Group One July Cup. On the hottest day of the year the gun-metal grey positively scorched the Newmarket turf, setting a new course record for six furlongs in beating James Fanshawe’s Society Rock, ridden by Kieren Fallon, and Ireland’s Slade Power with horses from South Africa, the US and Australia behind them.

One of the joys of the July course, where they really work to make racegoers welcome, is the easy access to the pre-parade ring where you can watch the handlers putting last-minute touches to their horse’s preparation. There was the trainer’s wife floating the saddlecloth on to Zanetto’s back as gently as a mother soothing a baby. Australia’s hope Shamexpress shed what appeared to be a set of equine galoshes, the bull-like backside of the South African favourite Shea Shea was bursting with muscle and the sun showed up the elegant chequerboard grooming on Hamza’s quarters as his attendant sponged out his mouth. As they filed into the parade ring proper, Aidan O’Brien’s Gale Force Ten led by a ‘lad’ built on a scale that would have qualified him to double as a nightclub bouncer, I noticed that the Bahrain-trained Krypton Factor was sensibly kept longest in the shade beside the roses.