Loyal partners

Espying Katie Walsh at Newbury with a ride for Nicky Henderson, I couldn’t help recalling one bookie’s reaction to the finish of the gruelling four-mile National Hunt Chase for amateurs at this year’s Cheltenham when she and Nina Carberry finished first and second, both earning bans for overuse of the ‘persuader’. ‘Birds first and second,’ he rasped. ‘And what about the way they used those whips?’ ‘Oh yes, oh yes,’ a gent in a camel-hair coat next to me had echoed, dreamily turning an excited shade of pink. It takes all sorts, even in a racing crowd.

Post-Festival life at Newbury, too, was a reminder of racing’s talent for renewal. OK, so neither Kauto Star nor Denman won, but in Imperial Commander we have a horse who can beat anything on the Cheltenham track. Trainer Nigel Twiston-Davies, who scores his successes unpropelled by massive financial firepower and who paraded Imperial Commander that weekend in a scorched duffel coat he had rescued from the fire, will remember the day just as much from the way his 17-year-old son Sam won the Foxhunters on Baby Run. At Newbury, Sam rode another canny race up against the pros on Banjaxed Girl.

Part of the newer Cheltenham furniture, too, is Donald McCain. His noisier father Ginger may have won four Grand Nationals but he never trained a Festival winner. Donald notched his third and fourth with Ballabriggs and the exciting Peddler’s Cross. The Cheshire trainer scored a swift double at Newbury, too, with Riptide and the gutsy mare Double Hit, the first of them ridden by this season’s revelation, Jason Maguire.

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Racing partnerships are all about loyalty and confidence. Just as Nigel Twiston-Davies and Paddy Brennan have struck up a partnership that has boosted both, so have McCain and Maguire, who was riding his 90th winner of the season on Riptide and is on target for his first ton.