Robin Oakley

Racing: Here are the ‘Twelve to Follow’ for winter

Women have some of the top-class horses — look out for those of Rebecca Curtis, Emma Lavelle, Venetia Williams

Tony McCoy riding Kid Cassidy Photo: Getty 
issue 23 November 2013

Women truly are different. Recovering in a spare bedroom from the wonders of a hip replacement (don’t ever jump on industrial-sized wheelie bins to compress the contents), I passed Mrs Oakley’s bedroom at 3 a.m. to find her light on. What was wrong? ‘I can’t get to sleep,’ she complained, ‘because I know there’s something I should be worrying about but I can’t remember what it is.’

My worry in recent weeks has taken a more obvious shape: how to explain to Spectator readers the performance of our Twelve to Follow on the Flat. You may remember (well, I do anyway) that our Twelve over jumps last season amassed a staggering profit of £430 to a £10 stake. Sadly we have fared rather less well with the summer Twelve. Between them they appeared in 49 races.

Charlie Hills’s Just The Judge won the Irish 1,000 Guineas, Ralph Beckett’s Secret Gesture was second in the Oaks, and Marco Botti’s Senafe was third in the German 1,000 Guineas.

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