One of the greatest parliamentary sketch-writers of all time, Norman Shrapnel, made a point of never socialising with the politicians whose performances he chronicled. ‘I was worried it might dilute the purity of my hatred,’ he explained. When writing about Turf figures, the danger is a different one: you end up backing too many horses trained by those who have become friends. One day at Goodwood recently I plunged on three horses whose handlers had encouraged me to do so and not one of the three finished in the money. But that was my fault for suspending disbelief. As the Irish trainer Mick O’Toole once explained, ‘If there weren’t a lot of folk out there who thought their horses were better than they are then racing would collapse.’
You do come to value the realists and one of those, Chris Wall, is having a splendid summer. I admire trainers with small and middle-sized yards who choose to operate alongside the big battalions in Newmarket as he does at the neat Induna Stables, which he acquired in 1992.
The son of the small-time jumps trainer Ron Wall, who advised him against a career in racing, Chris had what might be called an ideal preparation, working first for Barry Hills in Lambourn: ‘A big yard was a good place to acquire self-discipline.
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