William Haggas’s Addeybb heralded the opening of the Flat season by winning the Lincoln Handicap on 24 March but I find it hard to engage with racing that isn’t over obstacles until the excitement of this weekend’s Grand National is over. That said, recent devastation of the jumping programme by Britain’s monsoon season and the improved quality of all-weather racing, particularly Lingfield’s Good Friday championships, has lately given me a new interest in the contests taking place on fibresand, Tapeta and Polytrack surfaces at Lingfield, Newcastle, Chelmsford, Wolverhampton, Southwell and Kempton Park.
Kempton’s card on Saturday provided frantic finishes aplenty and you couldn’t help but feel that sap-stirring sense of renewal as ten wide-eyed two-year-olds, only four of whom had seen a racecourse before, tiptoed and skittered their way inquiringly around the parade ring before the EBF Novice Stakes. One handler whistled softly to his charge to calm him on this first day of school and jockeys vaulting into the saddle were mostly quick to give the youngsters a reassuring pat or two.
It began well for me too: prior experience is often the key to these contests and nobody produces sharper, fitter two-year-olds than David Evans, the Sid James lookalike who trains in glorious countryside beneath the Black Mountains near Abergavenny.
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