Write a few books and you have to listen politely at parties as people who have never opened yours tell you, at some length: ‘I’ve always felt I had a book in me.’ Many things in life look easy until you have to knuckle down to it, hence the golfer Gary Player’s sardonic comment to someone who remarked on his good fortune: ‘Yes, and it’s strange how I’ve found the harder I practise, the luckier I get.’
Player’s remark came to mind after Jack Quinlan’s success in Saturday’s Betfair Hurdle at Newbury when he rode Amy Murphy’s Kalashnikov to a convincing victory in the Betfair Handicap Hurdle, the richest of its kind and the hottest contest yet this season. A month ago, after the pair won a Kempton chase with Mercian Prince, I wrote that the enthusiastic rookie trainer would be winning more races with Mercian Prince and with Kalashnikov and that Jack Quinlan, who rides schooling for most of the few Newmarket trainers with jumping horses, had talents beyond his high workrate that deserved more recognition.
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