He didn’t quite tap the side of his nose but, looking around and dropping his voice, one of the best-connected racecourse informants I know greeted me at Cheltenham on Saturday with the news: ‘Alan King has got the sniffles in his yard.’ Striking a line through all the inmates of King’s Barbury Castle Stables on my racecard, I paused only to put a circle round Baby Mix, Paddy Brennan’s mount for Tom George in the first. ‘Paddy says this is the best novice he’s ever sat on,’ my informant had also confided.
Unfortunately, nobody had told Baby Mix, one of the ante-post favourites for the Triumph Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival in March. He fought for his head throughout, made mistakes at the fourth and second-last hurdles and slowed before the last as if he was carrying two jockeys, finishing sixth of six. I did a Lady Godiva on that one. (Optimists say she put everything she had on a horse, realists say she lost her shirt.) As for Alan King, he scored a treble with Grumeti, Bless The Wings and Batonnier. If his horses have a sniffle, I hope I catch it soon.
It was still, however, one of those glorious, emotional days peculiar to the winter sport. I have long admired Simon Hunt’s chaser The Giant Bolster, trained by the battered former jump jockey David Bridgwater. After a good showing in his prep race over hurdles at Chepstow, I was convinced he would win the Paddy Power. So was his trainer, but The Giant Bolster fell at the first, not the only occasion on which his jumping has let him down.
On Saturday in the Murphy Group Handicap Chase, rider Tom Scudamore sent him off in front.
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