With shorter days and leaves falling, I begin to itch for the more sporting, less obviously commercial world of jump racing. But Newbury’s classy card last Saturday, sponsored for the 24th year by Dubai Duty Free, proved the perfect reminder that the Flat too can provide character, good humour and success for the small battalions.
Eric Alston started as an apprentice jockey on two shillings and sixpence a week and began his training career in 1981 while a dairy farmer rising at 4 a.m. for milking. Plying his trade on the outskirts of Preston he is hardly in fashionable racing territory but anybody who loves the sport knows that he can win with cheap horses and that he has had some very decent sprinters through his hands. Remember Tedburrow, bought for £6,000, who won 21 races in the UK, Dubai, Italy and Hong Kong? Then there was Reverence who came to Alston as an unraced four-year-old and went on to earn a cool half-million.
On Saturday he brought owner-breeder Con Harrington’s Maid In India down to Newbury for the Group Three Dubai International Airport World Trophy and on ground that did not suit she came home at 12-1, half a length clear of the favourite Dakota Gold.
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