Robin Oakley

Advice should always be received cautiously. I have in mind the two hunters in the American woods. One fell to the ground, his eyes rolling in his head. His companion called the emergency services by cellphone: ‘I think my friend is dead. What do I do?’ The operator cautiously urged him, ‘Now, sir, let’s stay calm. Let’s first of all make sure your friend is dead.’ The line goes quiet. Then there is the sound of a shot before the caller comes back on the line to the operator, ‘OK. Now what?’ Do not cash all your premium bonds to invest on the dozen horses I am now advising for an interest through the winter.

It was one of those moments when a clunking great pile-driver comes up and thuds straight into your duodenum. I can weave through the form for a 24-runner handicap at the sputtering fag end of the season. I can summon the maths to cope with a series of cross doubles at, say, 13–8, 11–4 and, please the Lord, 33–1. But faced with columns of car specifications and model numbers on the internet when buying from a garage three hours’ drive away, I am rather less use than the village idiot. Hence the moment last week when the replacement for our 13-year-old BMW arrived and I had to telephone the saintly Mrs Oakley, who had saved for it over six years, with the uncomfortable words, ‘Darling, I have, uh, bought the wrong car.

How can Flat racing keep its public enthused when the moment a superstar emerges he is whisked away to other duties? Winning the 2000 Guineas, the Derby, the Coral Eclipse, the Juddmonte International, the Irish Champion Stakes and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, Sea The Stars gave us a glorious summer. But at only three, before you can say ‘how was it for you?’, he is off to the breeding sheds to meet a bevy of equine lovelies and racing must begin the search for the next Great One. It is as if Beckham and Ronaldo had been whisked off permanently to a life of TV celebrity shows before they had played in a World Cup, as if Botham and Shane Warne had been retired to the commentary box before ever playing an Ashes series.

It takes a lot to keep me away from Newmarket’s Champions’ Day meeting but the prospect of an hour on stage at Cheltenham’s Literary Festival with Ruby Walsh and Paul Nicholls talking about Paul’s autobiography Lucky Break (Orion, £20) was lure enough. The champion trainer’s careers master might have been surprised to find the ever-reluctant schoolboy there. When Paul said he wanted to go into racing he warned him, ‘You will never make a living out of horses.’ Uh-huh? Paul’s horses have won some £3.5 million in each of the past two seasons. The ‘lucky break’ occurred when a horse kicked out in a Devon lane in 1989 and painfully shattered Paul’s left leg.

For followers of every sport there are trigger words, often in pairs, which immediately bring great moments to life. ‘The Thriller in Manila’, Muhammad Ali’s third fight against Joe Frazier, probably does it for boxing. Any bracketing of ‘Coe and Ovett’ brings back famous finishes for athletics fans. No true cricket supporter can hear mention of ‘Lock and Laker’ without recalling the Old Trafford Test when the last-named spinner took 19 wickets — and went home to his Australian-born wife to meet the puzzled inquiry: ‘Jim, did you do something good today?’ The yellow and russet leaves still on the trees beside the A11 to Newmarket last Saturday reminded me that two words in racing hold a special magic for me.

Watch young jockey William Buick in the parade ring tipping his cap politely to owners and he looks too slight to be driving home hefty old handicappers. The pink choirboy cheeks have ladies wanting to pick up the 20-year-old and cuddle him. But like other top riders who have had those good manners and angelic looks — Walter Swinburn, Steve Cauthen and Jamie Spencer come to mind — William has had enough early brushes with the stewards to show there is nothing soft about his will to win. William was the apprentice sensation of 2007, winning the Wokingham at Royal Ascot on Dark Missile for his chief employer, Andrew Balding, and a string of handicaps for Barry Hills on The Illies.

Should we cheer him or shun him? There was nothing special about the race on Wolverhampton’s all-weather track last Friday night, a 12-furlong handicap won by Paul Howling’s Our Kes, nothing special except for the fact that the jockey on board had ridden his last winner in Britain back in July 2006, at which point his licence was suspended because police believed he was involved in a race-fixing conspiracy. The day after that case collapsed we learnt Kieren Fallon had for the second time in two years tested positive in France for cocaine use. An 18-month worldwide ban from riding followed.

Variety Club day at Sandown, a splendid tradition which raises many thousands for disadvantaged children, is always a bit of a test. That chap over there in the tailored jeans and the shark’s tooth necklace — is he the star of something I should have watched last night or just a jack-the-lad from the local out to impress his girlfriend? Generally the rule seemed to be that the deeper the suntan was the more likely it was that you were looking at a star still in work. Certainly some of them do fade. Too many of Saturday’s showbiz contingent reminded me of Gypsy Rose Lee’s comment, ‘I’ve still got everything I used to have...but it’s all just a little bit lower.

It is the weather men rather than the steaks most of us want to grill slowly over hot embers this non-barbecue summer. But there are consolation days and nowhere better to appreciate them than Newmarket’s July course. The staff are friendly. Nobody looks askance at those who choose not to wear a tie and the fillies in silky pastels are as beguilingly undercovered as those in a risqué Edwardian pencil sketch. Flowers abound beside the parade ring and unsaddling enclosure, and I have never agreed with my late mother, who used to complain of others’ gardens, ‘Marigolds, dear...so common.’ The July course has been pleasantly re-developed. But at my age not all changes are welcome.

Horses, of course, have more sense than to bet on people. But how much do they know about what is going on? Watching the contenders parading before the Betfair-sponsored King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, the richest race in the UK calendar, you could not miss the frothy sweat already streaming down the flanks of the Aidan O’Brien-trained Rockhampton. Had somebody already told him it was going to be his task to act as the hare out in front, making the pace for O’Brien’s other two stars, Frozen Fire and Golden Sword? Rockhampton did his job, but it proved not to be to the benefit of Team O’Brien, who have swept up so many Ascot prizes in recent years.

Many worry these days about the quality of British racing. Racecards are stuffed with low-rated handicaps for poor-quality animals simply to keep the betting-office tills churning. But the quality of the men and women steering them from the saddle has never been higher. You could not expect to see a better example of riding from the front than champion Ryan Moore’s all-the-way win at Newmarket last week on the top-weight Plum Pudding. Jamie Spencer’s last-gasp win at Ascot last Saturday on Secret Society demonstrated with exquisite perfection how to do things the other way.

Half an hour before it might have been Armageddon. The sky was black as pitch and the rain was bucketing down, not the happiest sound in a yard which two years ago was flooded out. But as an athletic bunch of horses jingled round the copper beech in Harry Dunlop’s trotting circle the atmosphere was all optimism. Racing is all about sudden change. It is all about might-have-beens, too, and the youngest of the three racing Dunlops knows about those already. His Three Moons was a serious Oaks contender. As a two-year-old she had run Henry Cecil’s Midday to a nostril. Two days before the big race Three Moons developed a problem and had to be withdrawn. Midday ran, and was beaten by just a head by Sariska. The dream was snatched away.

Newmarket trainer William Haggas should be one of racing’s ambassadors to the world. Win or lose he communicates pleasure. Take Triple Aspect’s victory at Sandown on Saturday in the Agfa Listed sprint. ‘He’s a really scrubby little thing and he moved to post like a goat,’ declared the candid trainer. ‘But he’s really genuine and that was a hell of a performance.’ William used to train the second horse Jargelle, said jockey Liam Jones. ‘She’s a very good filly. We won the Supersprint with her and the scorching pace she set played into my hands.’ Triple Aspect is a heart failure horse for connections. He can’t go the early pace.

The poet says you are nearer God’s heart in a garden than anywhere on earth. Goodwood on a summer day with sun gleaming off chestnut flanks, Jamie Spencer and George Baker swooping sweetly and just enough breeze to ruffle the mini skirts does it even better. Admittedly, the Almighty let me down on Saturday when I had five legs of the Placepot up and the money on the favourite in the last. But his temporary blinding of the bookies over Luca Cumani’s Ialysos at Haydock made up for it. Ialysos’s seven previous runs, in Greece, had been on sand but he had won them all and Luca is a dab hand with foreign imports, demonstrated with Falbrav and Starcraft, La Vie de Colori and Cima de Triomphe. Yet Ialysos was allowed to start at 14–1.

Mother of Parliaments? More like the Ugly Sister of Parliaments these days. But without an expenses system like a roulette wheel permanently fixed to pay up, how can the rest of us find the money to have our moats cleared and our helipad hedges trimmed? As usual the Twelve to Follow relies on a scientific mix of racecourse bar gossip, blind hope and Timeform’s Racehorses of 2008 (£75 from Portway Press, Halifax, West Yorkshire WF2 9LP). Sir Michael Stoute’s yard is stuffed with distinguished animals like Conduit and Patkai. We might get better prices though on Confront, a one-time Classic hope who made an impressive seasonal debut winning a Newmarket handicap under 9st 10lb. He’ll be weighted out of handicaps now but should still win races.

There are trainers who greet winners by noisily embracing their owners, planting smackers on everything in sight from the horse to the clerk of the course and suddenly becoming voluble blood brothers with racing writers they have previously shunned like slugs in their lettuce. And then there is John Oxx, the Irish maestro from whom a significant display of emotion is a brief adjustment of the tie knot or a ruminative stroke of the chin. After his unbeaten Sea The Stars had won last weekend’s 2000 Guineas in a thrilling race from Brian Meehan’s Delegator, Oxx was as quiet, courteous and painstaking as a Classics professor.

If she was human Rainbow View would be a stroppy teenager, chucking down her school satchel and heading straight out to the sort of club you wouldn’t want your daughter in. One word from a parent and she would do the other thing. Threaten a smacked bottom and she’d be off to the child protection officer, knowing her rights. She is a head-tossing little madam who puts the x into minx, the original wild child. But she also inspires infinite patience because her strength of will is matched with exceptional physical ability. Given the right mood on the day, Rainbow View will confirm that by winning the first fillies Classic, the Stan James 1,000 Guineas, on 3 May for her trainer John Gosden and owner George Strawbridge.

There is nothing quite like Aintree’s Ladies Day on Grand National Friday when the girls emerge from local tanning salons, whatever the weather, in roaming she-packs of wispy chiffon. No opportunity to add an extra bow or ra-ra flounce is neglected. Only the shy ones stop at bottom-hugging red satin and six-inch glitter heels. For superstructures, the motto is: ‘United we stand, divided we fall.’ One quartet pointed at my slightly jaunty red corduroys and declared, ‘We’ll have those off youse.’ Uncertain whether it was a compliment or threat, I fled. Further challenges followed. Arriving at my long-booked hotel I was met by a security guard, inquiring if I had come to buy the place. It had closed six weeks previously.

East Ilsley is the ideal English village, with a pub, a church and a village duckpond, where moorhens pick their spinsterly way across the mud fringes. Blackbirds trill a welcome from the mellow brick walls. Round the corner, past the allotments is Summerdown Stables, where a feisty two-year-old colt is banging hell out of the horsewalker as a second lot prepares for exercise and grooms empty mucking-out buckets into a trailer. The tidy yard with its brick arch and traditional stable clock is particularly friendly. There wasn’t a mucker-out or work rider from Ukraine or Swindon, Poland or Pakistan who didn’t offer a smile and a cheery good morning as the spring sun shone on the swaying daffodils.