Robin Oakley

The Irish show enough enthusiasm for the ‘jumping Olympics’ at Cheltenham in March. Horses, trainers and punters come over in their hordes. For this year’s Epsom Derby it is a different matter. Two of Ireland’s leading trainers are effectively boycotting Epsom with horses which, if they were to run, would be vying for favouritism. Jim Bolger, trainer of New Approach, who has finished second in the English and Irish 2000 Guineas and who was the winter favourite for the race, says the horse will go for the Irish Derby at The Curragh rather than running at Epsom.

Nobody ever does racing-speak as well as the Irish. After his Munich recently showed improved form to win at the Curragh, the Irish trainer Eddie Lynam declared, ‘He works like a real machine at home — but until today he raced like a washing machine.’ I, too, woke up last Saturday with my back feeling as though I had been put through several cycles of an industrial-sized washing machine — the legacy of a youth misspent throwing javelins instead of reading improving books like Raceform — and if there is a time I don’t appreciate being forced to do my racing horizontally at home it is in the run-up to the Derby and Oaks. There really is no substitute at this time of year for getting to the track to see the three-year-olds in the flesh.

Experiments don’t always come off. Like the train company trying out new safety glass for drivers’ cabins. It adapted technology from an aviation manufacturer which had developed new cockpit protection against bird strikes. But when the bird projectiles were launched the mocked-up train windows shattered and the dummy driver was decapitated. In dismay, it messaged the results to the aviation specialists. Only to receive in reply the terse message: ‘Try defrosting the chickens first.’ So no experiments, then, in selecting this year’s Twelve to Follow for the Flat.

In Bucharest recently I encountered some Romanian proverbs. ‘Always eat the end of the bread: your mother-in-law will love you,’ said one. And, more to my liking: ‘Always empty the last drops out of a bottle into your glass: people will like you.’ Sometimes people in racing, facing the strains for our pleasure, find themselves tilting the bottle a little too often. It was sad for Timmy Murphy, for example, after his skilful, patient Grand National-winning ride on Comply or Die that his triumph was clouded by most commentators presenting it as a redemption from the months he spent in prison back in 2002 after drunken behaviour aboard an airliner.

It would have been nice to be at Nad Al Sheba racecourse last Saturday to see the burly, majestic Curlin obliterate the pretenders to his crown as the best racehorse in the world and saunter away with the Dubai World Cup. We only see quality like that once in a decade. Instead I was at Newbury, watching mud-splashed jockeys retreating thankfully to the weighing room like fighter pilots after a sortie, and soaking racegoers clustering ineffectually under blown-out umbrellas as the rain drove in from every angle. I was going to remark that it does not take a $20-million card for jumping folk to enjoy themselves. It is the sheer good-fellowship of the winter sport that warms the heart.

On hearing that I was off to a horse sale Mrs Oakley’s goodbye lacked the usual wifely warmth. Something a touch minatory about priorities and the need to keep a roof over our heads. Not to mention a replacement for the aged BMW. But at the first Goff’s ‘breeze-up’ auction of the year, held at Kempton Park, I was tempted. The pinhookers’ two-year-old offerings looked so much the finished article. Pinhookers back their judgment of conformation and pedigree by buying foals and selling them on as yearlings or, more frequently, by buying yearlings and selling them on six to eight months later as educated two-year-olds virtually ready to race. At a breeze-up sale you don’t just see the animals loping around a ring but going through their paces on the track.

I used to be quite keen on jogging, working on the theory that you add a minute to your life for every mile run. My enthusiasm weakened after a TV colleague pointed out that the net result of my endeavours would be an extra six months in the nursing home in my eighties at £4,000 a month. But the benefits of continued exercise, at least for those with four legs, were evident soon after 2.45 p.m. last Saturday when six game old boys came to the second last at Newbury virtually in a line, all bursting with vim and vigour and in with a chance of the prize.

My favourite, though almost inevitably apocryphal, story from the US elections so far: Hillary Clinton, on a school visit, invites pupils to question her. ‘OK, Mrs Clinton,’ says Benjamin, ‘why did you vote for the Iraq war when now you oppose it? Why did you achieve so little on healthcare reform? And why didn’t you do more about your husband’s philandering?’ As the would-be presidential candidate gulps, the school bell goes off loudly, signalling break, and everybody departs. When they reassemble it is Elmer’s turn. ‘Why, Mrs Clinton, didn’t you vote against the Iraq war? Why didn’t you do more about Bill’s philandering? Why did you achieve so little on healthcare reform?

Entering The Trainers House at Moulton Paddocks is a reminder that preparing racehorses is not a job but a way of life. In the cheerfully cluttered lobby and kitchen, framed pictures of Lucy Wadham’s winners vie for wall space with those of jodhpured infant Wadhams, either exhilarated or grimly determined, soaring over obstacles. Step up to admire the group photo of horses like Aspirant Dancer, Tealby, Pagan King and Triple Sharp, whose impressive strike rate won the yard the National Hunt Stable of the Year award for 2001–2, and you find yourself squelching in the paper loo just vacated by the latest puppy, who prefers the Racing Post to the lawn. It is an enviable lifestyle based around a comfortably sized yard housing some 25 inmates. It also comes with useful security.

Upper Lambourn trainer Charlie Mann, who was forcibly retired as a jockey in 1989 by breaking his neck after riding around 150 winners, lists his hobby as ‘having fun’. His idea of doing just that included returning to the saddle in 1994, with a licence he printed for himself (a misdemeanour which cost him a £1,000 fine) to ride his horse It’s a Snip in the Pardubicka cross-country chase in the Czech Republic, a marathon test which includes crossing ploughed fields, banks and stone walls. They were second that year: the next year they won it. Charlie’s mother was a Yorkshire showjumper who sold ponies. He never wanted to be anything but a jockey.

After Denman, the deluge. The downpour which followed the Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury reduced my notes to soggy pulp, but no matter. I will remember almost every stride. Denman’s victory, carrying 11st 12lb on sodden ground and beating a field of the best handicappers in the country out of sight, was one which will be imprinted on the inner eyeballs of everybody who witnessed it. Leg-weary horses with lesser burdens in earlier races climbed over the last few fences like slow-motion clockwork creatures. Denman, already clear of his field, soared majestically over the last two as if on springs, leaping in the process into co-favouritism with his stable companion (last year’s winner Kauto Star) for jump racing’s supreme crown, the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

It was as if we’d never been away for the Flat season. On Paddy Power Gold Cup day at Cheltenham Tony McCoy, implacable in his concentration, pale-faced as a cadaver, wearing about him an aura of resolution the way others trail clouds of aftershave, rode the first two winners. As if to remind us what we’d been missing, the double took him to his century for a season which only now starts to get full media attention.

Enough of these two-year-old babies and equine whippets racing over the length of a few suburban lawns. Not a moment too soon it is time for hardier sorts and for the winter sport, for sturdy mud-stained limbs and exhaled breath hanging in dank November air. First, though, some past business, and I fear that if I were reporting on Twelve to Follow Inc at an AGM there might be some rumblings from the floor about the chairman’s stewardship of the finances. Apologies. On the basis of a £10 level win stake the accounts show a loss of just under £100 on the fortunes of our Twelve on the Flat this year. Between them they ran on 45 occasions and were in the frame on 26 of those, a pretty decent record.

I will never agree with the video referee in England’s World Cup final, even if he produces a certificate signed by every member of the Royal College of Opticians. Though the South Africans deserved their victory, for me Mark Cueto’s effort will always be a try. But officials are not always wrong. The Newmarket stewards who the same day gave the Irish jockey Kevin Manning five days’ suspension for improper riding on the Darley Dewhurst Stakes winner New Approach were absolutely right. Yes, it was a thrilling victory from a first-class field of the horses likely to contest next year’s Classics.

‘Any fool can get a horse fit to run,’ I have been told by many a trainer. ‘It’s getting inside their minds that counts.’ Particularly with slow learners. Newbury’s card last Saturday produced plenty of traditional scenes — a Group winner for Barry Hills, the richest handicap of the day falling to Luca Cumani, a classy animal from Henry Cecil winning after a long injury break. But it also showed us how well they and some other trainers know their charges. Brian Meehan’s Fool’s Wildcat had been pleasing in his home gallops. But his racecourse figures in three attempts read 634.

Rider Mick Fitzgerald was asked by his careers master when still at school what he wanted to be. ‘I’ve half a mind to be a jump-jockey,’ he declared. ‘Good,’ replied the laconic pedagogue, ‘because that’s all you’ll need.’ Fitzgerald is actually one of the brightest men in the saddle, but though the thrills of the sport are uncontestable and the weighing-room ‘craic’ is better than in any sport you can name the teacher had a point. Jump-racing careers have a limited time span. The winners’ percentages produce less than on the Flat, and a sport which brings a fall on average every 13 rides in company with half a ton of horse does have its drawbacks.