The Turf

Robin Oakley

Wednesday, 1st July 2009

Be patient

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 Two days before the big race Three Moons developed a problem and had to be withdrawn.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. ‘It was sad not to get the chance against our own age group and sex, gutting to have her go wrong so close to the race,’ Harry shrugs. But the promising filly might yet run in a British Classic, the St Leger.

Following father John and brother Ed into the training game in autumn 2006, he chose a tough time. In current economic circumstances mere survival is an achievement. But Harry is doing better than that.

His first runner, Situla, won at Wolverhampton. The useful, if quirky, Festoso (she has to be led blindfold to swim in Harry’s equine pool and insists on being accompanied everywhere by head lad Phil Wright) was the first two-year-old winner and she was third in the Group One Cheveley Park Stakes to European champion Natagora. Connections were cheered by a recent Listed win for the four-year-old over 6f at Haydock and there should be Group races to follow.

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