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The Turf

Robin Oakley

Wednesday, 30th April 2008

Twelve to follow

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. It is the usual mix of racecourse observation, the gleam in a few trainers’ eyes, and a long flight with the invaluable Timeform’s Racehorses of 2007 (available from Portway Press, 25 Timeform House, Northgate, Halifax, W. Yorkshire HX1 1XF Tel: 01422 330540; www.timeform.com) in my lap.

First, though, the accounts for the jumping season which ended last Saturday at Sandown with Paul Nicholls passing the 150-winners and £4-million prize-money marks, Ruby Walsh notching over 200 winners in England and Ireland and Philip Hobbs’s little Monkerhostin taking the last big race of the season, the Bet365 Gold Cup. Some of us had thought that the 11-year-old had lost a little of his zip. Instead, in his 49th race in Britain, he scored the biggest of his ten victories, at 25–1.

So far has the jumping game come that trainer’s wife Sarah Hobbs, a real gleam in her eye as she cheerfully slapped jockey Richard Johnson’s shoulder on the winner’s rostrum, described their season as an ‘awful one’ until the final day. Really? The yard has sent out 109 winners, amassing first-prize money of £1.4 million. But they had missed out in the prestige contests and everybody wants those big-race winners.

Me, too. Our Twelve to Follow included Osana, second to Katchit in the Champion Hurdle, and a long-range Grand National recommendation Slim Pickings (at that time 25–1), who finished fourth to give a decent each-way return. In all, the selections ran 34 times, scoring eight victories and six seconds. Our profit to a £10 level stake was £30, a better return than any sub-prime lending shark in the City would have given you.

Paul Nicholls’s Oslot provided three victories, Leslingtaylor beat the hotshot Tidal Bay to win at 5–1, though he later proved unsuited to Cheltenham, and other winners included Mobaasher, Muirhead, Osana and Nodform’s Paula. Those last two should both be effective over fences next year.

On the Flat the phenomenon so far has been the outstanding form of John Gosden’s horses. So, just to be perverse, I will go first of all for one of his which got beaten. Raven’s Pass went down a short head to Henry Cecil’s Twice Over in the Craven, but looked breathtakingly good in the Solario last year and his trainer had left plenty to work on.

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