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Thursday 21 August 2008

The turf

Head over heart

I heard from a Nato general not long ago the story of two hot air balloonists in the US who got lost. They descended to check their bearings from visible landmarks and found themselves above a massive and curiously shaped building. Seeing a man crossing the car park one balloonist shouted, ‘Where are we?’ ‘In a balloon,’ the man yelled back. At which the other man in the basket stoked up the hot air and took them back up through the clouds. When his companion queried his action, arguing that their informant had been useless, he replied, ‘Oh, no. The information was short, accurate and no bloody use to anyone. That had to be the Pentagon.’

In racing, too, the best information doesn’t always come by the direct route, from a trainer on his third brandy or on a postcard from a jockey’s favourite maiden aunt. Like most in racing I wanted to see Henry Cecil win another Eclipse after all these years with Phoenix Tower. But head must rule heart in punting, and when the lady who gave me space at her Sandown table on Saturday for my haddock and chips asked me for the winner I pointed out that Aidan O’Brien’s Mount Nelson was the only Group One winner in the field.

After my failure to profit from his six victories at Royal Ascot I was not going to make the same mistake twice. O’Brien does not hesitate to run several horses in a race or to supply a pacemaker or two. Indeed there has been argument on occasion whether his jockeys have employed questionable ‘team tactics’. So it was a pretty obvious sign of the all-conquering Ballydoyle’s confidence that Mount Nelson was their only entrant for the £285,000 first prize.

More articles from: Robin Oakley | this section

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