Stars of the future

Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin said the other day that he had got on better first time at George Bush’s ranch than he had expected. ‘He must have thought: “What’s going to happen if he invites in a former Intelligence officer?” But Bush himself is the son of a former head of the CIA, so we were a nice little family circle.’ It reminded me of asking Tony Blair after his first meeting with Putin how it had felt doing business with a guy who had made his way in the world not as a democratic politician but as a KGB spook. ‘Well,’ mused the PM, ‘there are some advantages. It was the first of my overseas trips that didn’t leak in advance.’

In racing, too, many trainers seem to have taken their public relations training from the KGB manual, finding it hard even to confirm to the betting public the blindingly obvious. So what was good at Sandown last Saturday was to see two stars of the future emerge from yards which are bywords for civility and open dealing. In Paul Nicholls’s Kauto Star and Henrietta Knight’s Racing Demon we may well have seen the Cheltenham Festival winners next March of the Queen Mother Champion Chase and the Arkle. In bottomless ground both five-year-olds saw off top-quality opponents in a style which confirms them as stars of the future.

Kauto Star, who missed most of last season with injury, was having only his fourth run over fences in the Tingle Creek Chase, yet he jumped like a stag in the hands of Mick Fitzgerald and saw off a renewed challenge from the talented Ashley Brook in the final stages despite veering left in his inexperience. Champion jockey Tony McCoy had actually been smiling when he left the parade ring on the handsome milk-chocolate-coloured Ashley Brook, but he had the pensive look on return of someone who has been beaten by a very useful horse.