Where would we be without ‘all-weather’ racing on artificial surfaces?
Where would we be without ‘all-weather’ racing on artificial surfaces? With Sandown’s jumping card frosted off last Saturday, I wasn’t the only one who scuttled across Surrey to Lingfield’s polytrack, where Betdaq had sponsored an extra day to keep the cash tills rolling and the internet wires humming with the bets that help to sustain our sport.
All-weather racing began here only 20 years ago, just before the Berlin Wall fell. But with an ear-nipping chill and snow still visible on the grandstand roof we still enjoyed a seven-race card.
Gone are the days when you went to Lingfield just to watch the little guys of the sport kicking sand in each other’s faces in front of crowds no bigger than a bus queue. These days top trainers, too, send their horses to the artificial tracks: Ghanaati won last year’s 1,000 Guineas on her turf debut after two prep runs on Kempton’s all-weather.
Top jockeys have found they can boost their careers by staying put at Wolverhampton, Southwell, Lingfield and Kempton rather than heading off to the sun in India or Dubai. Punters relish the greater predictability of results on the all-weather.
Tamino, the clear pick after a course and distance second, took the seven-furlong race. Trainer Paul Howling, who shares part of Henry Cecil’s famous Newmarket stables, has access to Cecil’s magnificent indoor schooling area and he noted, ‘This horse hasn’t looked back since Mr Cecil asked for a lead horse. He’s been working with his quite nice animals and it’s reinvigorated him. I think I’ll lend him another next week!’
Wunder Strike was seeking a four-timer in the mile handicap, and I invested solidly, especially when bookie Barry Dennis told us that Ladbrokes was ‘piling into the favourite’. Jim Boyle’s horses do well at Lingfield. Smoothly ridden by Stephen Craine, who had him neatly tucked in behind the leaders, he won as a favourite should.
Jim called his jockey’s effort ‘an inspired bit of riding’ and a Saturday success like that will aid the career of a jump jockey now riding unusually on the Flat as well.
Stephen, who has ridden around a hundred winners over jumps during his attachments with Charlie Mann and Donald McCain, now has 16 Flat successes to add to that total, riding for Boyle and for John Mackie, Pat Morris and Jennie Candlish. He seems to manage that tricky balance between keeping his weight low enough to ride on the Flat while maintaining the strength to ride over fences.
His Flat ambition was accelerated when two broken wrists restricted his last two jumps seasons. Is the transition hard? ‘I started on the Flat with Paddy Prendergast in Ireland so I’m not totally green. But it does take a few rides to get into the swing of it — the pace.’ There are, he says, more options on the Flat, more trainers for a start. ‘In jumping, every yard has got five or six lads looking for rides.’
And the weight? ‘Anything under nine stone I have to sweat for. I’m quite good, though Christmas messed it up a bit. But [with a gesture to the weighing room] after that a lot of the lads are in the sauna there. They’re all struggling a bit.’
The jumping flavour continued. Former jump jockey Brendan Powell’s old sprinter Peopleton Brook took the six-furlong race like a horse who will win again. Jumps trainer Neil King — ‘We don’t go Flat racing unless we have to’ — landed one handicap with Chalice Welcome, and Chris Gordon — ‘I hate the all-weather but it helps to give us a living’ — took another with Winning Show. He joked, ‘You can do anything with this horse: Flat, hurdles, chases. I might put him in a trap and start trotting.’ Now that is where I do draw a line…
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