Bargain hunting

‘Any fool can get a horse fit to run,’ I have been told by many a trainer. ‘It’s getting inside their minds that counts.’

Particularly with slow learners. Newbury’s card last Saturday produced plenty of traditional scenes — a Group winner for Barry Hills, the richest handicap of the day falling to Luca Cumani, a classy animal from Henry Cecil winning after a long injury break. But it also showed us how well they and some other trainers know their charges.

Brian Meehan’s Fool’s Wildcat had been pleasing in his home gallops. But his racecourse figures in three attempts read 634. After the EBF Dubai Tennis Championships Maiden Stakes, however, the fierce rictus of concentration that is Brian’s racecourse face broke into a bonhomous vicar’s gleam. To aid the two-year-old’s concentration blinkers were applied for the first time and the Forest Wildcat colt scooted clear of his field in the last furlong to win comfortably.

‘Brian has always thought the world of this horse,’ said Graham Skeats, manager of Favourites Racing, ‘but he has been a very slow learner and the blinds have concentrated his mind. Jockey Jimmy Fortune thought he was a nice horse the way he lengthened and stretched.’ That maiden victory behind him, the Forest Wildcat colt (described in the racecard as ‘bay or brown’ and I’m damned if I could tell the difference any more than I can when Mrs Oakley returns from the hairdresser) could go on to better things. As a result of those first three runs, though, some of his classier entries have been scuppered. Clearly those racecourse results had been nibbling away at somebody’s faith.

Asked by the Racing Post before the Usk Valley Stud Nursery about the prospects of his Mr Keppel, Jamie Osborne declared that he was on the upgrade.