Robin Oakley

Charlie Appleby is the trainer to beat

He has every chance of dominating next year’s championship

Caption: William Buick, trainer Charlie Appleby’s No. 1 rider. Credit: Tom Morgan / Alamy Stock Photo

I know what Keats was on about with his mists and mellow fruitfulness, but autumn is less of a joy when you daren’t rock up at the local petrol station with a jerry can to fill the mower for fear of being lynched by fuel-hungry vigilantes taking you for a hoarder. For me this time of year is defined more by my annual quest to bring off the autumn double, finding winners two weeks apart for the Cambridgeshire and the Cesarewitch. This year I managed two seconds with Anmaat (11–2) and Burning Victory (13–2): the dream goes on.

The Cesarewitch is my favourite, partly because it brings to Newmarket a clutch of jumping stars who fancy their chances of cocking a snook at Flat trainers in their own headquarters by taking home the prize for the 2m 2f contest that begins in Cambridgeshire and ends in Suffolk. Cesarewitch is an anglicised version of Tsesarevich, the title given to past heirs to the Russian throne. Racing folk jibing at the takeover of our major football clubs by Middle Eastern moneybags are in no position to scoff: the race got its name because the Tsesarevich Alexander, later Tsar Alexander II, lobbed the Jockey Club £300. One of those fearsomely bearded Romanovs who scowl from sepia prints, the poor chap was assassinated by People’s Will revolutionaries at their fifth attempt despite having proposed emancipation of the serfs.

The jumping brigade triumphed again this year as Nicky Henderson won with the talented hurdler Buzz, the third time he has collected the prize after successes with Landing Light (2003) and Caracciola (2008). Other National Hunt trainers who have won the Cesarewitch in the past 25 years include Jeff King, Mary Reveley, Martin Pipe, Philip Hobbs, Alan King and Willie Mullins who did so three years running from 2018–20.

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