Family affair

Dick Francis spent more than ten years gathering material for his biography of Lester Piggott, a man not famed for his spendthrift ways with cash or words. ‘I know you think Sir Ivor was the best of your nine Derby winners,’ Francis said to him one day. ‘Tell me about him.’ Piggott thought for some five minutes and replied, ‘Nice horse.’ So helpful.

The story came to mind when I picked up a racecourse whisper for the Martin Pipe-trained Nice Horse in the last at Sandown on Saturday, but when he drifted from 13–2 to 10–1 it seemed best to leave well alone. Fortunately, I sided with another French-bred import, Nicky Henderson’s Temoin. He, too, drifted in the market in the face of a gamble on Ian Williams’s Oscatello, ridden by Paul Carberry. But we will hear plenty more of Temoin. I haven’t seen such a cheeky winner in ages. Mick Fitzgerald always had Temoin, a useful stayer on the Flat, well placed behind the leaders. Two out, without the slightest effort, he closed on Oscatello. After the last he drew alongside, eyeballed his toiling rival and then, with Mick Fitzgerald still motionless, eased past him with his ears pricked in the final 50 yards. I doubt if Temoin knew he had had a race. He could be very good.

If you go back far enough in the notebook, you can always find a reason for backing a winner you have just missed and it was another Henderson runner, Tysou, who took the feature race, the Victor Chandler Chase. After his last run at Sandown behind Mark Pitman’s Dempsey, Nicky had said that what suited Tysou was a fast-run race. The Mark Pitman-trained Dempsey, carrying my money, and Paul Nicholls’s Hoo La Baloo, also a Sandown winner last time, set off in a private duel at the front which played into the hands of Tysou, who came through in the slog after the last to win by two lengths.