Punting at Kempton Park in winter I have one basic rule. Take a long hard look at anything Nicky Henderson is running before you consider backing anything else. His record at the Thameside track is extraordinary. But those who had taken the odds of 3–10 on his Tetlami in the novice chase on Saturday missed a few heartbeats on his way to victory. Tetlami’s clumsiness at the third fence left Barry Geraghty perched halfway up his neck with one leg out of his irons. As they made their way towards the next there was an edgy couple of hundred yards as he struggled frantically to get his foot back into the hole. Back on balance in the straight, Tetlami’s class eventually showed but there was, I thought, a touch of bashfulness about Barry’s comment to the owners on dismounting: ‘It’s good to have a bit of excitement.’
It reminded me of the time he attempted a Frankie Dettori-style flying dismount from Moscow Flyer at Cheltenham and almost ended up on his backside. ‘No more than five for execution,’ said trainer Jessica Harrington tartly. This time Nicky Henderson agreed with me that Barry deserved a nine for gymnastics, whatever you gave him for the rest of the ride. ‘A good thing it didn’t happen at the second last,’ added the trainer. ‘There wouldn’t have been time then to go faffing around looking for his iron.’
Almost inevitably, the big race of the day, the Lanzarote Hurdle, went to the Henderson-trained, Geraghty-ridden Oscara Dara. Always the plan from the master-trainer? What do we mere mortals know: after the race, Nicky revealed Oscara Dara had only run because he hadn’t liked his fencing over the bigger obstacles at Plumpton and had been even less impressed when schooling him over them at home two days before Kempton. A rapid refamiliarisation with the hurdles programme followed in the next 24 hours and there he was with another big Saturday winner. Oscara Dara will now stick to hurdles for another season before an intensive jumping course in the summer. Says his trainer, ‘No point in bullying him over fences for now,’ and I’m taking the 10–1 for the Coral Hurdle at Cheltenham. Coincidence backers who went for the 5–1 Oscara Dara because he was owned by BG racing were lucky: in fact the BG stands not for Barry Geraghty but for Beare Green, the village where most of the owners come from.
If Nicky and Paul Nicholls continue to dominate the trainers’ table, we are at least seeing more new names this year among the winning jockeys. Coming up behind McCoy and Dickie Johnson are coolly capable young riders like Nick Schofield. One former champion jockey told me last year, ‘Back Schofield to succeed McCoy as no. 1,’
and he collected his first Grade One at Sandown only the previous Saturday. Another rider who has caught my eye this year is Richie McLernon, the deputy to McCoy in Jonjo O’Neill’s yard who is seemingly being entrusted with some better-class rides.
Riding Cloudy Copper for Jonjo, McLernon judged his effort to perfection, asserting in the straight and coming away with Alan King’s Hold On Julio for the rider’s ninth victory of this campaign. ‘It’s good to have a Saturday winner,’ he said of the novice hurdle winner. ‘He settled well off such a slow pace. He’s good, isn’t he?’ So he is, and as a point-to-point winner destined for a career as a three-mile chaser, Cloudy Copper’s speed was an indication of class.
McLernon might have had another even more spectacular Saturday winner. In the Lanzarote he had come with a wet sail on Captain Sunshine after being only tenth round the final bend and was closing on the leader when he crumpled at the last. There is a good pot to be won with him provided he has done himself no harm.
Another young rider who would be challenging for honours now were it not for some hideous bad luck is Ian Popham. Back in 2011 he fractured his pelvis in several places in an accident on the gallops. Having after many months completed his rehabilitation he got back on the racecourse only to have a fall and fracture his pelvis once again in October. He came back last week with a winner at Catterick, and at Kempton demonstrated his fitness once more on Caroline Keevil’s Bally Legend. Both trainer and owner Brian Derrick paid testament to how hard Ian had worked to get back to race fitness, giving him ten out of ten for effort.
Watch, too, the 7lb-claiming amateur Nico de Boinville, attached to the Henderson yard. He won recently on Petit Robin for Nicky and at Kempton he scored again on fellow Lambourn trainer Noel Chance’s Brackloon High, by no means the easiest of rides as he runs in snatches. Noel, who trained two Gold Cup winners, still enjoys a punt but he confided, ‘It was the first time he’s run I didn’t lump on him.’ Luckily I did have a bit of the 6–1.
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