Like most people in racing I began 2023 down in the dumps, moaning about insufficient prize money, small fields and declining crowds. Gloom only intensified with racing’s administrators, the British Horseracing Authority, yet again forced into a humiliating U-turn on new rules it had proposed governing jockeys’ use of the whip, doing so just days before the bedding-in period for their implementation began. Lions unled by donkeys once more.
In my despondency I had forgotten the actual magic of going racing but it took only a few hours at Sandown on Veterans’ Chase Day to rekindle the sheer joy of the sport and its rich tapestry of characters who will in the end ensure its survival. Although inevitably there was a success for Paul Nicholls’s well-oiled winner factory, this was a day for the smaller folk, for the little battalions who make up the warp and weft of the racing picture, for the less-rewarded stables whose roots are sunk deep into the point-to-point world.
There are not many more than a dozen horses in Pam Sly’s Peterborough yard but it was her Xcitations who collected the Unibet handicap chase by seven lengths from the Scottish raider Corrigeen Rock in the hands of amateur Jack Andrews. Both horse and rider have courage. Andrews, the point-to- point champion, is 6ft 4ins and must have the best nutritionist in Britain while Pam, Sly by name but as open-hearted a trainer as you will find, revealed that Xcitations had been lame after both his previous victories and only after a third round of X-rays had they discovered that he had been running with a fractured pedal bone. As well as being trainer and part-owner, she is Xcitations’ breeder – as she was with 2006 1,000 Guineas winner Speciosa – and Xcitations is, remarkably, the 31st of her mare Bonnet’s Pieces progeny to be a winner. The earlier 2m 4f chase, won by Certainly Red, provided another female success as she is trained at Chichester by Lydia Richards. Lydia has just nine horses in her yard and of the ten races they have contested this jumping season they have won five. Top trainers would kill for her 50 per cent strike rate.
This was a day for the smaller folk who make up the warp and weft of the racing picture
The Tolworth Hurdle, a recognised trial for the top novice hurdlers, was the Grade One feature of the day but for me the biggest attraction on the card was the Unibet Veterans’ Chase final confined effectively to 11-year-olds and upwards. It had attracted a field of 18 familiar names who have been plying their trade around the country’s jumping tracks for years. It would take pages to list all the previous victories of popular names such as Elegant Escape, Coo Star Sivola and Snow Leopardess and even longer for me to tot up how much I have lost on some of them as age has slowed their legs against younger rivals. This time the 13-year-old Wishing And Hoping, a regular at Aintree, prevailed over Ramses de Teillee to land the £50,000 prize for Mel and Phil Rowley. Phil has been training pointers from their Bridgnorth base for 15 years but Mel only acquired her licence to train under Rules in 2021. A winner at 50-1 won’t have had many backers but few will have cared: what most wanted was to cheer on an old favourite.
Talking of old favourites, where do jump jockeys go when they stop riding? Some become commentators. A few take up training themselves. Others have been known to become starters, farriers or horse dentists or to run pre-training yards teaching horses the basics. Some of the canniest now become syndicate managers and after last Saturday at Sandown you can bet that number will increase because two of the most notable victories on the card were scored by horses run in the name of the Noel Fehily Racing Syndicates. Noel and fellow retired jockey David Crosse teamed up to find a few horses and build syndicates of owners to run them. They take a look, ride them if they can and buy the ones they both like. So successful is the enterprise that they now have 26 each with ten owners and with Love Envoi, trained by Harry Fry, they already have a Cheltenham winner. She won smoothly again at Sandown on Saturday cheered on by the syndicate members and plenty of their friends and relatives who really added atmosphere.
Further triumph came with the Nicholls-trained Tahmuras in the Grade One Tolworth shouted home by the syndicateers at 5-2. ‘I love doing it,’ said Noel. ‘It gives you a massive buzz. As a jockey I loved the big days. They got me revved up but watching them makes me a lot more nervous.’ And what are they paying for these good horses? ‘Love Envoi was 38,000 guineas and Tahmuras was 67,000. That’s roughly our range but like everything the price of horses has gone up so we’re having to dig a bit deeper to get what we want.’ Whatever the price tag, operations like theirs are the future of racing.
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