In racing, superstitions are rife. I once saw a trainer remonstrate with an owner for displaying a green handkerchief: green, he insisted, was unlucky (although it doesn’t seem to work that way for owners Simon Munir and Isaac Souede, whose ‘double green’ colours have been carried to success in many top races). Henrietta Knight, who trained Best Mate, is famously superstitious: straw on the way is OK, but if she sees a load of hay en route to the races she’s so sure of bad luck that she’s inclined to turn back. She couldn’t bear to watch Best Mate’s Gold Cups from the stands and hid in a tent behind the weighing room.
Former jockey Sam Thomas, who’s making a name for himself as a trainer by successfully targeting big handicaps, seems to be of the Henrietta school. After he won the Ladbrokes Trophy at Kempton Park last Saturday with Katate Dori, saddling last year’s winner Our Power to be third in the same race, he revealed: ‘I’m a terrible watcher. I can’t be in the stands. I have to be pacing around. I like to have a quiet moment and get closer to the action.’
If one trainer sees a load of hay en route to the races she’s so sure of bad luck that she’s inclined to turn back
The Racing Guru and I had both backed Katate Dori and we knew more than two fences out that no more luck was needed: at that point jockey Charlie Deutsch, who seems to win a big race most Saturdays for Venetia Williams, indulged himself with a super-confident look back between his legs at the opposition toiling behind him.
It could scarcely have been a more popular victory. Both Katate Dori and Our Power are owned by Welsh plant hire supremo and Ffos Las founder Dai Walters, who suffered life-threatening injuries when a helicopter taking him and Sam to the races crashed in 2022. Asked about his recovery, the no-nonsense Walters declared: ‘My back is still sore but you’ve just got to live with it and move on. If you moan people get fed up listening. I’m happy. Sam is working so hard and I’m glad he’s getting the results. I look out of my bedroom every morning and he’s in the yard at 5.30. He deserves some luck.’
The one out of luck, as Sam considerately emphasised, was stable rider Dylan Johnston who had been given the choice between the two horses, a choice which resulted in a jockey’s share of £16,000 rather than £85,000.
Charlie Deutsch and Venetia Williams are not the only ones mopping up Saturday prizes this winter. Ben Pauling and his increasingly impressive stable number-one jockey Ben Jones won three of the seven races on the Kempton card. Our Boy Stan won the bumper after being headed and that followed a ten-length success for Bad, an Ascot faller last time. But the real eye-catcher was the four-year-old Mambonumberfive, acquired by Ben for Mal Bloodstock for €520,000 after showing form as a three-year-old in France.
At the end of racing last Saturday the Pauling yard had sent out 23 runners over the previous fortnight: no fewer than 11 of them had won, a quite extraordinary 48 per cent strike rate. Mambonumberfive, a massive 17 hands, had been pulled up on his previous run at Cheltenham and, as ever, trainer Ben was candid in his assessment: ‘At Cheltenham he did everything wrong and fell in a hole. He wasn’t fit enough: impressed by what he was doing at home, I hadn’t given him enough graft. After Cheltenham we got stuck into him. Here he kicked the first four hurdles out of the ground but got better as the race went on.’ A chaser in the making then? ‘I would say that is all he is. For such a big horse I was thinking two years down the line so this is a bonus.’
The Kempton comment which stuck with me, though, was that of Nicky Henderson after his grey Hyland, a Grand National entry, had come home 15 lengths behind Katate Dori. After checking with wife Sophie the name of his pet culinary hate, Nicky declared that Hyland had liked the soft ground at Kempton as much as his trainer likes eating kale. ‘It was foul. He’s used to bowling along in front. He had to get into a ruck. He didn’t know where he was. He couldn’t lie up with them. After a circuit it seemed like “dream over” but a circuit later it was a different story. I loved the way he kept on. If we get some good ground [at Aintree] we’ll give it a go.’ The Lambourn trainer has won pretty well everything worth winning except a Grand National and there was a real glint in his eye which encouraged me take the 50-1 available for Hyland’s National chances. There have been crazier bets.
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