Robin Oakley

The turf | 1 October 2011

Tale of woe

issue 01 October 2011

Seeing me leaving the races early one day recently a friend inquired why. ‘Got to finish some painting,’ I replied. ‘Oh, really,’ he said in surprise. ‘Do you do watercolours or oils?’ I would have said, ‘No, walls,’ but he might then have imagined I did murals, so I had to explain that, surrounded as I am by plumbers installing new heating, bricklayers repairing our chimneys and electricians trying to trace the wiring in our 1797 abode, I  have been trying to save a few pennies by  doing the home decorating.

But economies, alas, don’t always live up to the theory. As I tried to prise the lid off a fiendishly secured paint tin last week, the top suddenly flew across the room and a spume of white undercoat splashed unerringly straight into the works of the expensive sanding machine being operated by the chap stripping our floorboards. When it ceased to work within the next few minutes, I learnt that these machines cost four figures and can only be repaired a hundred miles away in Southampton. I await his bill.

Mrs Oakley’s rather unfeeling response was: ‘Stick to the day job,’ but the problem is that, racing books and this column apart, there no longer is one. So at least, I thought, I will now bet with greater caution. No more wild and greedy stabs at 20–1 shots. Be content with small gains on obvious choices. Bet with your head, Oakley, I said to myself. Don’t let your heart follow the horse that ‘owes you one’ after a previous narrow disappointment or the animal trained by a friend.

So, for a start, I reckoned that with Kieren Fallon determined to give it his best shot in his attempt to win back the jockeys’ title and going to the less fashionable meeting of the day at Haydock, I would do each-way cross doubles on all his mounts. With most available around 5–1 or better, it only needed two of his six rides to come in to be sure of some gain. So what happened? In six races he managed just two third places.

At Newmarket, John Dunlop’s Farhaan, the short-priced favourite, was all the rage to beat Aidan O’Brien’s three raiders in the first and looked impressive in the paddock, so I invested solidly, only for him to trail in fifth of six. In the next race, Richard Hughes, the jockey of the year for me, was riding Best Terms, unbeaten in four outings. Again I went with the surefire favourite, only for her to run far too keenly and come home fifth of the eight finishers.

It was some consolation, therefore, when the likable Tom Tate from Tadcaster, who had been without a winner for 71 days, won the feature event of the day, the Betfred Cambridgeshire Handicap, with the 40–1 shot Prince of Johanne. No, it wasn’t a happy ending. I didn’t have a penny on him. But it was at least a consolation when Tom revealed that the horse’s professional gambler owners, David Storey and Tony Henderson, hadn’t invested either, having been put off by the draw. Experts are fallible, too. Would the nearest and dearest of Messrs Storey and Henderson, I wondered, be telling them to stick to the day job? Thank God, anyway, for the anti-flannel merchants like Tom Tate. ‘What a nice way to come off the “cold trainers” list,’ he declared. ‘I suppose I should tell you I had laid him out all season for this, but I didn’t.’ To the predictable interview inquiry on the public address system, ‘Were you surprised?’ he simply said, ‘Yes.’ Had I had a horse to send to such a candid treasure among trainers, I would have done so on the spot. As he puts it, ‘We all live on optimism in this game.’

We keep reassuring ourselves that, despite the poor prize money, Britain still offers the best racing in the world. But what a pity that so many of the decent prizes we do have left seem to be going to those based elsewhere. Ireland’s Aidan O’Brien trained the first three home, led by the impressive Daddy Long Legs, in the Juddmonte Royal Lodge Stakes. Rodolphe Collet brought the marvellous miler Sahpresa over from France to win the Kingdom of Bahrain Sun Chariot Stakes for an incredible third year running and Ger Lyons, the up-and-coming force among the younger Irish trainers, took his first Group One when Lightening Pearl won the Cheveley Park Stakes. That was a first Group One also for the bubbling Prince Fahad al Thani from Qatar, whose Pearl Bloodstock operation is proving a real force to be reckoned with.

The Pearl–Lyons combination is one to watch. Like the long-respected veteran John Oxx, Ger Lyons is a trainer who only sends his horses across the Irish Sea when they have a serious chance. Now Prince Fahd and his adviser David Redvers are sending him a class of horses he never previously enjoyed we will see more such results. 

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