The Turf | 18 July 2009

Many worry these days about the quality of British racing. Racecards are stuffed with low-rated handicaps for poor-quality animals simply to keep the betting-office tills churning. But the quality of the men and women steering them from the saddle has never been higher. You could not expect to see a better example of riding from the front than champion Ryan Moore’s all-the-way win at Newmarket last week on the top-weight Plum Pudding. Jamie Spencer’s last-gasp win at Ascot last Saturday on Secret Society demonstrated with exquisite perfection how to do things the other way.

Famous for his late-finishing thrusts, which look brilliant when they come off and earn him punters’ brickbats when they don’t, Jamie made good headway mid-race then sat behind the leader until inside the final furlong. Despite his mount then being slower than expected to respond (he had lost a front shoe during the race), Spencer galvanised Secret Society to win it in the final strides. He then rode a similar race on Soul Heaven to take the nursery by a neck.

But it is not just the fashionable names who are delivering this season. In their mid-forties, the Hills twins, Richard and Michael, both of them jockeys who educate a horse as well as riding it, are riding better than ever. At Ascot, Richard kept William Haggas’s Aqlaam close up with Confront to draw Spencer’s expected finishing sting on Cesare, and won the Group 2 Summer Mile neatly by half a length. Earlier he had taken the handicap with another William Haggas horse, the improving Shamali, on whom he showed great coolness when the runner-up went clear three out.

Jimmy Fortune, on Desert Kiss in the fillies’ handicap, also showed how to beat a Spencer swoop, going off in front at just a steady pace then turning the screw from two furlongs out so that Jamie could never quite get to him on the held-up Alsace Lorraine.