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.
The two Haggas winners at Ascot should be worth following. Shamali, a big fellow who has an Ebor entry, tends to improve through the season while William is decidedly sweet on Aqlaam, who injured his pelvis when winning the Jersey Stakes as a two-year-old last year. ‘It’s taken him a long time to come back but he’s getting his confidence again. He’s improved again in his work (since his previous run at Ascot) and I really hope he will go forward now. It’s a hard game when a horse is talented and you can’t at first find the key.’
Our Twelve to Follow are taking time to find the key, too. William’s King’s Apostle and Mike de Kock’s JJ The Jet Plane ran in the July Cup, the speedsters’ championship. JJ finished third at 13–2 and King’s Apostle, who was finishing fast, lost all chance when the winner, Fleeting Spirit, careered across the course in the last furlong. ‘Allowed to run straight, he would have been third,’ says William, and at the 25–1 I had taken that would have done me nicely. At 6–1 or better I always back each way.
Roses For The Lady was also 25–1 when she finished second in last weekend’s Irish Oaks, which helped. The horse whom Aqlaam beat half a length at Ascot, Confront, is also in the Twelve, but again we had to be content with each-way value at 12–1. Sadly, the two-year-old No Hubris, who was highly fancied to win a Group 2 at Newmarket on Friday, injured himself in his box the night before and did not run.
Frustrating, but after a period when I couldn’t have tipped wet concrete out of a mixer, I managed to find four winners at Ascot on Saturday. Hope is riding on my shoulder again.
Comments