I could not understand on Saturday why a fairly standard Newbury card had brought so many vehicles on to the approach roads. All was explained when I saw a group of merry ladies pulling knickers out of their handbags and comparing them. The old Welsh belter Tom Jones was appearing on stage after the day’s racing and he still gets ladies of a certain age waving their underwear at him. I do hope, though, that on such a breezy day those were spare pairs on display.
The so-called ‘Party in the Paddock’ went with a zing, rather more so than the dinner party reported on last week by one of our favourite guests. On that occasion the claret had proved rather better than the conversation. Worried that her husband had gone missing halfway through, she found him in the next room, fast asleep. When she urged him, ‘For God’s sake, get back in there and be entertaining,’ his response was, ‘Get your handbag, woman. I can’t take any more of this, we’re going.’ At which point it was none too gently pointed out to him that he was at home and hosting the occasion…
Racing dinner parties rarely disappoint, though I am still sorry I wasn’t at the Lambourn occasion of which I heard tell when writing about the village of sin. The subject had turned to moral standards and sex before marriage. One male guest turned to another declaring, ‘I never had sex with my wife before we married, did you?’ To meet the response, ‘I’m not really sure. Remind me of her maiden name.’
Lambourn trainer Barry Hills, whose biography I wrote last year, retires this week, and it was son Charlie, his successor, who was at Newbury to saddle up Barry’s last winner at their local track, the impressive fillies maiden winner Gray Pearl. Barrington W. Hills himself, anticipating the handover a touch, was away grouse-shooting. When I reminded Charlie that his father had been inclined to couple any references to his possible retirement with the story of football manager Brian Clough’s purchase of the midfielder Dave Mackay, Charlie’s response was: ‘Who was Dave Mackay?’
Mackay, for younger readers like Charlie, was the Tottenham Hotspur and England star, by then a veteran, and his then manager greeted Clough’s interest with the comment: ‘What do you want him for, he’s got no legs any more?’ To which Clough replied, ‘I’ve got plenty of young players who can run around the pitch. What I need is someone to stand in the middle and shout at them where to go.’ Something tells me that Charlie, the antithesis of the grumpy image his father has cultivated for so long, will not lack for advice. Good luck to them both.
Along with the partying there was some decent racing at the Berkshire track, and John Gosden’s Fencing was cut to just 16–1 for next year’s 2000 Guineas after winning the Denford Stud Stakes over seven furlongs in the hands of William Buick. There were raised eyebrows from the trainer when bookmakers also rushed to make George Strawbridge’s colt joint favourite for the Derby. He reckons ten furlongs, not 12, will be Fencing’s distance but has always liked the horse, who was sent on by Buick after a messy early pace. Fencing and the third in the race, Sheikh Hamdan’s Leqqaa, were by coincidence brought up in the same paddock in Pennsylvania. ‘Lucky he brought the right one home to us,’ said John.
Trainer Richard Hannon was not surprised, though, when Census, yet another star for Harry Herbert’s Highclere syndicates, won the Geoffrey Freer Stakes and was immediately made a leading fancy for this year’s St Leger. The three-year-olds are having it all their own way at the moment and Census beat his Ascot conqueror Brown Panther with the two well clear of their field. Jockey Richard Hughes, whose Racing Post column reveals a jockey who thinks and writes as well as he rides, had wasted to just 8st 6lb to ride Census. He declared of the fast-improving colt, ‘I thought we had a Leger runner but now we have a horse who can win it,’ while satisfied father-in-law Hannon commented, ‘Richard can treat himself to a Chinese or an Indian after that.’
Star of the day, though, was Marco Botti’s Excelebration, who has twice finished behind the remarkable Frankel this season but has not let the experience of taking on such a machine demoralise him. A star miler in his own right, the best horse the young Newmarket-based Italian has yet handled won the Group 2 Hungerford Stakes over seven furlongs by a whopping six lengths. Back him to beat anything else over a mile, but not Henry Cecil’s machine.
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