The Turf | 3 May 2008

Experiments don’t always come off. Like the train company trying out new safety glass for drivers’ cabins. It adapted technology from an aviation manufacturer which had developed new cockpit protection against bird strikes. But when the bird projectiles were launched the mocked-up train windows shattered and the dummy driver was decapitated. In dismay, it messaged the results to the aviation specialists. Only to receive in reply the terse message: ‘Try defrosting the chickens first.’

So no experiments, then, in selecting this year’s Twelve to Follow for the Flat. It is the usual mix of racecourse observation, the gleam in a few trainers’ eyes, and a long flight with the invaluable Timeform’s Racehorses of 2007 (available from Portway Press, 25 Timeform House, Northgate, Halifax, W. Yorkshire HX1 1XF Tel: 01422 330540; www.timeform.com) in my lap.

First, though, the accounts for the jumping season which ended last Saturday at Sandown with Paul Nicholls passing the 150-winners and £4-million prize-money marks, Ruby Walsh notching over 200 winners in England and Ireland and Philip Hobbs’s little Monkerhostin taking the last big race of the season, the Bet365 Gold Cup. Some of us had thought that the 11-year-old had lost a little of his zip. Instead, in his 49th race in Britain, he scored the biggest of his ten victories, at 25–1.

So far has the jumping game come that trainer’s wife Sarah Hobbs, a real gleam in her eye as she cheerfully slapped jockey Richard Johnson’s shoulder on the winner’s rostrum, described their season as an ‘awful one’ until the final day. Really? The yard has sent out 109 winners, amassing first-prize money of £1.4 million. But they had missed out in the prestige contests and everybody wants those big-race winners.

Me, too.