Mrs Oakley hopes it will be a lesson to me after all the abandoned umbrellas, mislaid mobiles and washbags left in hotel-room bathrooms over the years. When changing planes at Mumbai Airport at one o’clock in the morning en route for Hong Kong, I failed to pick up my laptop after the security check. Retrieving it from Britain took seven weeks. The airline didn’t want to know and airport authorities would hand it only to a personal representative. It only ever came back thanks to old friends at CNN: thank God, I still work occasionally for an international organisation.
‘Never mind the £150 in airport fees and freight charges,’ I thought as I popped into CNN’s London office to collect it. ‘Things can only improve now.’ Only to find a parking warden outside fixing a £65 ticket to my windscreen. I had called in with my phone parking fee. But it was, it seemed, for the space the other side of the line between public and residents’ parking. That made my trip to Goodwood on Saturday a retrieval mission. I was determined to make the old enemy contribute to my costs.
That day’s Racing Post had carried headlines about a new corruption scandal: several jockeys have been charged with violating information and non-trier rules, among them the progressive Greg Fairley. Reckoning Fairley had a fair chance in the first and would be out to show his critics I had a small dip, win only. He was beaten just three quarters of a length — at 28–1. Normally, I back outsiders each way, but this was to be a day for boldness.
In the next I had my biggest bet of the season so far. John Gosden’s Beachfire, ridden by the angel-faced William Buick, looked a class above the rest. I was delighted to have got 11–4 and watch him being backed down to 2–1 favourite as most of Goodwood came to the same conclusion. Alas, it is not the size of the dog in the fight that matters, as they say, it is the size of the fight in the dog. Beachfire lumbered unco-operatively out of the stalls and loped along at the tail of the field. Using all his powers of persuasion, young William got him closer to the pack but still in last place entering the straight. He then started reeling in the leaders only for the hanging Beachfire to decide two furlongs out that he had done enough and down tools to finish third. ‘He’s a dog,’ said former course managing director Rod Fabricius, consolingly on hearing of my misfortune. ‘There’s nothing more irritating than a horse with ability who won’t make the best of it.’
Ah, well, I thought. William Buick will surely have a more co-operative partner in the next in the shape of Sir Michael Stoute’s Class Is Class. So he did. In a blanket finish, three horses flashed past the post together, separated only by two heads. Class Is Class, unfortunately, was judged to be the second of them.
With a pressing engagement back in Oxfordshire, I had time only for one more race. Jim and Fitri Hay have been spending a lot of money buying horses and those growingly familiar pink and green colours deserve some luck. They retain Jamie Spencer but noting that in his absence elsewhere former champion Kieren Fallon was riding their two-year-old Macdonald Mor I thought he was worth a punt, especially as he shortened from 8–1 to 6–1. Trained by Paul Cole, the 110,000-guinea Macdonald Mor’s main opponent was Richard Hannon’s Trumpet Major, who had cost only €20,000, but when Macdonald Mor moved up to him two furlongs out it was Trumpet Major who proved to have the extra gear and moved away smoothly to win.
It just wasn’t my day, or my week. But I shall next time be backing Brian Meehan’s six-year-old grey City Leader. He missed the 2010 season with health problems but at six clearly has a good engine left. The grey had been last into the straight but was pulled wide to beat Class Is Class. His trainer, who clearly has great affection for him, declared, ‘He’s an old horse but he’s got a heart the size of a house.’
It simply wouldn’t be Goodwood without John Dunlop in the winner’s enclosure assessing a victory in his usual measured tones. Harlestone Times was convincing in winning the mile-and-a-half race and jockey Ted Durcan reckoned afterwards that he would stay two miles and could even be a candidate for the Ebor. The four-year-old is still improving.
I certainly wasn’t improving, but on checking the results from Haydock I had some good news. I had looked for a horse to beat Overdose, the so-called ‘Budapest bullet’ on the Hungarian horse’s first visit to Britain and had picked on Sole Power to do it, getting 11–1. Backed down to 8–1, he obliged. It paid the day’s expenses, but alas made no inroads into my laptop losses. Those will have to wait, and the only thing I lost at Goodwood was my notebook. Mind you, anyone unwise enough to have acted on the notes they found within could only have lost money.
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