Expensive research projects don’t always produce the results anticipated by those who commission them. Take the cosmetics company which launched a study into what perfume drove men wild and came back with the simple answer: bacon. It made me think of the millions of dollars America’s aeronautics industry spent on perfecting a ballpoint pen that would write upside-down in space. Meanwhile, the Soviet astronauts made their notes at any angle in pencil.
I wasn’t surprised, though, to hear that recent medical research had revealed that horseracing — apart from being the most sociable sport of them all — is more exciting than football and rugby. So confident of the findings were the Kempton authorities on Racing Post Chase Day last Saturday that they allowed racegoers to register to get their money back if a sample who took part in an experiment failed to be aroused by the action.
Several hundred registered for the potential bonus but the sample whose heart rates were measured and whose excitement levels were recorded through skin conductors attached to racegoers’ fingers all proved to have been significantly stimulated by the experience.
I was certainly not immune but I am afraid that what sent my heartbeat soaring even more than the action was my discovery on taking out my new mobile phone to ring my bookie with a last-minute thought before one race that my son, on setting me up with the new instrument, had thoughtfully locked it. By the time I had established how to free it for action (and, yes, all I had to do was press the word ‘unlock’ on the screen, but that wasn’t how the old one worked) it was too late.
I would have had the blips racing across the monitor screen for the wrong reasons, too, during the closing stages of the Racing Post Chase when, after an excellent display of jumping, the ever-consistent Richard Johnson brought home Quinz as the 8–1 winner. It was another case of overdoing the research. Having had Philip Hobbs’s horse in my Twelve to Follow in 2009, I have been measuring his progress since but I noted from that morning’s Racing Post that Philip reckoned more rain would not help his chances. Having driven to the course from Oxfordshire in a near-monsoon, I therefore deserted him and went for Hey Big Spender, who finished a decent fourth of the 16 runners at 14–1.
This year’s Twelve and those who preceded them aren’t doing us badly currently. Diamond Harry, from the 2008–9 list, won the Hennessy at 6–1. Rebel Rebellion, from 2009, won a novice hurdle nicely for Paul Nicholls the other day at 5–2 and Philip Hobbs’s Wishfull Thinking took the Murphy Group Handicap at Cheltenham last month at 9–2. At least I did not desert Colin Tizzard’s Coup Royale, one of this year’s list, at Kempton. Having backed him in the morning at 11–2, I was a little worried to see him out with the washing halfway through the race, but he stormed up the straight to win the 2m 4f handicap chase convincingly as the 7–2 favourite. The Tizzard yard is humming these days and should repay a serious interest at the Cheltenham Festival.
One of those who did relish the rain-soaked ground was Richard Price’s mare Ocean Transit, who was the first winner for up-and-coming jockey David Bass since his conditional rider’s ‘claim’ was reduced from 5lb to 3lb. Bass is attached to the multi-horsepower yard of Nicky Henderson, and Price declared, ‘If he’s good enough for Henderson he’s good enough for me.’ The mare, it turned out, had suffered from an unusual affliction, her racing suffering previously from sucking in air through — how shall I put this in a family magazine — an organ which will give her much pleasure later in life when stallions come to visit. All sorted, it seems, with a few stitches.
Another horse to note for soft-ground occasions was Gary Moore’s Sire de Grugy, an 11-length winner of the novices’ hurdle. The whoops of pleasure on his return to the winner’s enclosure from first-time owner Steve Preston and his family and friends would surely have had those heart-rate monitors climbing. Steve told me that they looked for a horse whose trainer was willing to go in with them and Gary still owns a quarter of what looks like a useful prospect after three ready victories.
The one to remember, though, is Quinz, a big strapping sort who could well win the Grand National next year if indeed his owner Andrew Cohen does not decide to send him to those big Aintree fences at only seven years old this April. Andrew Cohen’s Suny Bay twice came home second in the big race and I thought I detected a real gleam in his eye. If you can find a bookie to give you the 25–1 now quoted on the ‘with a run’ basis he looks well worth a punt.
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