After a lifetime reporting politics, I am as well accustomed to spin as a washing machine. But a rich new example reaches me from the US. Researching her family tree, a Californian discovered that she shared a great-great-uncle, Remus Reid, with a US senator. Unfortunately, the great-great-uncle was a regularly convicted horse thief and train robber whose only remaining photograph was the one showing him on the gallows platform before he was hanged. She wrote to the Senator seeking any information he had on their shared relative. An aide replied that Reid had been a famous cowboy whose business empire grew to include ‘equestrian assets’ and ‘intimate dealings with the Montana railroad’ and who had devoted years to ‘government service’. It concluded, ‘In 1889 Remus passed away during an important civic function when the platform on which he was standing collapsed.’
No spin, therefore, on the current fortunes of this season’s Twelve to Follow. We have had one spectacular success. After three races, Fingal Bay remains unbeaten and is still my banker for the Cheltenham Festival. Sadly, others, too, spotted his potential: the starting prices for his three victories were 4–5, 4–5 and 1–4, which hasn’t exactly made our fortunes. Peddler’s Cross, too, has won and Jump City is coming on, finishing second before a fall last time. But none of the others has yet made the winner’s enclosure, partly because three — Rebel Rebellion, Musawarma and Awaywiththegreys — haven’t yet made it to the racecourse. In the jumping game just getting them to the track is an achievement.
To give us more sport, then, I am withdrawing those three from our team and I am also taking out Big Knickers, whose trainer reported a breathing problem after his last outing. In their place I am fielding Boston Bob, a top-class novice hurdler with Willie Mullins in Ireland. In, too, comes Bless The Wings, Alan King’s novice chaser who has shown his liking for Cheltenham, and Module, a promising handicap hurdler for Tom George.
The final new entrant is Zarkandar, who was a mightily impressive winner of the Betfair Hurdle at Newbury on 17 February, the day the Berkshire course restaged the card that had been frosted off the previous Saturday and invited the public in free. All credit to them, though I hope it never happens again. So keen were the motorised public for the freebie that my normal 40-minute journey to the course took two and a half hours.
We all know Paul Nicholls is a genius at preparing horses, but to bring back Zarkandar, last year’s Triumph Hurdle winner, after a 316-day absence and win the most hotly contested handicap hurdle of the year with him was a considerable feat by anybody’s standards. Never before in 40 years has the race been won by a horse making his seasonal debut, and I have rarely seen Paul so boisterously enthusiastic afterwards. Yes, he said, he had had to be quite hard on Zarkandar to get him ready for Newbury (the horse had been given time for recovery after being cast in his box last October) but there was plenty more improvement to come and the target had always been not Newbury but the Champion Hurdle.
Since stable jockey Ruby Walsh rides also for Willie Mullins’s multi-horsepower yard, which includes last year’s Champion Hurdle winner Hurricane Fly, it may well be that Nicholls’s super-sub Daryl Jacob will be riding Zarkandar at the Festival. Never mind, said the exuberant Nicholls. ‘In that case Daryl will be waving Ruby goodbye up the finishing hill.’ We have been told.
In the meantime, at a publisher’s behest I have begun the intriguing task of assembling a volume on the best hundred horses in British racing history. Some obviously book themselves in. Sea Bird’s annihilation of the opposition in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe and Shergar’s huge winning margin in the Derby put them unquestionably in the top ten. Nobody will ever again win three Grand Nationals and finish second in another two as Red Rum did or collect five Cheltenham Gold Cups like Golden Miller. The tough mare Dawn Run remains the only horse to have won both a Champion Hurdle and a Cheltenham Gold Cup.
For sheer class and consistency I have seen no better than Sea The Stars. But what constitutes ‘greatness’? Lammtarra, who won the Derby and the Arc, retired unbeaten, but he only ran four times whereas Brigadier Gerard ran 18 races and won 17 of them. Do we give undue prominence to winners of middle-distance races like the Derby and Eclipse? Some reckoned that Tudor Minstrel, whose sheer pace demolished the 2,000 Guineas field of 1947 before they had gone four furlongs, was the greatest horse they had witnessed, but he didn’t get a yard over a mile.
If speed is the quality we most admire then pure sprinters like Abernant should be included. The key factor, I believe, is that good races make memorable horses, rather than the pure stats, but conundrums abound and I would welcome readers’ nominations.
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