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March Week One
In 1990, this was the week commencing Monday Feb 26th, through to Saturday March 3rd. This year, thanks to the Leap Year extra day, it runs Feb 23rd to 29th, but I’ll stay with the option of using the Saturday date in 1990 as my base.
The first two days of the week in 1990 saw all the meetings abandoned due to cold weather. Rather ironic that the courses mostly now have covers to protect against that, but are still vulnerable to incessant rain. On Wednesday, Wetherby went ahead, but gave up after three races, although I don’t know the reason – snow seems the most likely explanation.
Thursday at Ludlow on March 1st, 1990, provided something not often seen now, an eight race card with two divisions of a selling hurdle. In total that afternoon they fielded 117 runners and I doubt if you’d get too many modern jockeys volunteering to ride in a sixteen runner novice chase round Ludlow.
The week ended with the then familiar two day meetings at Haydock and Newbury, the Haydock Saturday card being the one now almost entirely moved to a slot two weeks earlier. Newbury staged the 3M Philip Cornes Saddle of Gold Hurdle Final, a race won that year by Miinnehoma, who beat Remittance Man by 12L. Who’d have guessed that in a 3M novice hurdle, a future Grand National winner would outstay a future Arkle winner?
Haydock had the Greenall Whitley Gold Cup, the Victor Ludorum and the Timeform Chase on a top quality card, but none of the winners that year (Rinus, Ninja, Tartan Takeover) stir any memories for me. There were also minor meetings at Hereford and Market Rasen that Saturday, and what jumps off the page looking at all the results, is how many horses ran on March 3rd before going on to run at Cheltenham ten to twelve days later.
From Newbury, Commandante won a 2M 4F novice chase and went on to win the Arkle. Vestris Abu was beaten 1/2L in the Victor Ludorum and he’d already run twice in February in Ireland, but still came out in the Triumph to finish 4th, At Market Rasen, Sire Nantais, who already won three novice chases in December for Pipe, hacked up at 4/1 on in a 2m 5f novice, but found the Cheltenham fences a tougher proposition in the Arkle. It was not just over here either, as Kiichi won a 2M Listed Chase at Naas that afternoon before coming over to finish second in the Arkle. Were the horses tougher, were the trainers bolder, did Cheltenham mean less – whatever the reason, racing is the poorer for the reluctance to compete in the run-up to the Festival.
But my favourite on this list is a handicap chaser who won at Hereford, called New Halen, a horse who deserves to have his full story told. He came to the UK as a 7-y-old maiden, to be trained by A P (Tony?) James in Herefordshire. His early efforts were far from encouraging, with three UR in his first six runs for the new stable. By the end of the 1988/89 season, he’d run 27 times without success, all but two of those over fences.
In the 1989/90 season, he finally broke his duck in a Warwick novice chase, followed that with a series of placed efforts, before winning two handicap chases at Wolverhampton and Hereford. He then had a break over the winter, returning to win this novice chase at Hereford, his first success on soft ground. With those four wins under his belt, it was presumably a case of ‘nothing to lose’ when he was entered for the Mildmay of Flete Handicap at Cheltenham. On the day he was running from 18lbs out of the handicap, reduced by the 7lb claim of his now regular rider, Eamon Tierney, who had been in the saddle for all his four previous wins.
The opposition included plenty with Cheltenham experience, including the favourite, First Bout, the 1985 Triumph Hurdle winner, Oregon Trail, the 1986 Arkle winner and Observer Corps, who beat Norton’s Coin by 8L in the 1989 Cathcart Chase. It made no difference, as New Halen won in style by eight lengths, returned at 66/1, probably the most amazing result I ever saw in a Cheltenham Festival handicap.
On a personal note, it was also a memorable race for me, as I had my banker of the meeting in the field for the Mildmay of Flete, a horse called Aughavogue. I’d been present for all three of runs that year prior to the Festival, and had become convinced that this was the race his connections had as their prime target. I seem to be alone in this conviction, as he was freely offered at 14/1 on the day, at which price I invested £500 – the eventual SP was 10/1.
It looked an excellent bet as he jumped the third last tracking New Halen and still travelling very easily, but a few strides after the fence, the jockey pulled him out of the race and quickly dismounted. Impossible to know if he would have won, and if you know where to find a film of the race, please don’t tell me!
New Halen wes raised 30lbs for that win, but the improvement was genuine and he returned the next season to win first time out at Stratford, and he followed that with a third in the Mackeson, fifth in the Hennessey, and wins at Wolverhampton on Boxing Day and Cheltenham on New Year’s Eve to complete a memorable 1990. He had his final race at Warwick as a 14 year old and retired with a career record of 12 wins over fences from 78 starts.
Result of the Week
Sat Mar 3rd Haydock Cellar 5 Novice Hurdle
King’s Curate S Cowley Trained by Stan Mellor
This was the first win of his career and it came just 374 days before his greatest moment, the success in the 1991 Stayers Hurdle. That was a gruelling contest and from my connection with the stable at the time, I was aware that the jockey, Mark Perrett, feared the horse would never be the same again.
The following season was one of the driest winters ever across England, and racing was regularly taking place on good to firm even in December and January. That sort of ground was no good to the big heavy-topped King’s Curate and desperate to find races, Stan sent him three times to race at Ayr. He won the first time, a moderate contest in which he started 3/1 on – and he followed that with a decent second to Jodami in a Grade 2. But even Ayr, so often bottomless in mid winter, was only producing good going, and a third visit in April was disappointing. After that he was off the track for 21 months, and during that time, the owner moved the horse to Martin Pipe. He ran five times for him in 1994, but after a promising return in the Warwick National, his jumping became erratic and he fell in three of the other four. The fall in the fifth of those races at Haydock proved fatal.
A sad end for a smashing horse, and ultimately, it was the one he beat at Cheltenham, Run For Free, who had the top class chasing career that had looked likely for King’s Curate.
Video of the Week
The final circuit of the Saddle of Gold Final 1990. Apart from the race itself, a reminder of the days when Newbury wasn’t just a green oasis in the middle of a modern housing estate. Note also the long since moved ‘cross hurdle’ halfway round the final bend.
I remember New Halen at that Cheltenham. I believe it was the last race of the day and my Dad and brother were making their way to the exit after the race when I had to call them back for me to collect. I had intended on putting £1 EW at a bookie who was offering 100/1 only to be told the minimum stake was £2 win or EW. Not wanting to miss the 100/1 I coughed up the extra couple of quid and had great delight in thanking the bookie for increasing my stake. I’ve probably still got the racecard in the loft so I might try and fetch that out later. Thanks for reminding me of my biggest price winner.
I remember New Halen running at Plumpton in a maiden chase with my money on it at Plumpton in April 1989 and getting beat, I’m sure there were at least 2 divisions of the maiden too.
Then it popped up at the festival a while later without me putting a penny on it !!
King’s Curate v Run For Free in the Stayers’ Hurdle remains one of my favourite ever races. Peter Scudamore’s ride on the valiant runner-up is arguably the best ride in defeat I’ve ever seen.
March Week Two
Or as it was then, just the plain ordinary week before the Cheltenham Festival. No preview evenings, no stable tours, no press days, no blogs on bookmaker websites, indeed no websites at all. Very few early entries, very few Irish trained entries, almost no doubly entered horses, just a simple clarity about which horse would run in which race.
In 1990, the week began on March 5th with the all hunter chase card at Leicester (actually there was one amateur riders handicap in the middle), where racegoers were treated to the presence of great veterans like West Tip and Lean Ar Aghaidh, as well as the first win under rules for Teaplanter.
That came in Div 2 of the Garthorpe Hunters Chase over 3M, and Teaplanter scored by 30 lengths, a margin he repeated several times subsequently in his long career. This win was the first of nine from his next ten starts, a sequence broken only by an UR in the Cheltenham Foxhunters of 1991, when he started 6/4 fav. He became a standing dish at his local track, Towcester, where he recorded nine wins from ten starts, going off at odds on in all ten of those races. The one defeat, by 1/2L, came as a 13-year-old, when he tried to demolish the second last under Ben Pollock, who had taken over from his regular owner/rider Richard Russell at the start of 1996. His career record was 24 wins from 38 starts under rules.
He ran his final race aged 14 at his beloved Towcester, going out with a win in the wonderfully named :
23rd Year of Schilizzi 1906 Sixty Years Commemorative Challenge Cup Hunters’ Chase
You don’t get races with grand titles like that anymore – if it was still being run at Towcester, I suspect it would be called the Unibet Hill Climb.
The same afternoon at Windsor, a seven race card attracted 133 runners, although the only thing of any note on the card was the appalling sequence of SP returns, which were 150%, 186%, 160%, 155%, 153%, 161% and 142%. Barry Dennis must have left before the last race (only joking Barry!).
The following day saw a Warwick card that included a Pertemps sponsored three race international jockey’s contest – two handicap hurdles and a handicap chase, each with eight runners. The riders involved were Dunwoody, Scudamore, McCourt, Dwyer, Carmody, Keogh, Stokes and Bailliez. I presume Carmody and Keogh represented Ireland and I know that Denis Bailliez was a leading French rider and I would guess that S Stokes (?) also rode across the Channel. Leaving the other four to make up two GB teams.
Anyway, the star proved to be Denis Bailliez, who won two races, including the chase on the 33/1 shot Sirrah Jay. Bailliez had ridden once before in the UK, winning a hurdle at Chepstow on Playschool in October 1984, as part of another jockey contest. I couldn’t trace any other evidence of him riding here, so he retired with perhaps three wins from five rides in the UK!
Sirrah Jay was already ten years old by then, but his best days were ahead of him and he played a significant part in establishing the career of Adrian Maguire. In the 1991/92 season, Maguire won on him five times, although two of those victories were later taken away, because Maguire had continued to claim the 3lb allowance when no longer entitled to do so, as a result of a mix up about the number of winners he’d ridden before moving to England.
His association with Sirrah Jay reached its peak when the old horse won the John Hughes Memorial (aka the Topham) at Aintree in April 1993, just six weeks after he’d been available to buy when winning a Lingfield claiming chase. He ran twice more in the race, finishing third as a 14-year-old under Lorcan Wyer (Maguire now claimed by his retaining stable, Nicholson) and then 9th as a 15-year-old, running from 34lbs out of the handicap and having the additional burden of Luke Harvey in the saddle.
After all that, the rest of the week was plain ordinary, with only the Imperial Cup on Saturday producing a memorable result – Moody Man scoring by ten lengths at 20/1 and going on to complete the double in the County Hurdle five days later.
We often hear the complaint that there’s too much racing nowadays, but my 1990 diary shows 18 NH meetings (15 turf, 3 AW) for this week, which compares to 16 NH meetings in 2020 – and two of those on Sunday. The big difference of course stems from the growth of AW flat racing, three meetings in 1990 becoming nine in 2020, mostly staged under floodlights.
Result of the Week
Sat Mar 10th Chepstow Avonmouth Handicap Hurdle
Holy Joe J Osborne Trained by Jim Wilson
Not an especially significant result to an ordinary handicap hurdle, but a chance to remember one of the gentlemen of the game in the 80’s and 90’s, Jim Wilson. And to note that Holy Joe left Wilson at the end of the 1993/4 season, bought by Dai Burchell at Ascot sales for 3,300 gns. Which led to him appearing in September 1994 at Worcester, the first horse ever to carry the colours of that incurable optimist Simon T Lewis, who later took out a permit to ‘train’ his own horses.
Mr Lewis may also have had a sense of humour, as one he’d acquired a full licence, his listed owners included a Mr W. E. Catstrey and Mrs S. Tickle. I suppose if you end with a career record of 23 wins from 885 runners, the ability to have a laugh is essential. I remember being present at Warwick for one of his winners, a horse called Executive Office. He arrived at Warwick with the consistent form often associated with horses trained by Lewis – PU, PU, F, PU – but proceeded to win one of the worst 0-90 chases ever staged at 50/1. The stewards invited the trainer to explain the improvement in form, but nobody ever tells them “you’re the form experts, you tell me”, so the usual line about a shorter trip and better going was used.
Video of the Week
Cheating a bit, but definitely well worth a watch to enjoy the tremendous ride Adrian Maguire gave Sirrah Jay to win at Aintree:
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