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This is winning ‘in a canter’ :
The runner-up had finished second in the Fighting Fifth, the third (btn 34L) finished a close third in the Xmas Hurdle, then won the Kingwell and the Champion Hurdle.
Golden Current is certainly an oddity, as neither his sire nor his dam ever ran in a NH race. He’s actually bred well enough to be a useful staying horse on the flat.
We all know what Golden Horn achieved, the dam was a 12F Listed winner in France, running in the Wildenstein colours.
When his breeder sent him to Goffs as a 3yo unbroken store, he failed to reach his reserve of £30,000.
And he has a half brother by Harry Angel who made his debut in a 5F 2yo maiden for Brian Ellison last year and ended the season with a handicap mark of 62.
Not the usual profile of a future NH star!
ERL,
She’s not even close to the antics of Alan Jarvis, who was refused a licence when he owed £868,000 to Doncaster Bloodstock sales and declared bankruptcy for the second time.
This is worth a read to show how far some will go:
APPEAL BOARD DECISION AND ORIGINAL LICENSING COMMITTEE REASONS IN RESPECT OF ALAN JARVIS
One of the issues with this is that a genuine buyer can be outbid for a horse by someone that has no intention of paying. The latter can just keep bidding regardless of the price.
There is some good news on the Southwell race, as CH should definitely bring home some prize money.
There’s a £25 award for the best turned out horse, and surely no judge is going to give that to anything else that turns up!
Matron,
“I would love Alan Potts to opine if he owned “Constitution Hill”.
Well we wouldn’t be in this god awful mess. Because absolutely the last person I’d ever want training a horse for me is N Henderson.
Three runs in novice hurdles as a 4yo, winning the last one to get a mark of around 125. Then put him away and the following season, win the big 2M handicap hurdles at Cheltenham, Ascot and Newbury. Ignore the festival and start him novice chasing asap after that. The Arkle as a novice, the Ryanair in his second season, then, and only then, try 3M in the King George and go from there.
And if he got passed to me now with the current history, I’d send him to Laura Collett for jumping lessons and plan a chasing campaign. It’s long forgotten now and caused no fuss at the time, but Desert Orchid fell in both his last two starts over hurdles, but won his debut over fences at Exeter less than a month after the last of those falls. If Laura, who by chance I met when she was a teenager, told me he was not a chaser, then retirement.
So he’s persuaded someone to put on a £40k race especially for CH. At a Friday night live event at Southwell.
I’m sure Messrs Henderson and Buckley will in great demand at the speed dating!
But it does at least mean we can see the race on ITV.
I’m sure the BHA review will look at the fences and hurdles, but I hope they’ll also consider whether the going was a contributing factor, and whether it was in fact safe to race on Saturday.
The times in the two 2M 4F chases indicate the ground was riding remarkably fast for mid January. And the track had also reported that take off and landing areas had been covered earlier in the week. I’m not sure whether they had full covers on, but if they did I think that was only done on Friday.
The covers raise the question of whether the going was different where the covers had been. Also, all the key incidents happened at the last two fences/hurdles and the fences down the side of the course, the areas which get the least sun due to the stands and the trees alongside the 3M start. No problems down the far side, where the sun shines all day.
All speculation on my part, but something I hope will be included in the review.
Flat racing ended in 1972 with the building of the Mildmay chase course. Before that, the small number of chases were all run over the National fences.
At the same time, the flat course was converted to a permanent hurdle course.
One story from that era involves the Schweppes sponsorship of a big handicap hurdle, which was first run at Aintree. The directors of the company and their guests arrived expecting the same standard of hospitality most of them had experienced as attendees at Royal Ascot. Mrs Topham put them in a dingy room with no view of the racecourse and served stale cheese sandwiches. The race was moved to Newbury!
Joe,
That list of races is both incomplete and inaccurate – isn’t AI wonderful. But the general point is correct, it’s more than just the King George.
I’ve been reminiscing about Kempton today and it’s interesting to note how some of the fixtures have been undermined by other courses. Charisma Gold Cup day in mid October was a Saturday that pretty much marked the start of the main NH season at the London tracks. It was the same Saturday as the Champion Stakes, so when that race was moved to nearby Ascot, Kempton were forced to move their fixture to Sunday. And as all the London tracks have demonstrated time and again, nobody in that area loves a Sunday meeting.
Then there was the Saturday in September, that featured the September Stakes and the Sirenia Stakes. In 2011, Ascot were granted a fixture on that Saturday and the two have competed for racegoers ever since – guess who’s winning.
Kempton had a pair of Guineas trials usually run on Easter Saturday. The Pattern committee decided they weren’t required/good enough. They existed for a while as conditions races, but eventually just faded away. The big early season handicaps, the Jubilee and the Rosebery, had declined long before they were being run on the AW.
They had a good 3yo Listed race in May called the Heron Stakes, now run at Sandown. The two day NH meeting at the end of February included the 3M Rendlesham Hurdle, now run at Haydock.
I’ve reached the conclusion that the JC haven’t done a single positive thing for Kempton for as long as I can remember. In fact it’s been downhill ever since Desert Orchid retired.
Yeats,
The officials colours for Anthony Hunt, owner of Robin Wonder, were yellow, dark blue stripe and sleeves.
Info courtesy of the rather odd fact that a) I still have my 1984 Sporting Life diary and b) that diary includes a full list of every owner then registered with the Jockey Club and includes their colours.
So it does look as if those colours have been passed on.
One question to be asked if Kempton does close – does the King George have to be run on Boxing Day.
Crowd figures have declined from 20k+ to under 14k in recent years, and that’s partly down to the total lack of public transport. The station and line to Waterloo is useful when it’s running, but it’s really a local commuter line that stops at every semi-detached along the way.
Sandown would have the same problem on Boxing Day and they have a lot less parking space than Kempton.
Any thought of running him on the flat should be abandoned after a look at his pedigree. The sire has never produced a flat winner, other than in bumpers or French AQPS races. The dam never ran on the flat and was well beaten in three mares bumpers in the UK.
And the entire female line going back four generations, none of the mares ever ran on the flat, nor did they produce winners on the flat.
Desert Orchid was once tried on the flat, running in the 1985 Sagaro Stakes – beaten a long way by horses that would only have seen his tail over hurdles.
And just a thought, that maybe Henderson and his team did well to get the performances they did from CH, as the jumping issues were there from his first race. This is from the comment on his Irish point debut, after which he was sold:
“Showing a really likeable resolution to pull out a two-length advantage coming to the final fence, only to make a serious error which came close to unshipping his rider”
Value31,
Mr Johnston chose to revive a debate he and I had 24 years ago – when he displayed his usual bias and belief that only he can possibly be right, by selectively quoting from my letter but offering me no right of reply.
In consideration of the sensibilities of other posters, I won’t put into print my long held opinion of Mr Johnston. Who by the way is not a trainer, he retired years ago.
CAS,
That’s the first hurdle winner sired by Massaaat – seven others have tried without success, although a couple have won a bumper.
Amazing that Sonic Pioneer got the trip so well, considering the dam was also a 7F specialist, same as Massaat.
Value31,
The SP system in use now takes no account of the prices offered by racecourse bookmakers. It’s based solely on prices offered by online firms. Been this way for several years.
The details on the procedure are available here:
http://www.thesprc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Rules-for-Returning-the-SP-Final-Clean.pdf
Well the program of races for the two meetings being held at Wolverhampton, shows a sparkling level of originality.
Seven races, all handicaps, all for 4-y-olds and up, none over a distance more than 1M 4F. Presumably staying races would be too long for the attention span of the intended audience.
BetMGM feature heavily among the sponsors.
Just one question – how does telling people that the meeting is going to be shown on ITV work as an attraction to turn out on a cold Friday evening?
As an aside, the promoters of the RL showed debts totalling £5M in their last published accounts.
