TOWN MOOR  –  SUMMER WISHES, WINTER DREAMS

They seem to race a lot at Doncaster.

It’s not just my imagination. Summer and winter, afternoons and evenings, fixtures on Derby day and fixtures during Cheltenham; Jonjo O’Neill was recently anticipating a routine task on Town Moor until Willie Mullins asked him to ride Poniros in the JCB Triumph Hurdle at the festival, thereby giving him the most welcome surprise of his short career at 100/1.

Doncaster has been good to me. Even without A4 Class Dominion of New Zealand manfully tugging a sold-out crowd of steam enthusiasts on the journey north a few years ago I’d have some very fond memories  –  Reg Hollinshead’s Goldeva at 40/1 in the Cammidge Trophy a while back and, most of all, Zip winning the closing apprentices’ handicap on the last day of the Flat, all murky damp and mist, at 16/1 in the hands of Jessica Cooley.

This reminded me how shrewd Richard Fahey is. I’d seem Jessica ride at Salisbury and knew she was very good but it never occurred to me that the trainer might have noted it as well. She led all the way on Zip, a consistent, willing sort over the years, and kept enough in hand in the closing stages. I thought there would be more winners to come, even if we had to wait for the following campaign but it wasn’t to be. Zip was her last ride and I never knew why.

When I think back to my time at Cambridge, where I spent too much time on sprint handicaps and not enough on Marcel Proust, the Lincoln Handicap looms large. I think it fair to say that the start of a new Flat season mattered more to the racing press in those days than Cheltenham (this is no longer the case, of course) and I remember a page carefully cut from the Sporting Life in 1968 detailing the Lincoln Handicap entries. There it was, up on my wall at Churchill with arrows and crossings out and asterisks and ticks and blobs.

You may recall it was the year of Frankincense, the year all of Barry Hills’s hard work and careful study bore fruit as the 100/8 shot came home half a length ahead of Waterloo Place. I thought then, and still think now, that it was closer than suggested in the press but the fact is that, having spent several months planning and spreading the money around (and without a word to trainer John Oxley, for whom he worked) Barry netted around £60,000, which comes to around £1,520,000 today.

It meant he could set up on his own with the great days as Robert Sangster’s trainer at Manton still to come, together with the heart-breaking near misses in the Derby. For sure, anyone who saw Lester Piggott’s astonishing ‘rodeo’ ride on Roberto to deny Rheingold in 1972 will never forget it. Fred Winter sent Barry a card. ‘Suppose just bad luck on all concerned to be born same century as L PIGGOTT ‘ it read.

I’ve thought about the Lincoln plans up on the wall and all the rest of it at regular intervals since. Fascinatingly, Harry Thomson-Jones, who had some good novice hurdlers in the yard at the time, chose to run the ultra-fit Waterloo Place, successful in a Newbury hurdle only a matter of days before. Half a length was some effort, given that Frankincense later finished a close fourth behind Royal Palace, Taj Dewan and Sir Ivor in an Eclipse Stakes out of the very top drawer.

Everyone knows everyone else in racing, of course. Frankincense’s jockey Greville Starkey was godfather to Barry’s twin sons Michael and Richard, while the latter rode for Tom Jones in Sheikh Hamdan’s colours. Indeed, when you pick your way through the minefield presented by the form book, you sometimes appreciate the value in backing short-priced favourites. When Tom really needed to get one off the mark, he’d send it to Brighton, of all places, and Richard (who had his share of critics) would make all at a perfectly-judged pace. Thus 8/11 could seem quite respectable sometimes, though it would never have appealed to Barry. ‘Never bet odds-on and never bet each-way’ were his two guiding principles.

I suppose we learn as we go along, even if we never quite put the stake together for a Frankincense-style bet. We loiter somewhere around the perimeter, admiring and envying in equal measure. At least Barry Hills and Robert Sangster knew which journalists appreciated a proper drop of champagne and I’ve never forgotten that.

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