Another Lost Weekend

-

Last Saturday’s punting was not a complete disaster. But it was pretty grisly viewing. One clear cut winner at pretty skinny odds and a hole in the secret off-shore gambling account is all I have to show for some furrowed brow effort and stubby pencil scribbling.

Sans Frontieres, the one winner, did the job very nicely in the Irish St Leger, though. I enjoyed that. He was given a supremely confident ride by French jockey and avid paintball competitor, Olivier Peslier. I  momentarily thought too confident when Sans Frontieres was out the back turning for home, particularly on slow ground, but the horse found plenty of gears and cruised passed Profound Beauty no more than 100 yards from the post. He beat Laheeb last time out who has come out and won since (despite the burden of my wedge), so the form is holding up well. Honestly, it’s like joining the dots sometimes. Couldn’t be easier. Sans Fronitiere heads to Melbourne now where he will meet the runner up again in the showstopping Melbourne Cup.

Elsewhere, Approve probably showed up best of the losers. He got the 7 furlongs well but bumped into something close to the top drawer in Saamid. The Godolphin horse easily justified his odds-on price with an effortless win and immediately received quotes ranging from 12/1 to 7/1 for the 2000 Guineas next May. But I like Approve well enough for another day. Masamah crucially missed the break in the Portland and ran his race well enough but without ever getting into contention after that.

And that was pretty much it. Nothing looked remotely dangerous from the remaining selections. So no hyper-ventilating; very little swearing at the telly; and no mirthful teenagers sniggering at my equine exhortations….

Sunday meanwhile, was a little more dramatic. It marked the end of a chapter. The end of my love affair with the gorgeous, classy and now it appears, moody, Sariska.

I’ve harped an about her rivalry with Midday before. Sariska’s refusal to start in the Yorkshire Oaks last time was a big plot on her reputation. Nevertheless, trainer Michael Bell was clearly persuaded to give her another chance. “We have nothing to lose”, he said of the dual classic winning filly. So she lined up in Sunday’s Grade 1 Prix Vermailles at Longchamp. Joining these two old foes was the unbeaten French filly Sarafina and soft ground-loving High Heeled. But it was a rerun of the Yorkshire Oaks with Midday winning authoratively and Sariska again planting her sourpuss feet and refusing to start. There’s a great photo in the Racing Post of jockey Jamie Spencer looking like a right turkey in the stalls, blinking tamely back at the camera as the rest of the field tear down the track.

Michael Bell was, under the circumstances, genuinely hilarious when he called time on her career by saying "It is rather annoying as we know we can potentially beat that lot. It's rather like having a Ferrari with no keys." Fantastic. Like a fool, I still love her though. What memories. This undeserving and faintly comical final curtain simply adds a smidgeon of mystique to her reputation. In some ways, the only loser is Midday again. Whilst Sariska refused to race there will always be the smallest trace of tarnish about these victories. I know you can only beat the ones that turn up, but what if Sariska had started….

But it ‘s time to move on from the flat. Yes, just like that. We are entering my favourite time of the year. September is the when I stew over the form book, RP database and my fragile grasp of last season’s events to pick my 40 to follow: a privileged bunch of nags who will spearhead my assault on the new jumps season. I can feel my pulse quicken a fraction just at the very thought of it. This chosen few will be revealed soon…. Nearly as dramatic as Strictly this isn’t it? Bet you can hardly wait.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Seaside Special - Skye is the limit: west Highland

-
Image
  I’m surrounded by a jigsaw of blurry photo prints, OS maps and website screen-shots spread out across the office desk. It looks like an evidence board for a murder drama. I’m trying to piece together a youth hostel trip to Scotland from the late 80's/early 90's. None of the prints are dated or annotated. I recognise the faces of our group and some of the buildings. And even some of the landscapes. But not all of them. They were chucked in an album with pics of the Peak District and the Norfolk Broads from 1991. So that’s the year. But wait. The photos were in the wrong album. After a bit of checking, it’s definitely 1989, the year after I graduated.  Geographically, the trip fits well in the blog series at this point as we go clockwise round the UK, but the recollections are going to be as patchy as a politicians autobiography. Picking out a few highlights and strong memories, whilst skating over the rest. The trip was a big deal at the time. Our most ambitious youth host
Read more

Seaside Special - NC500 part 2: north and north-west Highland

-
Image
Day four was a dog-leg day: north from Staxigoe to Duncansby Head in the far top right of mainland Scotland before swinging west along the top of the world as far as Bettyhill. We passed close to Castle Sinclair Girnigoe again before skirting the bay beyond with its pristine yellow-white beach which we had glimpsed from the castle’s ramparts yesterday.   First stop was Duncansby Lighthouse, where we were lucky to find a park. For the first time, we had hit a populist bit of the NC500 tourist trail. Camper vans of all shapes, sizes and nationalities packed onto the verge parking. The lighthouse held a prominent view (as you would hope, to be fair) towards the Orkneys, Dunnet Head – Scotland’s most northerly point - and in the near distance John O’Groats where the sunshine glinted back from rows of yet more camper vans docked by the famous sign post. Their number was a shock at first, but we soon got used to the idea and it was really only at the most popular stops where they grouped i
Read more

Seaside Special - A honeymoon and a fast car: Argyll & Bute

-
Image
Before I first visited Argyll - so before 1996 - I had imagined it to be characteristically highland Scotland: full of muscular, bare crags heaped upon each other with scree slopes crashing down into lochs overlooked by impossibly romantic ruined castles. This betrayed uncharacteristically rank research on my part. Argyll was not like that at all. I usually made an exhaustive study of the nooks and crannies of any of my potentials destination long before making a booking. On this occasion, I was under-prepared and poorly informed. But as this was a honeymoon stay, maybe other matters were legitimately clouding my mind. I do not wish to suggest that I was in any way disappointed with the geography of the area. Far from it. I was thoroughly pleasantly surprised. Our cottage was in a remote spot off the road between Crinan and Achnamara, perched above Loche Choille-Barr. The one-bedroom bungalow, converted from a threshing barn, had acres of land sloping away to the shore. The air was s
Read more