Cheltenham Festival Preview News

The audience at the Cartmel Festival Preview Night was terribly well behaved; there was none of the heckling that you get at other venues - except for one ignorant punter who rudely interrupted to recommend a horse which, as it turned out, had already been scrubbed from the list of entrants.

But that's enough about me, what did the real expert panellists say?

One horse had them all smiling: a good old-fashioned coup in plain site; a horse which has been brought along with just one race in mind - campaigned cleverly to maintain a favourable handicap rating. One of the few horses to unite the panellists - right at the end of the evening. Oh - you should have been there...

One of the hot favourites on the first day of the Festival is thought to have a wind infirmity - but is considered so good that they might just win anyway, without coming under the sort of pressure which could reveal the potential problem. Which horse? Oh you should have been there...

Another ante-post favourite drifted in the markets after suffering defeat last time out - but was subsequently found to have stood on a stone. Which horse? Don't worry - we were given a better priced one that will probably beat it anyway. I'll come to that later...

Selecting just a few of the panel's selections is a tricky task - after all, I want to impart enough winners to ensure that you come and pay for a ticket to next year's Preview Night. On the other hand, I don't want to give away the best information, otherwise no one will need to buy a ticket next year - seeing as it's all in the blog. At least that's my excuse -if somehow I manage to ignore all the winners and highlight only the also-rans.

So here goes: Henry Brooke thinks Min will win the first and apologises for being unoriginal. Marten Julian suggests that Buveur D'Air offers the best value. Trevor Harris (of Star Sports) and the panel Chairman (John Sexton) agree with him - who said Henry was unoriginal!

Jimmy Moffatt, trainer of the 2016 Grand National winner (in case you had forgotten) opted for Silver Concorde.

Everyone agreed that Douvan would win the Arkle Novices Chase, although the selection was truly unoriginal.

The Champion Hurdle will go to Nichols Canyon, The New One or Top Notch. Or possibly My Tent Or Yours, but only if he has learnt to settle during the two years he has been away from the track. No one mentioned Lil Rockerfeller - but I think he's worth backing each-way anyway.

Polly Peachum, Aurore D'Estruval and Bitofapuzzle were popular for the Mares' race - with The Govaness each-way for a bit of fun.

In the Ultima Chase, a race usually won by a horse with a low weight, the panel opted for Holywell, Carole's Destrier and Morning Assembly - all of whom are set to carry 11st 10lb or more. Trevor thought Kruzhlinin would go well, although Henry (who has ridden him) didn't think he'd jump the Cheltenham fences fluently enough.

On Wednesday, Yanworth will definitely win the Neptune Novices Hurdle (according to Jimmy - who says that there is no point backing losers at long prices when you can back winners at short ones). Marten prefers A Toi Phil - and Trevor confirms that there has been money for him. 

While More Of That and No More Heroes are the class horses in the RSA Novices Chase, virtually everyone agrees that this race isn't usually won by the classiest. Seeyouatmidnight is a popular selection. 

There is barely 4lb covering the top five in the betting for the Champion Chase, which begs the question: Why would you back Un De Sceaux at odds-on, when you can back Dodging Bullets at 10/1 or more? And even then, Marten thinks that Felix Yonger (10lb off the top) is better than his official mark suggests.

If Trevor is to be believed (do we ever believe bookmakers?), even the handicapper thinks Diego Du Charmil will win the Fred Winter.

In the Bumper, Henry likes Spirit of Kayaf; Marten and Jimmy go for Ballyandy, while Marten also thinks the fact that Willie Mullins isn't talking about Castello Sforza could be significant. Incidentally, Willie Mullins is about to go down in history as the man who trained the most losers ever at one Cheltenham Festival (even if he also trains the most winners).

John Sexton believes that Black Hercules will win whichever race he runs in - which should be the JLT Novices Chase on Day 3 (Thursday).

Coincidentally, Thursday is also the day that Doctor Harper is likely to appear, having held multiple handicap entries in the build-up to the Festival. He'll probably win the Kim Muir - although you could also look out for Perfect Candidate, Cause of Causes, Silvergrove and Lost Legend.

The panel are unanimous in their support for John's Spirit in the Brown Advisory Chase.

Six different horses are mentioned favourably for the World Hurdle, none of them is Knockara Beau - who I am hoping for, with every fibre of my heart.

I've forgotten what was said about the new novice race for mares, as that's when I got up to refresh my orange juice and lemonade. It was very nice.

Day four: Marten's tip for the whole meeting is Connetable. That's difficult to resist, even though I hold a 16/1 voucher for Zubayr - who was also the selection of Jimmy Moffatt. Henry Brooke is going for Leoncavallo, John Sexton for Footpad and Trevor Harris for Sceau Royal.

My favourite race on Friday (after the Gold Cup, the Foxhunter and possibly the Triumph Hurdle) is the County Hurdle. Marten is hoping that Kayf Blanco creeps into the weights - he looks outstandingly handicapped for a 33/1 shot.

Don Cossack isn't very sexy, but he'll probably win the Gold Cup. John's gone for the other Don (Poli), while Jimmy, Henry and Trevor are all not-so-secretly hoping Cue Card scoops the million pound bonus.

Pena Dorada is a 66/1 certainty for the Foxhunter (no one said that - but I think he'll probably lead them down the hill on the final circuit). Jimmy tipped Mendip Express.

And then there was that one that made them all smile. What was it called? Oh sorry... out of space...

What Have You Got To Lose?

I was just seven years old, standing in the school playground, when I first contemplated Pascal’s Wager. Of course I’d never actually heard of the 17th Century philosopher, nor did I really understand the concept of wagering, but the thought process was there.

My friend Peter Colligan, who was also seven, asked me ‘Do you believe in God?’ 

I responded by looking over my left shoulder, just in case God was actually standing behind me, thought for a moment, and said ‘Yes’. Because I wasn’t really sure, but if God did exist and he heard me saying ‘No’, there was a very real possibility that I could be struck by lightning on the spot. In other words, it may have been a longshot - but there seemed little harm in acknowledging God’s existence and a major potential downside if I denied it.

Pascal had it the other way around. In a document entitled ‘Pensées’, published posthumously (by which time he presumably knew the result of his wager) he reasoned that there was little downside to believing in God - besides the deprivation of a few luxuries - but a major upside if we found ourselves ascending to an infinite paradise as a result of our belief. He posed the question ‘What have you got to lose?’ 

… Which is what I ask myself, every year, as we approach the major National Hunt Festivals of Cheltenham and Aintree. 

Here’s an easy one: Should I back the Jimmy Moffatt trained Highland Lodge at 50/1 for the Grand National? On the downside, I might lose my £2. On the upside, I could win £100 – and more importantly, if he does win, I won’t be derided as the only person in South Cumbria who hasn’t backed him. Answer: back Highland Lodge.

Here’s another one: Should I back the dual Cartmel winner Pena Dorada, at 66/1, for the Cheltenham Foxhunters Chase? Again, I might lose my £2, but then I might win £132. And if he were to win without my money down, there would be much wailing and gnashing of teeth – so much worse than the fiery depths of hell. I obviously have to back him.

So what about this week’s selection? Well this is where we depart from the cold logic of Pascal’s Wager and rely on good old fashioned faith. Because, let’s face it, an omnipotent being would see straight through Pascal in any case - faith being so much more powerful than logic.

I’m placing my faith in Lucinda Russell - the trainer of Bold Sir Brian who attempts to win, for the first time since 2012, at Ayr on Saturday. He’ll be running off a handicap hurdle mark of just 115, compared to a peak of 155 when beating Pacha du Polder (the replacement for Victoria Pendleton's bicycle at Cheltenham next week) over the larger obstacles back in 2012. 

Come on, what have you got to lose?

A New Dawn for Edith & Maud

On Thursday, this week, the Government made an announcement which will hopefully provide a fitting conclusion to a story first told by Rudyard Kipling in 1888. 

The story, entitled ‘False Dawn’, concerned a suitor who intended to propose to one of two sisters in provincial India. The sisters, Edith and Maud, possessed ‘a strong likeness between them in look and voice,’ - which might have been a metaphor for the similarities between bookmakers on the high-street and bookmakers who operate through digital platforms, often based overseas. Unfortunately the suitor, whose name was Saumarez (he later became a horse and won the 1990 Prix De L’Arc De Triomphe) was disoriented by a dust storm and proposed to the wrong one.

During the last decade we’ve seen quite a few false dawns in racing, while the Government attempted to ensure that offshore bookmakers made a fair contribution to the sport of horseracing. First they scrapped the Horserace Betting Levy Board, then they hastily reinstated it, since when they've been forced to mediate between racing's requirements and the betting industry's identity issues.

Sadly, like Saumarez, their good intentions were lost among a series of disorienting storms - some brewed by the bookmakers and others by European legislation. They tried to woo the offshore bookmakers, but kept on clobbering high-street betting shops instead. This week, however, the Government announced a radical package of reform which will involve the replacement of the Horseracing Betting Levy from April 2017. 

The replacement scheme is expected to deliver a similar proportion of revenue, to horseracing, as was lost through the overseas migration of betting operators. It will create a level playing field among bookmakers: Edith (who owned all the betting shops) will no longer have to pay a lot more than Maud (who dealt exclusively online). Crucially, the plan is also expected to pass European state aid rules, following the favourable outcome of a similar case in France – assuming of course we are still part of Europe in April 2017.

The money will be used to secure the integrity of the sport and to underpin prize money - the life-blood of racing, as it filters through racecourses to owners, trainers, breeders and stable staff. 

In the meantime, racing continues to encourage bookmakers to become Authorised Betting Partners – a status which enables them to sponsor races at Cartmel as well as other racecourses – to make up the shortfall over the next year. One such authorised partner is Star Sports, who happen to sponsor our Cheltenham Festival Preview Night, which will be held in the Grandstand on Thursday 10th March. Tickets are still available and you’ll be able to enjoy a delicious supper as well as secure quality information ahead of the Festival in two weeks time.

And talking of quality information… You can call Star Sports now to back this week’s selection, Many Clouds, in Kelso’s Premier Chase on Saturday. Here’s hoping that those clouds don’t obscure racing’s new dawn.

Controversial Statements

Our friend Lindsay, from Rowleys Catering, was in the racecourse office the other day. 'A colleague of mine,' he said 'asked whether you actually wrote your own blog.' 

I was flattered of course, thinking that Lindsay’s colleague imagined that we employed an expensive ghost writer. 'No.' he said 'She just thought it was full of the usual promotional claptrap that you’d expect from an underpaid PR executive.'
 
Well that hurt. Because I used to be an underpaid PR executive; it was fun and I’d always laboured under the impression that I’d fooled everyone. I even used to script quotes on behalf of racecourse executives. Only now do I realise that no one believed a word I wrote – and they still don’t. Everything’s too positive, too perfect. And life isn’t really like that. Except for the tips - which win with a rarity that lends a smattering of authenticity to each post (this time it's the turn of Grumeti at Fontwell Park on Sunday).

So this week there will be no promotions, no glossy pictures painted. This week it’s just horseracing: the plain unvarnished truth. Controversial statements all the way...

Let’s start with girls: they’re just not as good as boys. They're slower, weaker and prone to mood swings caused by hormonal fluctuation – after all, that’s why mares are entitled to a weight allowance when running in conditions races isn’t it? Because let’s be clear, I’m talking about horses here and not humans. 

In fact, in case my daughter reads this, let’s just clarify that statement: girls are miles better than boys. Obviously. They’re more intelligent, funnier, prettier and better at performing more than one task at the same time. It’s just a shame that the boys don’t have to carry a 7lb backpack when it comes to the school cross-country event. 

Excitingly, the favourite for this year’s Champion Hurdle is a mare. And such is the spell cast by Annie Power (men are popular; girls always cast a spell) that some people believe that she could win the race with or without a weight allowance. If she wins convincingly, it could help to change attitudes – because we are guilty of discrimination. Male horses, including geldings and entire horses, account for more than 80% of all horses racing over jumps. 

There were fewer horses bred during the recession and, while numbers are recovering, there are still less horses in training now than there were in 2011. In an effort to encourage more racehorse owners to give mares a chance, the industry has come up with a scheme to enhance prize money when a mare wins – by as much as £10,000 for appropriately registered horses. Much better to have them racing than sat in the field.

And what about female jockeys? I’m not going to recommend that they should sit in a field. Tony McCoy suggested that they should receive a weight allowance when riding against male jockeys - a bit like mares. But that’s far too controversial a topic for me; after all, I’m just an ex-PR guy.

The 2,600/1 Spring Double

This year Jimmy Moffatt will attempt to do something that no racehorse trainer has ever done before – and I’m not talking about tipping the winner of every championship race at Cheltenham, when he appears at our Festival Preview Night on Thursday 10^th March. Although that would be handy too.

Just three trainers (Ivor Anthony, Denys Smith and David Elsworth) have won both the Lincoln Handicap and the Grand National, but no trainer has ever won both races in the same year – a feat known as the ‘Spring Double’. While the first race marks the start of the Flat season, the second is the zenith of the Jumps season and the two races take place on consecutive Saturdays in early April.

 

The challenge of backing the winners of both races, never mind training them, is so difficult that William Hill Bookmakers once gave thousands of potential investors a free £20 bet on the double. The offer followed an abortive attempt, in 1999, at floating the company on the stock exchange – at which point they gave everyone, who had registered an interest in the floatation, a voucher for the free bet. It would be easy to view the offer as a cynically empty gesture – but I, like many other punters, latched on to the John Dunlop trained 9/2 Lincoln favourite Right Wing, who won cosily by half a length.

 

My Grand National selection was Addington Boy, who was well supported in the market to 10/1. My potential winnings were £1,100, for a completely free stake, and although Addington Boy eventually finished fourth (winning me nothing), it was one of the most thrilling bets that I’ve ever placed. So imagine how exciting it is going to be when Jimmy Moffatt completes the Spring Double with Golden Town and Highland Lodge, both of which can be easily backed for their respective races at 50/1. That’s 2,600/1 for the win double or just over 180/1 if they can both reach a place.

 

I should point out that I know almost exactly nothing about Golden Town's chances in the Lincoln. But, having become the top trainer at Cartmel last year, I have faith in Jimmy achieving pretty much anything that he sets his mind to (as long as it involves training horses and has nothing to do with rocket science).

 

Highland Lodge, on the other hand, has won a race over at least 3 miles (like ten of the last ten Grand National winners); has an official rating higher than 137 (like ten of the last ten winners); has run at least three times since August (like nine of the last ten winners); has won a chase worth more than £29,000 (like nine of the last ten winners); has previously been placed over the National fences - when winning the Becher Chase (like seven of the last ten winners) and will carry no more than 11st (like eight of the last ten winners).

 

Asked about Highland Lodge’s chances by The Racing Post, Jimmy was quoted as saying “We’re pretty confident.” Which is how I feel about this weekend’s selection: Clic Work at Wincanton on Saturday.

 

Whose Great Idea Was This?

According to a television programme that I saw last week, we don’t have as much control over our actions as we think. In fact it appears that the notion of ‘free will’ could just be a myth – our bodies simply react to trillions of competing stimuli in an automated process over which we have no conscious control. This could explain quite a lot.

The TV presenter, who was a Doctor (so it must be true), showed us an experiment in which a patient was connected to various laboratory machines and instructed to move their limbs while electromagnetic beams were aimed at their head. By changing the electromagnetic settings, the Doctor could make the patient move the ‘wrong’ limb – although, weirdly, the patient always thought that the unintended movement was their own idea, thus maintaining the misconception that we are responsible for our own actions.

The implications for horseracing are huge. For a start, no one can possibly blame me if Starchitect doesn’t win the Betfair Hurdle at Newbury this weekend. My choice of selection has basically been preordained by a sequence of events which are entirely outwith my own control.

Moreover, we can’t blame the jockey, the trainer or the horse either – they’re all just creatures responding to a complex matrix of external forces. Although it should be noted that Starchitect is a particularly handsome creature and this may well turn out to be one of the forces that discriminates in his favour. 

In another programme this week, I heard an anthropologist discussing a similar theme. Simon McBurney spends his time asking people to point to the place where their ‘consciousness’ comes from. As you’d expect, most adults in western civilisation point to their brain. Some people might point to their heart, which is a nice sentiment, especially with Valentines Day just around the corner. But in the isolated wilds of the Amazon Rain Forest, McBurney found a tribe of people who pointed at the jungle surrounding them. Their belief is that their consciousness comes, not just from the self, but from their environment – which links us back to the hypothesis of the Doctor on TV.  

I’m not sure why I didn’t see this before. I am quite certain that if you asked a hundred thousand Irishmen where their consciousness comes from, they’d point East towards Cheltenham. Like a murmuration of starlings swooping in the Autumn dusk, or a hive of bees swarming in the Spring, droves of punters migrate across the Irish Channel each year in March – apparently coordinated by the unseen hand of fate. Few know how they managed to get to Cheltenham; even fewer know how they got back.

Most of the Irish contingent will be hardwired to bet on any horse trained by Willie Mullins. They’ll probably go home having backed a high proportion of winners. Unfortunately, I’m pre-programmed to support horses at longer prices (it’s a medical condition known as ‘greed’) – and will consequently come away much poorer. But at least I know, now, that it isn’t my fault.
 

Just the Job

I have a dusty file at home, full of letters received from racecourse managers - responding to my requests for work experience from the age of sixteen onwards. Some of them are very short, most are polite and almost all of them contain the word ‘no’ somewhere within the text. 

There are some exceptions. A few took the time to offer advice and a couple even invited me to visit their racecourses – anywhere from Folkestone in the south, to Kelso in the north (which was a tad far at the time). It was Geoff Stickels, the father of Chris Stickels (Ascot’s Clerk of the Course) who eventually gave me the opportunity to tread in divots at Lingfield Park. That was before they built the all-weather track; they don’t need divot-treaders for many Lingfield meetings nowadays. 

A few years passed, the sand arrived at Lingfield and I received a degree in Agriculture (or something similar, I've forgotten) from a University near Colwick Park - at a time when they still staged jump racing there. Geoff introduced me to his Marketing Director, Roger Easterby, who later became the Marketing Director of the Tote.

Roger gave me a job as Race-day Announcer in the Weighing Room, putting out messages over the PA system: non-runners, jockeys’ colour changes and vehicles that had left their lights on in the car park. I made all the announcements at Lingfield, Folkestone and Brighton and I wasn’t very good at it – so I was rapidly ‘promoted’ to other roles like chief-leaflet-deliverer and pub-poster-putter-upper.  

None of the jobs were full time but, because I was keen, I picked up extra work at Ascot Racecourse, Ladbrokes and a company which delivered flour all over the country - not that this had much to with horseracing, but at least it gave me plenty of time to read The Sporting Life. It was a good apprenticeship and there weren’t many jobs on a racecourse that I didn’t experience to some degree or another – so, if there are any young aspiring racecourse managers out there, I would recommend getting some casual work at your local (or even not so local) track. 

As it happens, we’re looking for people to help us this Summer at Cartmel Racecourse. Each season we directly employ around 120 staff at the races, not including the security stewards, caterers and tote operators. The office team expands too, as we employ an extra person to handle enquiries and assist in the coordination of events from May through to the end of August.  

Anyone interested in working at the racecourse, regardless of whether they’re seeking a new career or a little extra beer money, should write us a letter - I promise you’ll get a reply.  

To work in the office, it’d help if applicants are numerate, literate and have a sense of humour. No other specific qualifications are necessary - unlike entrants for the Cheltenham Foxhunter Steeplechase, who should either have won two point-to-point races or been placed first or second in at least two hunter-chases. Pena Dorada achieved that before winning two handicap chases at Cartmel last year and returns to hunter-chasing at Musselburgh this Sunday, in preparation for a shot at the Cheltenham Festival next month. Pena Dorada is our selection for the weekend.