I came out of yesterday's races at Cheltenham with the plan intact. Vroum Vroum Mag delivered to put me exactly where I wanted to be even if I deserved more actual cash than just the credit I get for tipping Altior to beat Min. But the plan revolved around Yanworth keeping up the good work today. Ruby got the run of the race whereas Barry Geraghty didn't and I can only say it would have been closer had it been otherwise but I'm not claiming to be unlucky. If you want to cling to dubious hard luck stories like that then you shouldn't be betting on horse racing. Then More of That broke blood vessels which sounds horrible and after the three equine fatalities yesterday and the controversies surrounding slopey-backed Alsatians at Crufts, I did once again question if being vegetarian is enough of a statement about caring for animals. But that discussion is for another time.
I wasn't going to get too involved in the Champion Chase because I wasn't convinced about Un De Sceaux as a wonder horse any more than I thought any of the three previous champions could come back. I stuck with the 33/1 outsider I backed nearly a year ago, Sizing Granite, for almost no money whatsoever, who hit the first and pulled up not long after.
But I have always said, since I saw him at Newbury as a novice, that Sprinter Scare was the best horse I've seen in the flesh. That includes Desert Orchid, Dancing Brave, Burrough Hill Lad, See You Then, Warning, Nashwan and two Gold Cup winners not good enough to be listed. I thought he was the jumping equivalent of Frankel, the flat wonder horse, but heart problems put him out of the game until a brave comeback didn't quite convince that he was still the same horse.
Until today when he goes up alongside the new pretender two out and goes by him very convincingly and sees him off. Absolutely brilliant.
Like they are saying about Douvan now, I always thought he could win over any distance and would go on to be a Gold Cup horse (I also thought Frankel could have had a shot at the Arc but enough's enough) but his health scare has kept him to two miles and now, at 10 years old, maybe this comeback miracle is more than could have been hoped for.
It's such a shame that the human stories are those that get heard. Of course, great 'training performance' by the lovely Nicky Henderson and very good for Nico de Boinville who now has the ride, who used to ride him out when Geraghty rode him in races, who has now moved on to a more lucrative contract. It's those that can speak our language that get interviewed but it is, and has always been, the horses that do the running. As Lester Piggott once explained to a disgruntled owner on whose horse he had got beaten, who said he should have gone sooner, 'I couldn't come without the horse'.
The horse just gets a bucket of water thrown over him and then has to have his photograph taken. These jumping horses are geldings and don't have careers at stud to 'look forward to'. Oh, Sprinter Sacre, what would you say.
So, at half-time, at Cheltenham, I'm definitely losing now. Bookmakers are much kinder than they used to be and I get another chance with my Yanworth stake because he was second. But I certainly need to get that one right. I don't quite understand the hullabaloo caused by Vautour going to the Ryanair Chase rather than the Gold Cup. I had him in a yankee, running in the Ryanair, a while ago because he was outstayed by Cue Card in the King George in a shorter race on a flat track. So perhaps I'll make a second half comeback and do a Sprinter Sacre all of my own. But I'm not quite as talented so it'll probably be a fallback on to one of two options. Either, well, it's only money or, I'll involve myself in poetry for a while. I have just written my piece for the Poetry Club's session on Shakespeare's sonnets for their meeting near the 400th anniversay of the death and that was very therapeutic (writing the piece, not the death). It will be here in due course and then there should be yet more things as my contribution to the anniversary. It's the least I can do.
