It is less than six months since Ruth Jefferson learned that three of the best horses in her stable would not be returning after their summer break. For a trainer in her first full season with a licence, still mourning the loss of her father, Malcolm, who had trained at the family yard for nearly 40 years, it could have come as a crushing setback.
Instead her response was both sensible and magnificent. “I think the thing is that I was born into this,” Jefferson said this week. “I was born the year that Dad started training. Horses come and go, people move, people leave. You can let it define you and let it worry you or you can just say, fair enough, it’s their choice, and crack on with what you’ve got. I took the option that I’d rather concentrate on what I’ve still got than worry about what’s left. Whether that’s a good attitude or a bad attitude, I don’t know.”
In a sport and a way of life that depends on uncertainty, many would argue that it is the only attitude. It is also an outlook that should serve Jefferson well as she attempts an unprecedented feat on Boxing Day. Waiting Patiently, the second-favourite for the King George VI Chase at Kempton Park, will be racing for the first time since February in a contest that has been a feature of the Christmas racing programme since 1937. There have been 67 winners since and not one has triumphed on its seasonal debut.
It is a daunting statistic and not the only one to ponder on the long drive to Surrey from Jefferson’s stable in north Yorkshire. Waiting Patiently is unbeaten in six starts over fences but has never raced much beyond two and a half miles. The last horse to win the King George on his first start at three miles was Desert Orchid in 1986.
Yet the challenge is as much the result of choice as necessity, a sign of Jefferson’s belief that a regime should suit the horse and not the trainer. “The problem was that we’d have had to push him rather than let him tell us for [the Betfair Chase at] Haydock or Ascot,” she says. “We’ve let him tell us when he’s been ready to step up and every time he’s told us he’s ready to step up again he’s done that as well.
“The other race we thought about was the John Durkan [at Punchestown in early December] but to travel to Ireland and back two weeks before Kempton didn’t feel like something we were overly interested in doing.
“So we took him away to Hexham, he did about a mile uphill on heavy ground, it was the blow he needed and he’s been fine ever since. I don’t feel like he’s massively unfit. I feel he’s about where he should be.”
Waiting Patiently’s ability to compete with, and beat, the best over fences is not in doubt. Cue Card, one of the outstanding chasers of recent seasons, had no answer to Waiting Patiently’s finishing kick after jumping the last in the Ascot Chase in February and Jefferson’s chaser was nearly three lengths in front of the 2015 King George winner at the line.
It was an emotional success for his trainer, 24 hours after her father’s funeral, and only her second since taking over the licence after Malcolm’s death 15 days earlier. Her first winner, Cyrus Darius, who took the Morebattle Hurdle at Kelso two days before the Ascot Chase, was one of the horses to leave the yard over the summer.
“On the time of the Ascot race and everything else, it was a good race,” Jefferson says. “A lot of races are slowly run but that was a gallop from start to finish. It wasn’t a Grade One that fell our way, it was one that he won and won well, so you’d hope it’s not going to be his only one.”
The memory of Waiting Patiently’s cruising speed and turn of foot remains sufficiently strong to make him a solid second-favourite for a race in which British jump racing’s training elite – Nicky Henderson, Paul Nicholls, Colin Tizzard and Nigel Twiston-Davies – will all saddle runners with a chance.
The betting is of little interest to Jefferson, however. “A price is just a reflection of other people’s opinions, to put it bluntly,” she says. “If you want, you can pick holes in us, in going there first time and never having tried three miles, but you could pick holes in every horse if you really wanted to. I just feel we’re not going to find out if he stays until we try him, so that’s the only unknown to me – will he stay?
“He’s a nice, talented horse and he’s earned his place. I don’t know whether being here [in her stable] makes him more interesting than being anywhere else. If he was somewhere else, he might be favourite or he might not, but it’s just a reflection of what the bookmakers and the people who have backed him feel.”
When some owners took their horses away in the summer, Richard Collins, the owner of Waiting Patiently, decided to back Jefferson, and he has added some fresh blood to his string at the stable too. For her part, Jefferson is backing her own judgment as she attempts to confound the Kempton statistics.
“The trainer’s job is behind the scenes, keeping everything right,” she says. “What happens on the racecourse is beyond our control. But you get to know your horses and judge your horses and I’m really happy with him.
“At some point you’ve got to take them on. We spend a lot of time moaning that people don’t take each other on, and everyone’s saying that it’s a hard race first time, but it’s where you’re at. You can run away from anything with any horse but why?”
