No hurdles were jumped in the home straight here on Friday, causing a certain amount of bottled up frustration among the training community and amounting to a first setback for the new padded hurdles gradually being rolled out around the country. Officials here hope that all obstacles will be jumpable for today’s much more high-profile card but that will depend on wind and a refined method of setting the hurdles into the ground.
“It’s just disappointing,” said Paul Nicholls after his Danny Kirwan was second in the Supreme Trial, “when you’ve got a Grade Two novice hurdle and you’ve only got four flights of hurdles. I just said to Harry Cobden, if the bloody hurdles had been there, that might have helped us a bit. But it’s nobody’s fault.”
Other trainers undoubtedly shared Nicholls’ feelings and many more of them will be prepared to say so if the problem extends into today, when, unusually, the feature race and the big betting handicap are both over hurdles. The issue showed itself before racing began yesterday, when gusts of wind going directly down the straight were strong enough to lift individual hurdle panels, making them more upright than their neighbours.
With the safety of participants in mind, that, clearly, could not be tolerated. Obstacles should not be able to move as runners approach and officials also pointed out the risk of a horse getting a limb trapped between adjacent hurdle panels, if they happened to be out of line with each other.
“I haven’t heard of it happening before,” said Chris Stickels, clerk of the course here. Ascot decided over the summer to install the new padded hurdles, which have been trialled over the last five years and are now in place at eight tracks.
Stickels continued: “I think the solution will be to put them in with a smaller hole, so that the hurdle legs will go into a tighter hole, which should provide more resistance and hopefully stop that. But until we’d experienced this problem today, we wouldn’t have known to do that.”
The padded hurdles were developed by Richard Linley, a former jockey who now serves as chief inspector of courses, with the aim of being more forgiving for horses who clatter them than the traditional wooden frame stuffed with birch. The British Horseracing Authority has said they reduce the faller rate from about 2% to 1.59%, which, it says, would amount to 90 fewer falls per year if replicated at all British tracks. But they also present a solid face to the elements and are therefore more likely to catch the wind than old-style hurdles.
“We’re very keen on them, we think they’re the next step in hurdle development,” Stickels added. “The faller statistics have been positive so far and the information we’ve had back from the vets is that the injury stats are very good too. The superficial cuts and scratches that you get from the birch hurdles, they’re much reduced over these.”
The most memorable performance on this card was, unsurprisingly, over fences when Vinndication won the novice chase. His trainer, Kim Bailey, has had his share of disappointments over the decades and knows better than to gush about a horse but he came as close to gushing as he dared in his assessment of the five-year-old.
“The long-term future of this horse is hugely important to me,” the 65-year-old said. “I think he could go a very long way and what you’re seeing now is only a frame of what he could be, so we’ve got to be patient with him.
“David [Bass, jockey] believes he’s the nicest horse he’s ever sat on but, as I remind him, he hasn’t sat on very many. He’s a lovely horse. Is he as fast as Charbel? The answer is no but he’s a proper, mudloving, old-fashioned type of horse.”
Eight months after retiring from the saddle, Katie Walsh is once more part of a plot to bag a major British jumps race. Baie Des Iles, trained by her husband, Ross O’Sullivan, is being lined up for next week’s Welsh Grand National and has shortened to a general 12-1 in recent days as punters begin to see possibilities in the grey mare, last sighted in this country when giving Walsh her final spin around Aintree in the National itself.
“She’s in good form,” Walsh told me on Thursday. “Her first run back of the season was in France, she ran very well to a point. She took a blow, so she’s come on from that. She ran in the Welsh National two years ago as a five-year-old. She’s a bigger, stronger mare now. It’s a great pot, she has a nice weight and the conditions suit, so she’s got to go and take her chance.”
Baie Des Iles evidently attracted some support for the Aintree National, judging by her starting price of 16-1. She managed no better than 12th but Walsh says that should not be taken at face value.
“It was a great experience, lovely to be able to ride her for Ross. She’s a super jumper and she took to the fences well. I was getting a great spin but, like so many other people in the National, we didn’t get the luck that you need. She got badly bumped by a loose horse at Valentine’s and lost her chance.
“I hunted her home, looked after her, there wasn’t a bother on her and she came out of it well, went to France a few weeks later and won a big race in Auteuil.”
Walsh rides out at O’Sullivan’s yard and spends her evenings chewing over work plans and running plans with her husband, but most of her work life these days is taken up with the yearlings she keeps at her father’s place, “literally half a mile away across a field”, where she prepares them for eventual resale.
I ask if she has any regrets about retirement. “Not at all, absolutely love it. I had a great career, I miss it but I’m very busy between Dad’s and Ross’s. It was the right time to go. I didn’t want to go when I wasn’t getting rides any more.”
Chris Cook's tips
Southwell 11.20 Motajaasid 11.50 Crindle Carr 12.20 Side Effect 12.55 Don't Do It 1.30 Makofitwhatyouwill 2.05 Matterhorn 2.40 Gnaad 3.15 Sellingallthetime
Uttoxeter 12.05 Field Exhibition 12.35 Pink Legend 1.10 Deebaj 1.45 Blakerigg 2.20 The Crazed Moon 2.55 Eddy 3.30 King Roland
Ascot 12.45 Gallahers Cross 1.20 Brianstorm (nap) 1.55 Thomas Darby (nb) 2.30 Count Meribel 3.05 Brafdford Bridge 3.40 Eden Du Houx
Wolverhampton 5.15 Proceed 5.45 Acadian Angel 6.15 Cosmogyral 6.45 Corinthia Knight 7.15 Storm Trooper 7.45 Albert Finney 8.15 Remembering You 8.45 Benny And The Jets
