A frog was swimming merrily along in his favourite stream one fine summer’s day. The sun was shining, a cool breeze was blowing, and everything was good in the world.

Suddenly, the frog heard a voice behind him.

“Good day to you, Mr Frog.”Read the rest of this entry »

So Twist Magic is up to his old tricks again, polarising opinion. There was the Twist Magic who was travelling like a dream in the Arkle when he and Don’t Push It got a perfect 6.0 from all the judges for synchronised falling at the second last, after which there was an enquiry into the second last, whether or not it should be the second last at all, or whether it should be razed to the ground and a picture of Edward Gillespie put there in its place.

It was the same Twist Magic who won the Maghull Chase at Aintree on his next start, the same one who won a graduation chase at Kempton on his debut the following season and who beat Voy Por Ustedes and Monet’s Garden in the Tingle Creek Chase at Sandown that December, usurping the former at the head of the ante post market for the Champion Chase.Read the rest of this entry »

There was as much turf racing in Manhattan last week as there was in Ireland, sofrom a racing point of view, it made as much sense to be there as to be here, kids and all, just to see what all the hullabaloo was about, if the Empire State Building really was bigger than Liberty Hall, and here’s the thing – it is. (More expensive to get in as well, but whatya gonna do?).

The trip was planned. It did help that part of the extended family live in New York, and that rent payable amounted to six loaves of Brennan’s bread, 480 Barry’s tea bags and a ticket to a Knicks game, but even so, it wasn’t as if we all woke up on Monday morning and said, look, yesterday’s Sussex National at Plumpton will probably be the last steeplechase run until the Normans Grove Chase at Fairyhouse, let’s head to New York tomorrow, let’s see how much flights are with 24 hours’ notice and how much discount you get for the small ones, under six but over the all-important age of two (when they start to cost you). And don’t think that you will get away with saying they are under two if they are two years and two weeks on the day that you fly. You may get out ofDublin, but you will almost certainly incur the wrath of the mean lady on the check-in desk on the way home. Honestly.Read the rest of this entry »

The grey days of January are probably greyer (or whiter) than usual this year with the snows and the freezes putting the kybosh on everything from the MCR Hurdle and the much-anticipated Fulham/Portsmouth showdown (?) to the Glasthule Choir’s already delayed Christmas party. Even so, there is much to look forward to in 2010. Here are three:

1. Kauto Star v Denman

This should be massive. Horses being horses, a half a tonne of body on four comparatively spindly long legs, fragile beasts that they are, you have to cross all 10 fingers (eight if you’re a Simpson) in the hope that the pair of them make it to 19th March, Cheltenham Gold Cup day, in one piece, or two pieces, one piece each. Sir Peter O’Sullevan tells of the time when, a couple of months after Lester Piggott had started training, he asked him how it was going. “They’re made of glass, aren’t they?” said Lester apparently, and Sir Peter does a masterly impression.Read the rest of this entry »

What do you do when the racecourses of the world that we inhabit at this time of year (say: National Hunt) are frozen over, and not even the new fandangled frost covers (up there with all-weather racing under the Trade Descriptions Act) can ensure that they remain, well, free of frost?

1. Go to the park or to the cinema or to Funderland (it’s still on isn’t it?) with the kids, get some brownie points in the bank, thus reducing your brownie point overdraft, because you will need your overdraft to be as low as you can get it when you are looking for the annual extension going into February and March.

2. Take a week off, go to New York, go skiing or something.

3. Plan your 2010, objectives and such, review the do’s and don’t’s of betting strategy that you fastidiously compiled this time last year and haven’t looked at since 17th February.Read the rest of this entry »

I remember Christmasses past, getting the Sporting Life and the Sporting Chronicle and the Irish Field on 23rd or 24th December, the ones that had the declared runners for St Stephen’s Day – or Boxing Day as we were sometimes apt to call it, influenced, no doubt, by the diaries that we used to get, all printed in the UK, and by the BBC racing commentators – and going back to my grandfather’s house, huddling around the turf fire with my brother and my grandfather and poring over the form for three days, swearing to my dad that we were helping my grandfather wrap his Christmas presents.Read the rest of this entry »

Amazing the way the shape of these races can change. There we were a week ago, thinking that the King George was going to be a Christmas cracker, as much turkey and stuffing as you could fit on your plate, and that the Lexus Chase was going to be a custard cream. Not so any more.

The first thing that happened was that Cooldine was a King George scratching. He didn’t make it on time for his intended seasonal reappearance in the John Durkan Chase at Punchestown two and a half weeks ago, so it appears that Willie Mullins wasn’t happy to send him over to take on Kauto Star in the King George on his seasonal debut. Rightly so. He’s staying at home now and going for the Lexus instead, all things being equal.Read the rest of this entry »

We all know that horses win races, not jockeys. We all know that a fridge would have won the Guineas on Nijinsky while not even God Almighty himself would have got Chateau Elan home in the 1999 Punchestown Charity Race. Okay, so maybe Ruby Walsh would have, or AP McCoy, or any 7lb claimer who could have done a little more than sit tight and steer, but that’s not the point.

Most jockeys will win most races when they are on the best horse. By the same token, there are few circumstances in which a jockey will win a race when he or she is not on the best horse, relative to the total number of circumstances, if you follow. Even so, jockeys are important, possibly even more important in National Hunt races than in flat races, and it isn’t just the finish that’s important. The finish is the part of the race that gets the headlines, the visible part, the strength-in-a-finish part, the part that brings the armchair jockeys out. However, the sum total of what has gone before in a race is much more important than the final two furlongs. You would never have caught Robert Earnshaw engaging in a McCoy kitchen-sink drive to the line, yet he continued to ride some of the best Dickinson horses because he was such a consummate horseman, because of his value before strength-in-a-finish ever became an issue.Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a quandary. You back a horse, you figure that he is value at the price, he goes well, he travels, all is going swimmingly until the first fence down the back straight, when a horse jumps in front of him and he comes down, money lost.

Four weeks later, the same horse is set to run in a similar race. (Have you guessed what it is yet?) Same type of race, same track, more or less the same distance, similar class of opposition, similar ground, same handicap rating, same jockey, similar price. Do you back him again? Do you run the risk of following this horse over this cliff, lemming-like (we all have lemming horses), or do you take a pull and say no way, not this time. Once bitten.Read the rest of this entry »

The Champion Chase market is a bit like Lanigan’s Ball these days.  Master Minded steps out, Twist Magic steps in, Big Zeb steps out, Forpadydeplasterer steps in again (even though he has far too many syllables for the rhythm of the ditty, such as it is), Well Chief steps out, Kalahari King steps in again, giving them a taste of a real Irish jig, as it were.

Twist Magic looked good in the Tingle Creek on Saturday, no question, and Big Zeb didn’t.  But Twist Magic always looks good at Sandown.  He has run there over fences four times now, he won the Tingle Creek in 2007, he would have been a good second to Master Minded in 2008 had he not fallen at the second last, he won the Celebration Chase there last April, and now he has won another Tingle Creek.  Four efforts, three wins, two Grade 1s and a Grade 2, and a good fall, if there is such a thing.  Three wins from four starts over fences at Sandown, four wins from 12 starts at other tracks.  Go figure.

He was great on Saturday.  He travelled really well, he seemed to enjoy himself out in front, he jumped impeccably for Ruby Walsh and he stayed on well over the last two fences and up the hill.  If you were to crab it, you would point to the fact that the winning time was almost two seconds slower than the time that the novices clocked in the Henry VII Chase earlier, but that would be to be pedantic, Twist Magic had nothing to push him further, he won as he liked, and they did stand still for a second or so when the tape went up, Ruby and AP looking at each other, wondering who would blink first.Read the rest of this entry »