Monday Musings: An Expensive Blunder

April 20, 2026
Tony Stafford

One of the most upwardly mobile jump trainers in the country is undoubtedly Jamie Snowden, writes Tony Stafford. Over the 17 seasons since he first took out his licence in Lambourn, Snowden has consistently improved both number of wins and prizemoney, and this term is the first time he’s exceeded £1 million in earnings.

The 84 wins have come at a strike rate of 25 per cent, and while it’s churlish to say a horse has been unlucky to lose when a bad mistake is the reason for it, his Git Maker’s second in Saturday’s Coral Scottish Grand National was probably undeserved.

True, the winner Kap Vert, a six-year-old trained by the duo of Philip Hobbs and Johnson White was an entirely deserving recipient of the £112k first prize on only his fifth start in a chase. That said, Git Maker’s performance for all bar one monstrous error at the 21^st of the 27 fences made things much more comfortable for the winning yard’s local ownership partnership of If The Kap Fits.

In his 13 chases before Saturday, Git Maker had been runner-up to the following year’s Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Inothewayurthinkin in the 2024 Kim Muir for amateurs at Cheltenham, and has places to his name in the 2024 Scottish and this year’s Midlands Nationals.

In those now 14 races Snowden’s ten-year-old has never fallen with only a single pulled up after 14 fences on one occasion and once completed the only eight fences remaining when another nine were lost to a low sun.

By my reckoning, he has safely negotiated 268 fences in around 48 miles of racing. So why then did he make the catastrophic error at the 21^st fence on Saturday? Having raced among the last three for the first half of the race, Jonny Burke moved him up around the outside easily into third place down the back for the last time.

It seemed a matter of time before he contested the lead, but he stumbled badly on landing, losing impetus to the extent that he was back in ninth or tenth by the following fence. Then another ordinary leap two fences further on would, we assumed, have finished it for him.

But no, this valiant stayer battled back again, so that he shared second going to the last. Slower away from the fence than both the winner and the 4/1 favourite, Joseph O’Brien’s Kim Roque, he stayed on determinedly to the line and was a nose ahead of the third, that making the difference of £21k for connections, so not a total disaster.

As a side note on disaster, Kim Roque raced here in the Ronnie Bartlett silks, and that same owner sold the winner last spring. How’s your luck?

I haven’t spoken to Jamie, but I was wondering who made the decision whereby stable jockey Gavin Sheehan switched off the Ayr ride to go instead to partner four Snowden runners at Bangor – none of which won – and neither did Gavin’s two outside rides.

Sheehan had ridden Git Maker in ten of those previous 13 runs over fences and two of those he missed came in the Kim Muir where the top amateur Will Biddick took the ride. For my money, Sheehan excels in judging pace in long-distance chases on a par I believe with Harry Skelton and the champion Sean Bowen. Not that Burke did anything wrong, far from it – did he not after all survive that terrible blunder and retain the partnership?

Dan Skelton meanwhile went on his merry way with a Sunday double at Plumpton worth £40k bringing him to within just 126 grand of making the £5 million for the season. There was a brilliant interview with him by the Racing Post’s Lee Mottershead yesterday, revealing much about the 41-year-old’s planning and some of his admitted weaknesses as he approaches the massive achievement coupled with a first trainers’ title.

On an earthlier level, I was thrilled that Jack Quinlan has set a new personal best this season – one for each of his 33 years. Jack has resolutely stayed close to his Newmarket roots and while the Amy Murphy connection that brought him so much success with Kalashnikov earlier his career has ended with Amy’s moving full-time to France, a former Newmarket trainer, Neil King, has provided him several highlights.

Biggest of those was the Aintree Grade 1 win of Storming George this month. Jack, as you would expect, was well aware of the winners statistic but was surprised when I congratulated him for passing half a million in stakes. “I had no idea,” he said. A bit of a mini-Skelton really. Jack had never previously got to £400K, just as Dan had never until this season got to £4 million and goes straight to the £5m.

After seeing what happened at Newmarket and Newbury last week, I’m not sure the picture for the first two English Classics at Newmarket next month is any clearer. It seems that the best way of enhancing one’s horses’ chances was to keep them away from the trials. So, George Boughey’s unbeaten Bow Echo, a son of Night Of Thunder has hardened his position as others fell by the wayside.

It must have been the result of some exceptional work on the gallops for the 115-rated colt to be as short as 11/4 while Zavateri, second in Saturday’s Greenham at Newbury and rated 118 on last year’s Dewhurst fourth behind Gewan, is at 25/1 after a satisfactory second to Alparslan. Gewan was fatally injured in a gallop a couple of weeks ago, sadly, while Coolmore’s Dewhurst runner-up Gstaad will probably go straight to Newmarket after missing the trials.

The two best US dirt horses from the 2025 Classic generation were back in action after a break in the Oaklawn Handicap, a Grade 2 race at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Arkansas on Saturday evening. Godolphin’s Sovereignty, trained by Bill Mott, was seen off by the seven-year-old White Abarrio, who brought his career tally to ten wins from 25 starts and £6.7 million in prizes. All six runners in the race were still entire horses, three of them four-year-olds, two aged five and the winner two years their senior.

Last year Sovereignty won the Kentucky Derby from Journalism, and they again finished in that order in the third leg of the Triple Crown, run over the reduced trip of 10 furlongs at Saratoga while Belmont Park was closed for rebuilding.

Sovereignty did not run in the second leg of the Triple Crown, the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico, which left the way clear for Journalism to step up. American dirt fans are licking their lips in anticipation of another year’s competition from two great horses.

- TS