A week today (or tomorrow, if our esteemed editor publishes on Monday) we’ll all be like kids at Christmas as the Cheltenham Festival begins, writes David Massey. Money in our pockets and hope in our hearts, we’ll attack the week as if it’s the only show in town and racing doesn’t exist for the other fifty-one weeks of the year, only to watch those ante-post dockets go up in flames one-by-one as something you hadn’t even considered goes sailing by your good thing at the top of the hill, leaving yours eating trail dust.
Not that there’ll be much dust around, with the forecast going no better than soft and, depending on which long-range weather forecast you’re looking at, it’s either going to tip down during the Festival, or it’ll be as dry as a bone, cold, with minus temperatures at night. I like weather forecasters, as they make us racing tipsters look like we’re on solid ground with their weekly absolute guess-ups. Maybe I’ll have a go at the weather next week and Sarah Keith-Lucas can try and find the winner of the Ultima, see how she likes those apples.
Anyway, I have been around and about for the last couple of weeks, with work trips to Market Rasen and Doncaster with the Paul Johnson firm, Southwell for their Winter Derby day with S&D Bets, and Hereford and Newbury with MT Racing. That was my yearly outing to Hereford: with two members of the firm sunning themselves in Barbados it means I get the call up. Hereford, much like Fakenham and Great Yarmouth, is three-and-a-half hours from anywhere in the United Kingdom, and whilst a lot of the rain has dissipated from north of the Midlands, it’s clear from the drive down that they’re still struggling around Hereford and Worcestershire. Fields turned into duckponds, and the ones surrounding Hereford can’t be seen for floodwater. I’m amazed it was even on. Fair play to the groundstaff.
There are no fewer than 15 bookmakers turning up for what is, after all, just a normal weekend meeting but the crowd is a good one and there’s enough business for all. I’d forgotten how much the people of Hereford love a forecast - I stuck it up on the lightboard for the first race, a four-runner handicap chase, and I don’t take much less on the forecast than I do on the actual race itself. Compare that to Newbury last Saturday where I put the forecast up for the opener and didn’t take so much as a washer on it. Strange.
The race is off, and there’s early drama with a faller which brings another down. Phil (Cashmore Racing) three doors down from me is scratching his head. “How has this happened?” he bemoans. “I was against Burrows Park and that’s been brought down, so I’m going to win on the race. But look at this,” he says, pointing to his forecast book. “I’m going to lose all that whatever happens, the only forecasts I’ve laid are the two left standing!” Sometimes, in this game, you can be right, and still not get paid.
Five out of seven favourites win on the afternoon, and one of the other winners, Bertie B, is 12s into 7s, so you really don’t need me to tell you how the afternoon went for the majority of the books.
Southwell on Winter Derby day saw a hundred members of the public let in for the first time since it (almost) went behind closed doors after the Storm Babet floods last year. There’s still reduced facilities at Southwell, with the downstairs grandstand out of action (and will be for a while yet) but tickets went quickly enough, I’m told, and it is nice to have a bit more of an atmosphere about the place. The winter nights are bad enough even when things are “normal”, for want of a better word, but with only owners and trainers there over the winter, what tends to happen is there’s a few racing people at the start of the meeting but they drift away once their horse has run. By the time you get to the last two races you’ve got a few annual members left, and maybe twenty others. If an owner has a monkey on, you take the bet, shut your eyes and hope.
The hundred that did turn up were mostly families with children, looking to enjoy an afternoon’s racing and a bit of fresh air. As such, small money, but enough of it around to make a decent book. Results were mixed, a few jollies going in but the worst result for many was Rose’aid finishing third at 125-1 in one of the maidens. Head in hands stuff for the Stevie Stretch firm, who laid £50 ew to one punter and a tenner each-way to another. Oof.
Newbury on Saturday saw another of the Invades student days. Before we all start slagging it off again, I’ve got some positive words to say about these days now. The students themselves, as they go to more and more of these racecourse days, are learning what it’s all about and as such, behave themselves very well, in the main, and now know how to place a bet. Yes, it’s almost guaranteed they’ll want £2.50ew on a debit card but so be it, if that’s how it’s going to be. It’s harder work but they know what they’re doing now, and have become easier to process - if you'll excuse the phrase - when placing their wagers.
As David Johnson, from the Paul Johnson firm, rightly pointed out to me, there have been 11,000 students at Doncaster over this weekend, 6,000 on the Saturday and 5,000 on the Sunday. If we can get a 10% retention rate on those students that's 1,100 racing fans you’ve got, hopefully for life. David is an angry middle-aged man these days - he gets more like Michael Douglas in Falling Down with every passing month - but he comes out with the odd pearl of wisdom every now and then, and he’s spot on here.
Anyway, it’s all well and good me saying all this as I get the luxury of the rails at Newbury and don’t have to deal with the students, all of whom are behind me in the Dubai Millennium hall! After the usual quiet start on the first (see earlier comment about the forecast, a waste of time) it picks up nicely, and there are a few decent bets flying about. Sadly one of them is on the winner, Heltenham, with one punter having £100 on, but it’s a small winning race all the same.
Bucephalus is almost a skinner, with most punters avoiding it as they can’t pronounce it, and we go the right way with Spring Note too. I watch the race with one of the big firms who have laid a £6000-£4000 Brentford Hope. Two out, they’ve done their money but a mistake at the last gets him off the bridle, and he finds less than I do having climbed four flights of stairs. Easy game...
I always joke to one customer that they are my “customer of the day” and today that’s Belinda, who has a colourful bee brooch on her coat (“it’s my nickname”, I am informed) and is having £2.50 each-way on two horses in every race. So far she’s backed Highland Hunter, Heltenham, and is collecting again after Knowhentoholdem wins the fifth race. She puts her bets on for the next, not only for herself but her aunty and best friend, neither of whom can be bothered to put their own bets on, it seems. “Ooh, I’ve got a £20 note here!” she exclaims, pulling one out of her coat pocket. I jokingly remind her it’s the one I gave her earlier, when Heltenham had won. “Oh yeah, I backed that one too, didn’t I?” she laughs. She goes on to back another winner and almost cops again in the last, but Geturguccion is just touched off by Jasmine Bliss, who went down to post like she was on wheels, and carried my tenner. Next door to me, Norman Barnes also see it go down well and immediately duck it, and push the second favourite out instead. There are bookmakers that still bet to opinion, rather than what the machine tells them - you’ve just got to find them to get the value.
They knew. Jasmine Bliss wins and sends us, and punters, home happy.
I’ll be at Sandown with MT on Saturday and quite possibly Warwick Sunday, but then, let the fun begin.
See you all at Cheltenham! Best of luck to us all, we’ll need it!
- DM
