I’m quite good at guessing the time as I look out of my window early in the morning, writes Tony Stafford. Yesterday, I surmised 7.24 a.m. – yes, I allowed myself a Christmas lie-in – but it was 7.26. I’d obviously miscalculated that the days were getting longer again (hurrah). The clocks will soon be going forward, too, by which time we’ll have had Cheltenham!

Then it was starting preparation for the Boxing Day cards. Last year I was swamped with the number of calls needed to the trainers on the From The Stables and Trainers Quotes services – I think we had upwards of 80 runners on the day.

This year, having spoken to Sam Stronge, who while assisting his wife Ali in running their small stable in Berkshire, is also the new Dave Roberts, agent not to A P McCoy obviously, but the man who has picked up the slack of the master jumps agent since his retirement a year or so ago.

At last count, the engaging Sam is listed as having 28 almost exclusively jumps jockeys and conditionals in his care, notably Nico De Boinville, Harry Cobden, Charlie Deutsch and Daryl Jacob. There’s some earning potential there and as he says: “It not easy to get away to the races any more”. I know how he feels, at this time of the year what with those early starts.

He did say, on hearing my early bleat about how much work there would be in compiling my information for the members: “I think there will be small fields, so it should work out quite nicely for my boys.”

How right he was. With all the meetings lost to bad weather of one type of another, but latterly mainly through waterlogging, you’d have thought there would be plenty of trainers, and especially their owners, gagging to have a runner at one of the seven UK jumps fixtures on Boxing Day (Tuesday).

They range around the country from Wincanton in the southwest; Kempton and Fontwell in the south; Market Rasen in the east; Sedgefield and Wetherby in the north and Aintree in the northwest.

So, a better geographical split than we sometimes get – viz Friday last week when Midlands trio Wolverhampton, Southwell and Uttoxeter shared the programme with Ascot. That admittedly can be and was extenuated as the BHA is providing extra all-weather action where it can to make up for other jumps cancellations.

So, what’s my point?  I said above that you’d think jumping connections would leap at the chance of having a Christmas runner after the relative blight of cancellations. In the event, there has been an uncanny correlation, both in the average number of runners per NH meeting on the day, and likewise its diminution since 2022.

Also odd, is that after all the extra all-weather cards alluded to, the sole AW programme on Boxing Day, at Wolverhampton, has a much greater number of runners than was the case last December.

When that meeting comes along every year, I never forget how I voluntarily passed up Kempton’s King George back in 1993 to attend the first-ever UK fixture held under lights at the then still shiny and relatively new Dunstall Park track, inspired by Ron Muddle and Arena, a few hundred yards from the old turf circuit where jumping had an equal share of the fixtures with the flat.

In 1993, the weather had turned cold and there were four abandonments from the nine jumps fixtures planned, with no obvious geographical bias. Ayr, Sedgefield, Hereford and Wincanton were lost. Wincanton and Sedgefield are the only two of the four still on the roster. Kempton was joined by Huntingdon, Market Rasen, Newton Abbot and Wetherby as surviving the elements.

Newton Abbot no longer races in the winter and, until this year, Huntingdon had been a staple, but Jockey Club Racecourses have jettisoned it in favour of Aintree this year. It gave JCR the opportunity to switch Sandown’s Tolworth Hurdle from there, bolstering the overall winner’s prizemoney at Aintree by 45 grand, with the inevitable sting in the tail.

Now it’s called the William Hill Formby Novices Hurdle (formerly the Tolworth Hurdle). At least it will be run with a very nice field.

Let’s return now though to Dunstall Park and 1993 when seated at my private table in the crammed to overflowing grandstand, I had the novel pleasure of my own TV set as I ate what I remember as an excellent lunch – it’s still very nice there -  while watching Barton Bank beat Bradbury Star and The Fellow to win 45k in the King George VI Chase at Kempton.

Google tells me that the 2023 equivalent after the interim inflation is £137k, so a first prize now of £142,000, courtesy Ladbrokes this time, narrowly beats that figure. If it’s possible to do it for the big races, then why not the rest?

So numerically, none of the seven NH cards on Tuesday has more than a total of 62, that honour going to Market Rasen. Last time they had 76! The smallest is Kempton with 46 compared with 59 last time, but in mitigation there was an extra race. Six and out for the punters therefore, and time to go home for the next phase of turkey consumption.

Aintree basically has taken over from fellow JCR track Huntingdon – I’ve nice memories of Boxing Day there, too. Just 51 horses in Liverpool compares with 76 at Huntingdon last year and the pattern continues at Fontwell, 74 last year, only 51 this time around. Wetherby also has a big drop, from 85 to only 53.

The other alteration is Sedgefield coming in for Newcastle. The Co Durham circuit was certainly on when Michael Dickinson had his remarkable 12 wins on the single day around the country. I had a great HWPA lunch recently, sitting for half the time next to Chris Pimlott (half a lunch with the Editor is more than enough!), who told me the maestro had only 15 runners that December day in 1982.

Chris rode a double at Market Rasen but said he had ridden a winner on the Brod Munro-Wilson-owned Talon, a horse I bought for the late, great amateur and all-round “cad” – he wouldn’t have minded me saying that – somewhere else later on. Talon was possibly the least grand of the duodectet, but we were as thrilled with that as the first of three King George wins that year of Wayward Lad (my second favourite jumper of all time after L’Escargot).

With one extra race in 2022 that averages out to eight per race, compared with 11 last year. And that’s comparing declarations and the possibility of late withdrawals with actual runners.

Prizemoney may have jumped at Aintree, even without the addition of the “George Formby”, in relation to Huntingdon, but that is not the case elsewhere. Wetherby is holding close to last year’s total, but Fontwell is down from 42k to 32k, and Sedgefield is way down on Newcastle last year – 26 grand following 43k last time at Gosforth Park. Maybe that’s why trainers and owners aren’t as bothered to leave the Christmas home comforts?

Meanwhile over in Ireland, and while I was writing this piece, the runners for the first two days of the Christmas meetings at Leopardstown and Limerick have been published. Reserves are in place for several races, but St Stephen’s Day’s (Tuesday) final declaration reveals 115 at Leopardstown and 80 at Limerick.

For Wednesday it’s respectively 93 and 83. It might be hard to beat the big three of Mullins, Elliott and De Bromhead, but there’s still plenty of other talented trainers willing to try for the massive money on offer this week.

Finally, all that remains to say is have a great and profitable Christmas. I think Dylan Cunha’s Mart (1.50 Wolverhampton) on Boxing Day will be very hard to beat.

- TS