Robin Oakley

Shepherd’s Walk in Epsom has seen plenty of horse action over the years. Jack Reardon trained there 70 years ago and it was from that leafy lane that John Sutcliffe sent out Specify to win the 1971 Grand National and from where John Benstead would patiently prepare slow-developing stayers for Hamdan al-Maktoum. A few years ago, though, several trainers having moved in and out, the proud morning parade of horses heading across to the grandstand and the training grounds had dwindled to a trickle. All that has now changed. Fifty-plus equine athletes wind through the trees of a morning again.

Oh, how we love a prodigal who makes it. And oh how quickly we will dismiss those who remain on the wastrel path. A year ago this week, Kieren Fallon, the six times Champion jockey and winner of 15 Classics, started riding again in Britain for the first time since 2006. After the long absence from British racecourses, occasioned by two positive drug tests and earlier race-fixing charges which were dismissed in court, the Jeremiahs had a field day. Typical was the prediction: ‘By the time his suspension expires in the summer of 2009 he will be yesterday’s man’ and the headline: ‘Fallon: no way back for the finest talent of his generation.’ Some would rather he had stayed in obscurity.

Life is all about perspective. I used to believe that rugby was invented by William Webb Ellis, the schoolboy who picked up and ran with a football. But only until I heard an ex-England international explain that it wasn’t Webb Ellis at all who deserved the credit but Dalrymple, the guy who ran after him, wrestled him to the ground and said, ‘Give us our effing ball back.’ I used to think, too, that if a racetrack put on first-class races with decent prizes, top trainers would send good jockeys along with talented mounts and we would all enjoy good sport. That is no longer enough.

Thanks to jams on the A3 it took me nearly four hours driving from central London for the last day of Glorious Goodwood. It would have been worth it if it had taken 24. It was the day of the good guys with whom we all enjoy sharing success. Critical Moment, his impressive cruising speed complemented by a gutsy finishing kick under son Michael, provided another winner for Barry Hills, who had already saddled his 50th at the famous meeting. Then Midday, both saucy madam and serious racehorse, triumphed again in the Nassau Stakes for Henry Cecil. Conscious of her attraction and a little bit of a professional show-stealer, she could as easily have lined up with the naughty-eyed, hip-swinging chorus girls performing in the members’ enclosure as on the track.

They have been racing over this patch of the Sussex Downs since 1802. King Edward VII, who popularised both the panama and the linen suit, called it ‘a garden party with racing tacked on’. For me, it is Ascot without the excess. Goodwood’s stands with their floating canopies don’t look like a concrete imposition on the country, more an Arabian Nights children’s book fantasy, dream castles that could be wafted away to a never-never land where the Pimms flows for ever and punters back nothing but winners. Certainly, it is quality sport. You won’t see horses running faster than they do in the Goodwood Stewards’ Cup when the sprinters breast a rise and thunder down towards the grandstands.

Manton has a magic. The majestic beauty of the famous training centre on the Wiltshire Downs has to be seen to be believed, especially at daffodil time. There are gallops in every direction — the Barton Gallop, the Clatford Gallop, the Valley Gallop, the stiff Derby Gallop used traditionally 20 and 10 days before the big race — linked by stone dust pathways. History oozes from every wall and ditch. Here is a copse planted or a pub restored by Barry Hills, here is the cambered ‘American bend’ installed by Michael Dickinson, here are the vantage points where ‘Young Alec’ Taylor, his father Alec and Joe Lawson watched their 43 Classic winners — and, yes, that is 43 — go through their paces.

The best racing yards combine experience and tradition with youthful energy. Walk into Park House Stables, Kingsclere with the blackbirds swooping about their brood-raising business and you feel the vibes immediately. There is grandeur and solidity about the red-brick Victorian yards built by the great John Porter, trainer of 23 Classic winners, with their turrets and chimneys. But there is, too, under Andrew Balding a modern, cheerful informality. What was in Porter’s day the lads’ chapel, missed at your peril, is now the colours room for owners’ silks, prominent among them the Queen’s purple. Racing takes note of a good pedigree, and pedigrees don’t come much better than Andrew’s.

During elections, said H.L. Mencken, all the parties rush around the country insisting that the others are unfit to govern — and in the end they are all proved right. I don’t bet on politics because as a part-time political commentator I don’t want to be accused of letting wagers colour my judgment, but I did advise my friends last autumn to back a hung Parliament when you could still get 4–1 against. The Twelve to Follow over the jumps I named then have not stood the test of time quite so well. Two never made it to the track, but five managed to win and we had half a dozen seconds. The most enjoyable victory was the 14–1 success of the Evan Williams-trained Pheidippides at Kempton. He has undoubted class and will be worth watching over fences next season.

Biblical scholars say that five is the number of grace, three the number of perfection. ‘Fifteen, therefore, relates to acts wrought by divine grace.’ I don’t know if Tony McCoy was saying his prayers as his mount Don’t Push It cleared the last and headed round The Elbow for the Grand National finishing line but, like Frankie Dettori, who won his first Derby after 14 failed efforts, ‘AP’ too has now won the race that really matters at his 15th attempt. And he deserved any divine intervention that was going. So, too, did the punters who had backed Don’t Push It all the way down from 25–1 to 10–1 favourite. That didn’t happen because of anything in the horse’s form.

Espying Katie Walsh at Newbury with a ride for Nicky Henderson, I couldn’t help recalling one bookie’s reaction to the finish of the gruelling four-mile National Hunt Chase for amateurs at this year’s Cheltenham when she and Nina Carberry finished first and second, both earning bans for overuse of the ‘persuader’. ‘Birds first and second,’ he rasped. ‘And what about the way they used those whips?’ ‘Oh yes, oh yes,’ a gent in a camel-hair coat next to me had echoed, dreamily turning an excited shade of pink. It takes all sorts, even in a racing crowd. Post-Festival life at Newbury, too, was a reminder of racing’s talent for renewal.