It’s
not the first time I have highlighted the fact that money doesn’t always buy
you success when it comes to racehorses. This was further evident in the National Hunt flat race at Pitchcroft
last week and offers encouragement to all of us enthusiastic owners on a strict
budget.
Favourite
to win the race, having never set foot on a racecourse before at the age of 4,
with the star jockey booking of Tony McCoy and a trainer (John Ferguson) who
has a 29% strike rate in this type of race, Shamal, who cost 160,000 guineas as
a yearling had all the right credentials for a big racing debut. Unfortunately
the gelding was beaten 15 lengths into 5th place behind the winner,
Probably Sorry, who had travelled 173 miles down from Tony Coyle’s yard in
Norton and only cost £1,800 in the sales last summer.
One
of the most popular men in the weighing room returned to the winner’s enclosure
at Worcester after
a 2 month spell on the sidelines with facial injuries following a fall at
Fakenham in May. Noel Fehily was
delighted to get back on the score sheet for trainer Charlie Longsdon when
steering Pure Style to victory in the Handicap Hurdle.
One
of the most popular men in the weighing room of days gone by sadly passed away
last week, just three days after his wife also died. Legendary
Herefordshire jockey and trainer, Michael
Scudamore, himself the son of a point to point trainer, was father to 8 times
champion jockey, Peter, and grandfather to David Pipe’s stable jockey, Tom, as
well as to Michael , who trains at
Ross on Wye where his Grandfather was born in 1932.
At
the Worcester meeting last week, there was a minute’s silence before the
jockeys mounted for the first race, to remember the man who won the Grand
National in 1959 on Oxo, who won the Cheltenham Gold Cup on 1957 on Linwell and
who rode 496 winners before a career ending fall in 1966, when Snakestone slipped
up at Wolverhampton, permanently damaging Scudamore’s left eye. His career
in racing continued as a trainer from 1967 when victories included the 1970
Grand Annual chase and the 1974 Mackeson Gold Cup.
Appropriately,
the success of the Scudamore dynasty was highlighted on the same card at
Worcester last week when Tom rode promising recruit from the flat, Conducting,
to win the selling hurdle. The horse was bought in the subsequent auction for
9,000 guineas by Gloucestershire trainer, David Bridgewater.
