No beefs about this horse meet
In an enlightening day at the races, Alasdair Reid sees local hero Alan King capture the main prize Results
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Sa general rule, i t’s best to mai n t a i n a degree of professional detachment in this business, but to do so at the Scottish Grand National would rather miss the point. Attachment is the very essence of the thing. You’ve got to be involved. You’ve got to be on something.
Or, in other words, you’ve got to hand over your hard-earned if you want to know what it’s all about. In purely fiscal terms, this is a rash enough strategy for the few hacks who actually understand the swirl of variables that go into horse racing, but close to idiotic for those of us who don’t know our Ascots from our elbows and would probably hazard the guess that Kempton Park might be a new American sitcom.
My first stab at a betting strategy was to stick a tenner on Rhymer’s Ha’ in yesterday’s first race at Ayr. The rationale was simple: it was wearing the No 1, and that’s generally a good thing in racing. A Formula One champion has No 1 on the side of his car, so I guessed it might be a guide to form. It wasn’t. By the time my 8/ 1 punt had cantered home, approximately half- an- hour after the winner, I had figured that horse-racing conventions are different.
My second effort was to put another tenner, at 10/ 3, on Rajdhani Express in the Arcadia Consulting William Dickie and Mary Robertson Future Champion Novices’ Steeple Chase, a race distinguished by the fact that it takes almost as long to say as it does to run. And lo and behold, Rajdhani Express – named, according to Wikipedia, after “a passenger train service in India connecting New Delhi to other important destinations”– came home first, turning my £10 into £43.33 in the process.
It was my first and last success of the day. And, to be honest, a welcome distraction f rom watching the Ayr crowds at a time when I was starting to see the truth in Orwell’s “four legs good, two legs bad” suggestion.
1 Godsmejudge
2 Big Occasion
3 Mister Marker
4 Tour Des Champs An anthropologist would have a field day at a race meeting, where the sheer weirdness of the crowd is compelling.
The first thing you notice is the sartorial pecking order, which starts with tweeds and felt hats, descends rapidly through suits of ever-increasing shininess and ever-decreasing price tags, and very quickly bottoms out on the TK Maxx sale rail.
You would think that a day at the races would be a good reason for a dress code that errs on the side of practicality, but a good portion of the audience at Ayr looked like refugees from My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. Forget about horse- meat scandals, this was a festival of mutton masquerading as lamb, with more fake tan than you’d find in the Welsh dressing room before a Six Nations game.
Young Ryan Mania’s success at Aintree two weeks ago meant he was carrying a lot of hopes, and money, in his attempt to make it a double in the Scottish National. Mania’s year as Galashiels Braw Lad came to an end on Friday evening, and his official title in the town’s ceremonies this year is “Bearer of the Sod”. All things considered, it is not a flattering moniker for a jockey, but it would be far worse still if a horse was, er, saddled with that name.
In an attritional race, Mania and Auroras Encore tired on the final circuit and pulled up five fences from the finish. And so Godsmejudge powered on to victory in the main event, piloted by Wayne Hutchinson and adding a lovely yarn to the stock of Scottish National lore through the fact that it was trained by Hamilton-born Alan King, who had begun his working life at the nearby Cree Lodge yard.
“It’s just like coming home,” smiled the 46- year- old trainer. “I’ve won the Queen Mother and the Champion Hurdle, but this is right up there. I’m staying with my mum and dad up the road, so I’m going back there tonight and we’ll have a good party.”
King predicted that further glory could lie ahead for the winning horse. “He could be an