Jef­fery Ross

Cham­pi­on Na­tion­al Hunt train­er, Paul Nicholls, ad­mit­ted "Den­man was nowhere near ready at New­bury...!" dur­ing his press day* at Ditcheat, De­von, on Wednes­day. He was re­fer­ring to the de­ba­cle, ear­li­er this month, when the�vet­er­an chas­er crashed out at the sec­ond last un­der Tony Mc­Coy, who was rid­ing him for the first time. I wasn't in­vit­ed to the 'Press Day' but that's prob­a­bly a good thing be­cause I'd have been�hard-pressed to con­tain my­self...! Has the British Horserac­ing Au­thor­i­ty (Jock­ey Club) picked up on this re­mark be­cause�in Aus­tralia/Hong Kong/USA etc, there would�im­me­di­ate­ly be an en­quiry and Nicholls banned.�

Train­ers are ex­pect­ed/oblig­ed to pro­duce their hors­es fit and ready to race, oth­er­wise the rac­ing pub­lic, which bets on the re­sults, is be­ing de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­lead. How can any bet­tor have con­fi­dence, giv­en such a re­mark from the ac­knowl­edged num­ber one train­er? Den­man was long odds-on, at 1/6! Please, don't think that means no one would be in­ter­est­ed in punt­ing at such pro­hib­i­tive odds. Plen­ty of heavy-hit­ters ac­tu­al­ly spe­cialise buy­ing mon­ey and in­deed, Har­ry Find­lay is re­port­ed to have wa­gered more than �100,000 on Den­man to just go round and come back. Find­lay, in­ci­den­tal­ly, is the own­er of Den­man.�

Nicholls al­so said, the re­cent ex­pe­ri­ence in the Aon Chase "has brought him on enor­mous­ly and put him just where we want him!" I'll bet Den­man can't wait to get back to jump­ing fences in pub­lic, giv­en he's 'crashed out' twice, at the sec­ond last in grade one events dur­ing the last 12 months. Re­mem­ber Ain­tree, when the screens were erect­ed? For what it's worth, I've laid Den­man for the Chel­tenham Gold Cup next month 'not to win or be placed!' I've done this, de­spite Nicholls' warn­ing it would be "fool­ish to write off Den­man...!" More to the point, it would be fool­ish to heed what Paul Nicholls says in his week­ly Rac­ing Post col­umn, ever again and this bet­tor cer­tain­ly won't.��

Hy­drant is work­ing well, gush­ing in fact and that's why, with tal­ent­ed�five pounds ap­pren­tice, Bil­ly Cray on board he's napped for the eight-run­ner Maid­en Stakes over eleven fur­longs of South­well fi­bre­sand to­day. Every pound is vi­tal on the 'deep stuff' and form on/in it a tremen­dous ad­van­tage. Hy­drant achieved his best time-hand­i­cap mark at this Not­ting­hamshire venue back in De­cem­ber since when the ex-Pe­ter Chap­ple-Hyam-trained Haafhd geld­ing has been placed twice on poly­track. Last time Hy­drant ran on gen­uine­ly at Wolver­hamp­ton and against a bunch of�'mod­er­ates' he has an out­stand­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty of go­ing one bet­ter, and I'll bet he does!

SE­LEC­TIONS

RACE 17 (#6) PRINCESS MANDY (e.w.)

RACE 21 (#4) HY­DRANT (nap)

RACE 30 (#6) THEY ALL LAUGHED (e.w.)