Ask the expert
Robin Oakley e may, unusually, have a Cambridge economics degree but nobody in racing looks the part better than John Gosden. The panama or brown trilby according to the weather. The upright physical presence of a man you could easily imagine as a battalion commander. The crinkle of experience about eyes which have studied the racing scene from the inside at his father Towser's Lewes yard, in Caracas, Venezuela, on America's West Coast and at Manton. The calm confidence exuding from the man who learnt his trade at the feet of masters like Vincent O'Brien at Ballydoyle and Noel Murless in Newmarket, which is once again Gosden's home base.
Listen to John Gosden on the racecourse or read him in the sporting press and he makes more sense than anybody talking about the problems of a prize-money structure which virtually forces owners to go abroad with horses which show more than average talent. He is full of ideas about the need for starter barns attached to racecourses to provide opportunities for fledgling trainers or about the need to boost racing's fortunes with on-track gambling slots. You feel he should be conducting one-onone tutorials with everyone involved in the administration of racing. And he can train a bit, too, as he showed once again with the victory of the 5-1 favourite Pipedreamer in the Cambridgeshire, the first of the big autumn handicaps, bringing the three-yearold back from a two-month absence to dominate the 30-plus field and land one of the biggest gambles in the race for years.
Gosden had won a Cambridgeshire before. He did it with Halling back in 1984 and Halling went on to be a top-class Group horse, winning an Eclipse among other big races. Pipedreamer, too, will surely go on to even better things. Jockey Jimmy Fortune said that his victory had never been in doubt. 'He travelled like a Group horse throughout and I'm sure that's what he is really. He's a lovely big horse and he's done nothing but progress from race to race.'
It was a victory not without some drama. Through the week Gosden had been tortured by the thought he might have to pull out the ante-post favourite for the race because the ground would be too firm for the big three-year-old. He issued public warnings to that effect and was always going to put the horse first, but was deeply mindful, too, of those who would be blowing their money if he did. In the event, after a sunny first day, the cloud cover remained over Newmarket for the next two days, the ground did not dry out as much as he had feared and, after walking the course at 11 a.m., Pipedreamer's trainer was happy to let him take part. The rest, as bruised bookmakers know, is history.
John Gosden was not worried when Pipedreamer hit the front fully two furlongs from home. 'I said to Jimmy that, if he was travelling well, to go on.' But it hadn't been the same story in the race before, the Group One Kingdom of Bahrain Sun Chariot Stakes in which Gosden's classy filly Nannina, one of this column's Ten to Follow last year, was having the final race of her career. I had gone for her in a big way at 5-1 and she, too, was going so well that Jimmy Fortune really had no option but to let her take up the running two furlongs out. You don't like to disappoint a lady. But unfortunately Nannina is a lady with something of a sense of humour. As John Gosden puts it, 'Once she's got by, Nannina thinks, "That's fine, I'll go for a cup of tea now." She plays about.' Once again Nannina reckoned she had done her bit, started thinking about the cucumber sandwiches, and the 16-1 Majestic Roi ran on well to head her in the final furlong and win by three quarters of a length.
Nannina is now off to stud where she will surely shine. I was off to the cash machine. Somehow, though, you don't mind doing your money when the winner is trained by the ebullient Mick Channon. 'She's only just getting the hang of things,' he said of a filly he has always held in high regard and for whom little things had previously kept going wrong. 'As the year has gone on she's settled better in her races. It's fillies this time of year. We got our ground today.' He paid tribute, too, to jockey Darryll Holland, who had advised that they must go back to a mile with her. Majestic Roi is not going off this autumn to meet the boys behind the bike sheds. She will stay in training next year and there should be some good profits to be had with her, when she gets the sound surface she needs.
There is surely a fine future ahead, too, for Creachadoir, the King's Best colt who was second in the Irish 2,000 Guineas when trained in Ireland by Jim Bolger but who had not run since failing at Royal Ascot. On his first run for Godolphin, Saeed bin Suroor had Creachadoir looking a picture. He was well muscled enough to have played a role in the England front row, whose efforts against Australia were distracting much of the race crowd's attention on the big screen (well done, Newmarket). Kerrin McEvoy kept him up to his work but he smoothly saw off the Group Three field in the Countrywide Steel and Tubes Joel Stakes. I was not the only watcher to feel that there is a big race in this one.
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