Heart and muscle
Robin Oakley
Icouldn’t quite work out on my first visit to Bath races on Sunday why one entrance was headed: ‘Bookmakers and OAPs’. Senior citizens might need a bit of special attention. But why the Old Enemy? The feeling intensified after the preliminaries: a pantomime horse race for pairs. Having checked out the entrants in the paddock and preferred No. 7 — The Lucky Bustard — to last year’s winner Odd Shaped Balls, sponsored by the Old Culverhaysians Rugby Club, I toured the Ring looking for a wager. Not one of the gentlemen with the bulging satchels was taking bets. So there was some teethgnashing as No. 7 came home the easy winner.
Sunday racing at Bath, on a hillside off the A46 overlooking glorious countryside, is what you might expect. T-shirts and pushchairs, face-painting and jailbait mini-skirts, a cheerful informality and few top trainers bothering to turn up to watch their stable second and third strings. The course has a cleaner and more spacious Gents than most I know. But never has a hog roast tasted of so little. And surely on a baking summer’s day the soft drinks available before the first race could at least have been chilled.
Cool David Evans was there, though, in gold neck-chain and fashionable shades to greet his Slipasearcher, winner of the Maiden Fillies Stakes. She will win again in better class. And we saw top-class riding from Ryan Moore in the totequadpot (sic) Handicap Stakes on the topweight Lester Leaps In. The old maestro would have approved of his driving finish. Even more impressive was Richard Hughes on Richard Hannon’s second winner Madhavi, a strapping grey filly by Diktat. He set off in front, slowed into the final bend, then left the others floundering as he kicked for home. A perfect example of ‘waiting in front’.
Hughie Morrison, racing spur of a political family, pointed out to me that his Prince of the May was owned by the father of Tory leader David Cameron. But he did not suggest I should plunge. Quite right, too. Prince of the May, now placed just once in seven starts, ran only a respectable race. Like Ian Cameron’s son, he showed good early speed, but needs to demonstrate he can deliver at the business end.
My biggest racing pleasure of the week, though, was a chat with Australian Joe Janiak, trainer of Royal Ascot sprints candidate Takeover Target. Racing loves it when the little guys win, and this is where Crocodile Dundee meets Seabiscuit. Joe, now 59 and from Queanbeyan, New South Wales, is the son of Polish immigrants to Australia, born on the boat over. His first acquaintance with horses was shovelling manure. He taught himself to ride ponies bareback and has only given up riding work while he awaits a knee reconstruction. For years he has driven a taxi and lived in a caravan while training two or three horses from a racecourse barn.
Joe bought the unraced four-year-old Takeover Target, a gelded son of Celtic Swing with dodgy knees, in July 2003, for just 1,250 Australian dollars (about £450). It was how he worked, going to the sales with some £1,200 in his pocket to buy cheap horses, winning a race or two with them on country tracks and hoping to trade up. He gave Takeover Target six months’ rest and was rewarded with 30 stitches when, first time out, the horse objected to entering the stalls.
But then Takeover Target, in his trainer’s red-check colours, started winning, first at the local Queanbeyan track, then at Wagga Wagga, then in prestige races like the Salinger Stakes and Newmarket Handicap at Flemington, Melbourne. He has won 11 of his 18 starts and only failed to reach a place in one, collecting nearly two million Australian dollars.
For his Ascot foray, Takeover Target is lodging in Geoff Wragg’s Newmarket yard, and Joe acquired the first passport of his life to travel with him, sitting on a hay bale for the 26-hour journey. The passport, he told me, was a problem. He had trouble finding his birth certificate. But he is less worried about his horse. He was just back from weighing Takeover Target at Clive Brittain’s yard and the horse had proved so mettlesome that they had had to take him for a walk across the Heath.
Joe is confident. ‘His weight’s good. He’ll have a couple of gallops and I reckon we’ll get another five kilos off him. I’m very pleased with the way he’s settled in.’ As for the Ascot factor: ‘Oh, he’ll cope with that better than we will.’ Takeover Target is not like Choisir, the great big bull of a horse who came over and shocked British racing by winning both the King’s Stand Stakes and the Golden Jubilee at Ascot. ‘He’s only just over 15 hands. But he’s all heart and muscle.’ And, says Joe, ‘though he starts pretty brilliantly, if he misses the break he can come from behind.’ As for the ground: ‘He likes a little bit of sting out of it. But nothing too wet.’ So this summer should suit him.
Joe’s team, including son Ben, went to the Derby, in which Wragg’s Dragon Dancer was an unlucky loser. He stayed with the horse. But having found there is enough cool beer in Britain Joe plans to be around for a while. ‘If he pulls up all right we’ll go for the July Cup at Newmarket.’ And then it is on to prestige races in Japan and Hong Kong.
Already Takeover Target’s success has changed Joe Janiak’s life. He has bought his own training establishment and now has a dozen horses. So has he given up the taxi-driving for good?
‘For the time being. But you can never be sure. So I did renew my licence just before I came over ...’
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