The turf
What a mistake
Robin Oakley
British Airways' Lisbon to London schedules not being framed with the racing timetable in mind, I found myself arriving at Kempton Park from the latest Euro- summit a good two hours early on Satur- day. It seemed like an advantage. There was time to eat rather more than the usual snatched beef-in-a-bun, time to listen to advice and time to go through the form. Unfortunately all three activities proved a mistake. The Sharwood's Rogan Josh I chewed my way through with considerable difficulty would have felled a camel. Come to think of it, it probably was camel. The form-book offerings, this early in the flat season, are like models with political opin- ions, thin and almost certainly best ignored. And innocently overhearing a couple of professionals, hands cupped protectively round their mobiles, briefing head office on stable talk and market moves proved expensive. The horses noted as working particularly well at home ran abysmally, the hot pot certainty wasn't even placed, and a couple of 'ready' two-year-olds proved about as ready for the racecourse as I am to run the London marathon.
The professionals were also much taken with the fact that, despite his excellent sprinter Tedburrow running at Doncaster, Northern trainer Eric Alston had made his way to Kempton, where there was a buzz for the stable's outsider Ellen's Academy in the Bet at bluesq.com Handicap. I wagered heavily and knew three furlongs out that the horse was going nowhere.
The race was won by Premier Baron, trained in Newmarket by one Philip McEn- tee. The name may not be quite as familiar as those of 100-plus horsepower stars like Henry Cecil, Michael Stoute and Luca Cumani and that is because Philip, at 28, has only six horses in the 18-box yard he rents from John Berry. Once apprenticed to David Elsworth, he rode a few winners on the flat and worked as an assistant for others before taking up training much sooner than he had planned because of the premature death of his father. An Ameri- can owner who had planned to back the stable in a big way pulled out, disillusioned with British prize-money levels, and it has been a fight. As a young family man he has been breaking in horses for others and tak- ing any extra tasks he can get to subsidise his own training operation. In the jut of the jaw and in the older eyes looking out from Philip McEntee's face you could see a jumble of emotions typical of a young man fighting to make his way. There was pride in the achievement of their best win so far, mingled with some defiance of a world that does not seem pre- pared to reward energy, commitment and good sound horse sense. A man who has trained 11 winners in just 19 months in the job deserves some notice. Of Philip McEn- tee's 13 runners this year only two have fin- ished out of the first three. And yet the extra boxes stay stubbornly empty. Fortu- nately for the young trainer there is resilience too in his make-up. Asked if he'd had any orders for the sales, he laughed and said, 'No. But with this prize money maybe I can buy the winner of the seller at Wolverhampton tonight.'
The Kempton win was no fluke. McEn- tee knew what he had and what conditions he was looking for. I heard course officials muttering that he had been ringing several times a day to check the going and he had walked the course before racing. An owner or two beginning to feel neglected in a big yard could do worse, I am sure, than to invest in Philip McEntee's future. And the same applies to the much more experi- enced John Akehurst, whose all-purpose Epsom yard is producing some decent results without attracting the kind of own- ers he has the right to expect. John, who had won the sprint in which he also ran Marsad with the seven-year-old Passion For Life, has only 15 or so for the flat and could take 40. Epsom, he says, remains unfashionable as a training centre although its ratio of winners to runners compares with anywhere.
Always fun to talk to after a race, John said that Passion For Life 'tears up the gal- lops as if his backside is on fire' and paid tribute to his head lad Mick Attwater, the six-footer who rides and settles the horse in his work. In a tribute to his father, John says that what Epsom needs is another Reg Akehurst. But if he has not yet had the results his father did he does at least have the same kind of relationship with the handicapper, being careful to point out on the public address interview that Passion For Life had come to the races fully fit `with not an ounce left in him' and insisting dolefully that Marsdad was bound to strug- gle this year with the way he was weighted these days. Good luck to both of them.
Robin Oakley is political editor of the BBC.
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