frodon & frost.

​One of the great uplifting experiences in life, to my mind, is when you realise the horse you want to win, not necessarily the horse you have selected or backed, has without exception got the opposition off-the-bridle and going nowhere. Horse racing is always capable of kicking you in the nuts, of course, even while you ride that cloud of optimism, but when the evidence of your eyes becomes fact in the form-book, there is little on this earth to beat it.
On Boxing Day the racing gods allowed the romantics among us who have followed the career of Miss Bryony Frost from Pacha du Polder, through Black Corton, to the magical Frodon, a treasured memory. Frost and Frodon are racing’s golden couple and in saying that I must apologise to Tom Marquand and Hollie Doyle who over the summer and beyond have had their privacy invaded through the triumphs and fame of the pretty one in the partnership and who doubtless think themselves to be the golden couple. They are gold-dust, of course, but between them they can only provide the sport with only four legs, two less than the team of Frodon and Frost provide us with.
When John Francome said he thought Frodon the best jumper of a steeplechase fence he had seen in his lifetime he did not have the benefit of the exhibition put on Kempton. Frodon just doesn’t make jumping errors. It is as if as a young horse he attended an equine university that specialised in the art of how to get from a to b as quickly and neatly as Mother Nature will allow and passed out with an Honours Degree First Class. Once more, John Francome was proven correct. Geniuses should always be right, shouldn’t they?
I, on the other hand, a Frodon and Frost fan, was wrong. I didn’t think flat courses these days were in Frodon’s favour. I had pigeon-holed him as a Cheltenham specialist and didn’t give him a prayer in the King George. Although getting this season’s King George all wrong, the result did though prove my case that Frodon is right in the mix for the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Ignore him at your peril.
Frodon is a stayer,which has been my opinion since he won the Ryanair. He would have very nearly won either of the two previous Gold Cups, in my opinion. The ‘experts’ were unimpressed by his demolition job at Kempton, putting forward their analysis that the big battalions failed to perform (without giving a convincing reason why) and come March one or all of them will get their revenge. They, ‘the experts’, were united in their belief that Frodon will not get things his own way in the Gold Cup, that the opposing jockeys will be wise to Frost’s tactics of slowing the pace, stacking them up and them quickening again. It should be asked why Cobden and Twiston-Davies in particular, as they were riding stable companions of the winner, and de Boinville especially, were unaware of the tactics she was to deploy on Boxing Day?
Frodon won the King George, despite giving away a dozen lengths by jumping to his left, because there is not a horse in the Queendom or Ireland that can out-jump him. He gains a length at each fence, a length that Bryony never gives back to the opposition, and his quick precise leaps puts other horses on the back foot. Santini is a good jumper, a horse who always performs with credit around Cheltenham and is many peoples’ idea of a perfect Grand National horse, yet even a horse of his good reputation could not live with Frodon at the obstacles.
Frodon and Frost, god-willing that they are both fit and healthy to take-up the challenge, are my idea of Gold Cup winners because Frodon’s jumping will get most of the field out of their comfort zone. Al Boum Photo is a grand horse but his two Gold Cups were pedestrian affairs and I suspect having to keep in striking distance of Frodon, now that it is proved beyond debate that he is a thorough stayer, will bring about errors, though I hope not a fall.
The 2020 King George may have been Paul Nicholls’ 12th victory in the race but this will perhaps be the first time one of his winners will go to the Gold Cup as a Cheltenham specialist. I hope now the trainer stops underestimating the horse, as I hope the Ditcheat owners start to appreciate the talent that is the jockey. At the red-hot end of big races Frost has proved herself more than capable. She should by now have proved herself a worthy second jockey and not a journeyman picking up the odds and sods, which has become the situation this season.
Finally, it is disturbing to discover, even if the details are not available for scrutiny by the likes of you or me, not that it is any of our business, that Bryony is having difficulties in her private life that is emanating from within the sport. This is reprehensible and offensive to the image and well-being of the sport. I hope this ‘difficulty’ is swiftly concluded and that Bryony can regain the happiness in her life that she so deserves.