only 5-entered, blank saturday & Respectful resting place.

​Only 5 British-trained horses entered for this season’s Cheltenham Gold Cup can be registered as between an all-time low for the sport in Britain and immensely disappointing for all concerned. Neither Paul Nicholls nor Nicky Henderson can muster an entry between them, with only Dan Skelton and Venetia Williams supplying the home team with a credible chance of one of the five making the frame, with, I suspect, third or fourth the best we can expect. As much as I have championed Ahoy Senor in the past, he looks light of former years, years when he came up short when tried in the highest grade. The Real Whacker is not Gold Cup class, even if I could make a case for him as a Grand National horse. Royale Pagaille, a titan around Haydock, is another who has failed time and again at Cheltenham. Some experts had Grey Dawning down as a possible Gold Cup winner at the start of the season, though I have not shared their confidence and I witnessed nothing at either Haydock of Kempton to change my pessimistic view of him as a true Gold Cup contender.
So that leaves us with L’Homme Presse. Remember, off a far from advantageous training schedule for Cheltenham last season, he led the field into the home straight before being swallowed up by Galopin Des Champs and Gerri Colombe. He ran well on his comeback in the King George and though I suspect he is not a true stayer – the stable has Djelo for the Ryanair, who I fancy for the race – and it might be tempting to have thought of the lesser race for him, he is our only hope of getting amongst the Irish, even if, barring calamity, Galopin is a good thing to join the greats by winning three consecutive Gold Cups.
Although the reason for so small a number of British-trained horses entered is plain for all to see – there just is not the pool of horses of Gold Cup class trained in Britain – it might look short-sighted if anything, God forbid, should happen to prevent Galopin Des Champs from running. Did the Bradstocks not teach anyone a lesson when Coneygree proved them right and everyone else wrong? They gave it a go, so why is, for example, our top staying novice, The Jukebox Man, not entered? There are only 19-entered, with the French horse more likely to go for the Ryanair or 2-mile Champion Chase and Willie Mullins will not run all of his in the race. There might be only 8 or 9-runners. Cheaper to enter from the start than to supplement six-days before the race.

There will be no jumps action again this Saturday. Nobody’s fault, just winter squeezing our sensitive parts. At the moment, both all-weather meetings are scheduled for outside of the protected I.T.V. air-space. I am no fan of all-weather racing but it was initiated for days like we can expect on Saturday with snow, frost or waterlogging likely to claim both Warwick and Kempton. Both Newcastle and Wolverhampton must be moved forward to facilitate the I.T.V. seven and to give Ed Chamberlain, though more likely his understudy Oli Bell, something to do on Saturday.

On YouTube you will find a video of Peter Easterby guiding a journalist – his name will not come to me – around what is now his son Tim’s yard and taking him to see the resting place of two undisputable legends of the sport, Night Nurse and Sea Pigeon. The fenced-off square of a paddock is overgrown with a tree but there is a plague recording the main triumphs of the two. And if that small bit of Yorkshire was not sacred enough, Peter’s wife had asked for her ashes to be spread on top of the two graves.
In an interview with Alastiar Down, Peter Easterby was quoted as saying, approximately. ‘They had great lives and because of them so did we.’
If only we could see the likes of Night Nurse and Sea Pigeon again. They won 72-races between them. On the flat, over hurdles and over fences. Truly great horses, truly great days.