potential to be brilliant, a champion, perhaps & PREMIER RACING.

​Although it would be niggly to criticise any element of Newbury’s two-day November meeting, it was put in the shade by the action at Fairyhouse on Saturday and Sunday. The poverty of the Long-Distance Hurdle at Newbury was balanced by a very taking first novice chase by The Jukebox Man, the best horse Ben Jones has ridden and in time The Jukebox Man might become the best British-trained horse we have seen since the heady days of Denman and Kauto Star. Here was a horse who skipped around Newbury with the aplomb and exuberance of a seasoned Gold Cup standard horse and at race end gave the impression of being disappointed to be made to stop. He is certainly my horse to follow this season.
In Ireland, there were many a good horse on show, with very few balloons burst even in defeat. Yesterday’s Drinmore, made unusual by the absence of a runner from Closutton, was a corker of a race, with barely a head and a neck separating the first four, with the fifth only a length or so in behind. If ever a race proved that a single digit number of runners is as capable of providing a spectacle to heighten the senses as a maximum field then this was it. 
Croke Park may have been a surprise winner but he was a deserving winner, making the running and then displaying bags of spirit and stamina to hold on from Heart Wood (not a Gold Cup horse, at this stage of the season), Firefox (not to be written-off) and Gorgeous Tom, a horse in dire need of 3-miles and the one to take out of this race.
On the novice chase front, Caldwell Potter did all that could be expected of him at Carlisle, a racecourse fast becoming the go-to track for trainers’ keen for their star novices to have a fair introduction to fences. He attacked the first fence with the enthusiasm of a chocoholic espying an unguarded chocolate gateaux at his best friends birthday party, and for a brief moment it looked like Harry Cobden was not fully in control of the situation. Of course, the champion jockey was soon very much in control of both the horse and the race and though it would be stretching credulity to say Caldwell Potter won with his head-in-his-chest, he did win without need to go full-throttle. Whether he wins back his purchase price is for the future to decide, but up till now he looks the best horse bought that day at the dispersal sale of some of Gordon Elliott’s most promising young horses.
Of course, the star of the weekend, even usurping Sir Gino, was Lossiemouth. Although she disposed of Tiaheapoo (no doubt a misspelling) with the authority of an Olympic archer hitting the bulls-eye, should she have shortened as favourite for the Champion Hurdle for beating a long-distance Champion hurdler? The Hattons Grace was over 2-mile 4, it can be argued that Teaheapoo needs every inch of 3-miles to be at his best and his stamina was hardly used to the maximum due to the slow pace of the race. And who is to say that the champion 3-miler was not at his best for one reason or another? Lossiemouth is good, better than good, and if she turns up at Kempton on Boxing Day against Constitution Hill all will be revealed if she should be better favoured for the Champion Hurdle than either her stable-mate State Man or either of Nicky Henderson’s two contenders.

The Coral Gold Cup on Saturday was a premier race on a premier day’s racing. How was it dissimilar to last year’s Coral Gold Cup or any day in the fixture’s history? None, I would suggest. Which makes ‘Premier racing’ another of the B.H.A.’s white elephants. With so little money in racing’s coffers, perhaps now is the time for the B.H.A. to drown this particular red herring and convene a conference where everyone with an interest in promoting the sport can come together to offer alternative ideas.