the jukebox man, ban off & national entries.

​The headline on the front page of the Racing Post this morning should have been the injury to The Jukebox Man that rules him out for the rest of the season, thus reducing by one the number of winners British trainers might accumulate at the Cheltenham Festival this year. That it was not on the front page, I can only assume is because the news came in too late to change the set-up of the cover page. Personally, even though I have no personal involvement with the horse, it is a disappointment, for Harry Redknapp and the two Bens, Pauling and Jones, it will be gut-wrenching. It is not, thankfully, a career-ending injury and though the exact injury sustained was not made known, I can only guess that it is only a strain or cut injury, though it will make life much more complicated for the trainer next season. With only two novice chases behind him, and here Ruby Walsh is 100% correct, next season he will have to take on graded horses from the get-go and with the conservative approach taken by modern trainers, if he gets to the Gold Cup in 2026, he might have to try and win it with only two further chase efforts to his name. Mister Coffey, for example, one of my favourite horses in training, after dozens of chase efforts, including leading the National field for a long way, remains eligible for novice chases. Yet a horse with only two runs, or even a single novice chase, the previous season, is ineligible for novice chases. Perhaps some novice chases should become ‘winners of one’ and ‘winners of two’, to allow the likes of The Jukebox Man or Indiana Dream the opportunity to learn their craft in less exulted waters before upgrading to graded races.

Peter Saville and his ban of mercenaries have called off their interview ban due to take place at Sandown this Saturday, though it is only fifty-fifty the course will be fit for racing. The trainers have few, if any, allies in this dispute. It seems a silly sticking point, given the trainers claim not to want to benefit financially from t.v. interviews but wish the fee to go elsewhere, perhaps to charity, perhaps to a trainers’ benevolent fund, suggesting the subject has not exactly been given a whole lot of thought. Hopefully, the sponsors of Skelton’s yard, will whisper in his ear that not only will Dan be losing the marketing opportunity by staying stumm, so will they, and Dan would not want to lose that particular income stream, would he? A couple of seasons ago I labelled Dan Skelton ‘Super-Fresh’ due to his belief that Protektorat needed to be ‘super-fresh’ to be at his best. Of course, he was proved wrong. Now perhaps I should label him Dan ‘Super-Silent’ Skelton.

The National entries were published yesterday and instead of being childishly excited to discover which horses were entered, as was my reaction until a few years ago, my reaction this morning was ‘that time of year already.’ The anticipation has dulled, which is sad. I wonder if it is the same with others? It was always the first entry stage, looking for surprise entries, that gripped my fascination, not publication of the weights, since nowadays it is all, more or less, based on ratings, with no horse, these days, thrown-in at the weights. We all know I Am Maximus will be top weight and Mr.Vango will struggle to get into the race, even though he looks purpose-made it.
For academic purposes, apart from Mr.Vango, the four that initially leapt off the page were Gentelmansgame, Broadway Boy, L’Homme Presse and Kandoo Kid. The mark against Gentlemansgame, as with the similarly named Bravemansgame, is that I am of the opinion he is a weak finisher. I very much doubt L’Homme Presse will line-up, nor Royal Pagaille, for that matter, a horse I used to think was ‘more National horse than Gold Cup horse’. I no longer think that. Kandoo Kid looks the right sort. I just wish we had seen him since Newbury. This time last season, I thought Broadway Boy would develop into a Gold Cup horse and he has not, with his ever-optimistic trainer Nigel Twiston-Davies not even giving him a tentative entry this time around. It seems it is Aintree for Broadway Boy and he is my big hope for a British victory this time around.