Keep an eye on this Warwick form

By Ian Carnaby

When Red Marauder won the Grand National in 2001, there were only four finishers and two of them were remounted. The ground was so heavy it led to bitter recriminations afterwards, one of the claims being that the Liverpool executive was prepared to move heaven and earth to make sure the meeting went ahead after the loss of Cheltenham to foot and mouth.

Well, I have my doubts about that, though it soon became clear that most of the field had little or no chance of galloping four and half miles in the prevailing conditions. Some good columns were written afterwards, even if references to the Somme became a mite tiresome.

The best story concerned the amiable Malcolm Tomlinson, actor and commentator, who put Red Marauder in his Ten To Follow because he thought the horse a likely sort for the Murphy’s Gold Cup, or whatever they were calling the Mackeson that year. I remember it was possible to lose the sponsor’s product instead of drinking it, so it must have been the Thomas Pink.

Anyway, Malcolm - Dot Cotton’s solicitor in Eastenders, no less - had forgotten all about his Ten To Follow but had a tenner each-way on Red Marauder in the National. He was working for Racecall that day and, when his wife rang as he started the long drive back to Beverley, he was able to reassure her that the new fridge freezer was very much a declared runner, especially as he had taken 40 to 1 in the morning, not the 33 to 1 SP.

Baffled, his good lady wondered why that in itself was enough to have the Racing Post and the Tote ringing up all afternoon. At which point the penny dropped, with quite a merry tinkle. Red Marauder may have been a fluke, but Malcolm had picked horses capable of winning bonus races, and four of them had obliged at Aintree over the three days. All the best stories are true and it could not have happened to a nicer man. It was about £275,000 that year, I think.

So, there are reasons to remember the 2001 race and I thought of it again when d’Argent won the Classic Chase at Warwick the other day. There was an inspection after a wet week and the meeting went ahead on heavy ground. To get the hindsight bit out of the way without further ado, d’Argent - very much a course specialist - might have been backed because at least he was racing off a mark some way removed from his best. Having touched 149 in his heyday, he was off 136 here and his run in the Hennessy, whilst hardly inspiring, indicated that the ability was still there.

I’m not about to claim 18 to 1 winners that I didn’t back or recommend because it’s extremely annoying. But what I will say is that d’Argent was up against some very harshly treated rivals. It is almost as if handicappers are so worried about looking foolish that they make the task spectacularly difficult. In Kilbeggan Blade’s case it became virtually impossible because he was up 12lb for winning at Sandown, then the weights went up anyway and he was left with 11st 12lb in something approaching a quagmire. I was quite surprised when Tom George left him in. This onlooker would have produced the all-purpose vet’s certificate with lightning speed.

Only six of the 13 got round and they included Sixo, who finished somewhere near the county border. Arnold Layne fell, leaving Tony McCoy with injuries which might easily have been much more serious, while Trust Fund and High Chimes were among those pulled up.

The handicapper does take account of a horse’s background

Yes, I realise the McCoy accident might just as easily have occurred in a selling hurdle at Plumpton. And yes, I know that Warwick must have been raceable, otherwise they’d have called it off. But Arnold Layne was 12lb higher, Kilbeggan Blade was 12lb higher and Trust Fund was 9lb higher. They couldn’t win. The handicapper was effectively saying: ‘Look, you’ve had your win. Make the most of it because you’re not about to surprise me next time’.

(If you doubt this, at Kempton Panjo Bere was up 16lb in the Lanzarote for winning a Fontwell handicap hurdle. 16lb! And I love Fontwell, I really do, but winning form in a run-of-the-mill handicap there is as likely to translate to a race like the Lanzarote as a Brighton winner is to go again at York. If Panjo Bere were trained by a thoroughly reliable but lower profile handler, let’s say, off the top of my head, Gerald Ham or Kevin Bishop, and not a handicap shrewdie like Gary Moore, would he have been raised 16lb? It’s quite ridiculous to claim that horses are assessed irrespective of their background. Would you treat a Milton Bradley Wolverhampton maiden winner the same as one trained by Luca Cumani? Come on.)

I rummaged all through the Warwick form, looking at these near-impossible tasks, whilst fully expecting the meeting to be called off. Interestingly, High Chimes was up only 3lb for his third to Cloudy Lane at Haydock, which struck me as very fair form. But, despite earlier winning form in the heavy at Chepstow, he could not handle conditions here and was pulled up before the 17th.

All in all, I think it was right for the meeting to go ahead but by only the shortest of short heads, and comparisons with Aintree seven years ago are not ridiculous.

For the future, Kilbeggan Blade will be almost impossible to place and Arnold Layne will need to demonstrate that he is over an unfortunate experience. But High Chimes is still at the right end of the handicap, cannot possibly be raised again just yet, and is well worth noting for a valuable marathon in the not-too-distant future.