Horses can be choosy
Ian Harrison says pick your jockey well
Ispotted a photograph of Hayley Turner in the paper when she went to collect her OBE from Buckingham Palace. Well done and it was a lovely photograph. There are a lot of horses that refuse to perform if the jockey on board is too fierce.There was one some time a go that would refuse to go on if the jockey used the whip. So why are female jockeys ignored by the trainers?
If a trainer sees that the best performance from the horse is when it has a female jockey up he should make a note and make sure that she is riding it when it goes for a win but the owners have a lot to say about this and they like the idea of a Dettori or Scudamore on board. It makes them feel good in the members bar.
I remember one occasion at a northern course when a conditional, who had won on the horse two weeks before, was denied the ride and Tony McCoy was put in the saddle. He had never ridden it before and it became an immediate hotly supported favourite. He came into the final furlong dead last with his whip arm going like a windmill.When a horse goes into training the trainer will take some time finding a jockey that the horse will respond to. Horses are flesh and blood and have their like and dislikes.
When you place your bets do you look to see whether the horse wins at this time of year? Last week I gave out ‘Haaf a Sixpence’ at Lingfield, it had good recent form and always wins in November.It was CD and had come a head second over the course only eight days before. That was seven furlongs, today was a mile. I was looking at a fit horse ready to repeat its CD win last November.It won cosily at 5/1 each way.
At the top of the horse’s details in the Racing Post you will see a list of all the horse’s wins and it also shows the month and year.A few seem to win at any time of the year but many will only win in certain months.The trainer knows about this biological clock and will train the horse to this programme. Ignore this most important information at your peril.
On August 1 I set up the Christmas Fund with a £200 bank.On November 1 it stood at £1,221, £1000 profit that will help Christmas and NewYear along nicely.
It should be a bit higher than that by the end of November as the November stakes have been set at £120.
The Christmas Fund was based on the Ratchet Staking Plan which uses a 10% stake that is adjusted to the new 10% each month. It is slow but very effective.
Oh the misery, watching the hapless souls feeding hundreds of pounds into the Roulette machines.You have to feel sorry for late night betting office staff when they have to remove the last gambler from the machine.It can become quite violent as he shouts that he’s lost £300 and the machine is about to pay out.
The government is currently conducting an enquiry and the result of that should see the stakes lowered but it won’t. The treasury is making too much money from it and after the bookies have wined and dined Ministers and handed out free tickets to Royal Ascot I can’t see them reducing the stakes by much.