Lee will be singing in the rain if forecast holds true for Haydock
IT was once said that “statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamp-post: for support, not illumination”.
Perhaps, but the statistics for Kerry Lee’s first season as a trainer since she took over running the yard from her father, Richard, have been quite illuminating thus far. The headline figure of a 21 per cent strike-rate for her runners is further supported by a 26 per cent strikerate with her runners over fences.
Aside from the number-crunching there have also been three major winners on Saturday cards – all when the mud has been flying.
Top Gamble beat Champion Chase winner Dodging Bullets in the Game Spirit Chase at Newbury last weekend to follow up Russe Blanc’s victory in the Classic Chase at Warwick last month and the ball started rolling when Mountainous kept on going dourly to take the Welsh National at Chepstow.
The race had already been postponed from its Christmas slot due to waterlogging and was run in heavy ground which will again be the conditions when Mountainous runs in the Betfred Grand National Trial at Haydock this afternoon. Today’s forecast is for more rain and Lee is not complaining about the prospect of a downpour in Lancashire. “Not really, no”, she says with a laugh. “Someone said the other day ‘you’re the only person I see smiling constantly when it’s raining’.”
That smile was on full beam after Mountainous won, his first since claiming the Welsh National two years before. “He wasn’t quite right last year for some reason – they’re horses not machines. We couldn’t get him right, we did everything we could,” she said. “But from the start of the season we knew he was better. He came in from grass in much better form. Sometimes they need some sun on their back and a holiday.”
There was no sun to be seen at Chepstow and as the runners ploughed through the slop the main thought in Lee’s mind was about the cheekpieces the horse was wearing. “I was thinking ‘I wish we hadn’t put all that fluffy headgear on him’ because it was so wet that I thought it must have been weighing about a stone.”
The handicapper has replaced that Victoria Pendleton is not giving up on her dream of riding at next month’s Cheltenham Festival – despite having been unseated on her first ride over regulation fences at Fakenham on Friday.
The dual Olympic champion cyclist has undergone months of intensive training, with the aim of riding in the Foxhunter Chase.
The Paul Nicholls-trained Pacha Du Polder lined up at Fakenham as the 8-13 favourite for the Betfair Switching Saddles “Grassroots” Fox Hunters’ Chase, but he only made it as far as the seventh before parting company with Pendleton.
She said: “It’s up to the team of experts to decide whether I’m ready for Cheltenham – I hope I am. More than anything it’s a bruised ego; it won’t put me off.” burden with 10lbs more in the saddle cloth and Bishops Road has gone up a stone for winning at Sandown by 17 lengths on his first run for the yard since coming over from Ireland.
Both have been entered for the Crabbie’s Grand National and Lee hopes that they will both make it to Aintree. “I think both will love the ground,” she said. “Mountainous is absolutely loving life at the moment.”
Lee looks pretty happy too.