IT DID not start well. A period of incessant, heavy rain meant that repairs to the racecourse could not be completed in time for the traditional Easter Monday opening meeting. A revised plan saw the addition of a compensating September fixture and the season got under way a month late with the first May meeting featuring the Jersey Guineas.
The late start meant trainers could get extra work into their horses and many turned out fitter than usual for the first meeting. Champion trainer Alyson Malzard would normally not have her string of horses fully wound up at Easter, but they were in dominant form now and she won all five races on the card, Never Said Nothing taking the Guineas by a comfortable two lengths.
The Warwick Vase meeting a fortnight later looked like going the same way with team Malzard scoring its sixth and seventh consecutive victories in the hurdle and sprint races. The run was ended by Clear Man winning the main event to get Christa Cuthbert off the mark and Kark Kukk scored his first success of the year when Sumatran Tiger took the closing two-mile handicap.
The Jersey Bullet, the top sprint of the season, was the principal race at the first June meeting and it got off to a disappointing start with just two runners in the opening hurdle race. From four runners at the first meeting to three at the next and now a match this was a worrying trend. By contrast, The Bullet was a thriller with Profit and Loss, a winner at the first meeting but disappointing at the second, bouncing back to top form to beat Akkeringa by a short head. With three winners on the day Alyson Malzard was already looking certain to be champion trainer again. Fred Tett was also having a good season with a double on the day putting him on six for the season.
The next meeting, the first of the popular Friday evening fixtures, saw the Malzard Tett combination successful again as they took the Summer Cup with Island Song in the closest finish of the season, Buckingham being the minimum distance of a nose behind. Neither was particularly fancied, but few would have expected the tote exacta to pay an astonishing 200/1. Trevor Gallienne brought two of his horses from David Evans’ Welsh stable and was rewarded when She’s A Mirage won the mile and a quarter handicap. There had been a notable absence of horses from the UK, a worrying feature of the season and the Gallienne initiative was widely appreciated.
The second evening fixture’s feature event was the Champion Hurdle and the meeting turned out to be eventful and not entirely in an uncontroversial way. One major positive was the return of runners from Neil Mulholland, formerly a regular visitor with runners in the familiar yellow and green colours of Dajam Limited and it was this combination that won the Champion Hurdle with Princess T a class above her rivals. They also won the mile and a half handicap with Molliana, a multiple previous winner at Les Landes. Perhaps these successes would lead to further regular visits from team Mulholland, but it was not to be for reasons which will be discussed later.
The other, more contentious, aspect of the meeting occurred because of a mix-up in the mile handicap. Karl Kukk had three runners and two of them, Brown Mouse and Casaruan, were tacked up with each other’s saddles by mistake. The stewards took the view that as both horses were set to carry the same weight (both incidentally were in the same ownership) that it would be acceptable to rectify the problem by allowing their respective jockeys to change mounts. Casaruan was second and Brown Mouse fifth. Subsequently the Channel Islands Horseracing Authority, the regulator, overturned the stewards’ ruling and disqualified both horses, explaining in detail why it was strictly against the rules.
With five fixtures completed, the season had passed halfway and the second July meeting featured the Jersey Derby. Another poor beginning with just two runners in the hurdle led to some questioning whether it was viable to maintain a jump race on every card and it was pointed out if Alyson Malzard did not enter her horses there would be no race. The Derby was disappointingly supported too with just four going to post; it was won by Sumatran Tiger with whom jockey Elisa Whittington struck up a good partnership. The Tiger has become a flag bearer for Karl Kukk’s stable and her consistency a credit to him. Never Said Nothing, quiet since his Jersey Guineas win, bounced back with a narrow win under top weight in the mile handicap. It was an important victory because it put him in a strong position in the season-long Polygon Collective Championship for the top miler.
Ladies Day, always the first August meeting, has become the most popular of the entire season as a great social occasion; it is Les Landes’ mini-Royal Ascot with ladies taking the opportunity to bring out the posh frocks and big hats. Appropriately, the big race is the Jersey Oaks for fillies and mares. It was won in good style by Nature, ridden and trained by Celine De La Haye, and owned by her parents. It is the only horse she trains.
The Clarendon is usually the highlight of the last day of the season, but not so this year with one more fixture to come. This year’s edition was won by Clear Man, ridden by Isobel Francis, who was in irrepressible form and looked like mounting a late challenge for the champion jockey title. It was a good training performance by Christa Gilbert to steer Clear Man to his second win in this most competitive of handicaps. The stewards came down hard on visiting jockey Raul Da Silva for his using his whip from above shoulder height in winning on Evening Song and suspended him for two days, the first time this sanction had been imposed.
The season finale in mid-September belonged to Isobel Francis. She needed four wins from the same number of rides to pass Fred Tett for the jockeys’ title. She managed three, winning the Autumn Cup on Cool Dandy and following up with Buckingham and Clear Man. Looking forward to a successful spell back in the UK, she was unlucky enough to break a leg in an accident on the training gallops and has been sidelined since.
And so, the curtain came down on a season full of interest, but in some respects both disappointing and worrying for the future. More on that in part two of the season’s review in tomorrow’s JEP.