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Ashforth's Angles: getting to know the little guy at Ludlow

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Phil Dando - Horse trainer

Phil Dando: sadly a different Dando to The Phil Dando Big Band Dando

  PICTURE: Carl Evans  

 By David Ashforth 6:00PM 11 JAN 2016 

Tuesday’s racing: Lingfield and Ludlow

Small race meetings attract small trainers. Obviously, some of the trainers aren’t small, some are quite tall while others turn up even though they’re big trainers, like Philip Hobbs and David Pipe – but you know what I mean.

At Ludlow today there are trainers like Michael Mullineaux, John Groucott, Phillip Dando and Lady Susan Brooke, who have been training for decades but always overshadowed by mightier stables. Most of us, including me, don’t know much about them. It would be nice to know more.

Did you know, for example, that “Of all her many suitors, Lady Susan Brooke found herself strangely drawn to a man unlike any of the others. But was her heart ready for a true and tender romance?” That is what Ellen Rawlings wrote in her book, “A Perfect Arrangement.” It sounds jolly exciting and it’s a pity that it’s a work of fiction and the character of Lady Susan Brooke is not the real one, who has three runners at Ludlow today. Who knows whether or not her heart is ready for romance? Perhaps someone from Racing UK will ask her.

One of the pleasures of going racing midweek or watching on television is to see what these mysterious trainers look and sound like. Dando, for instance, looks comfortable. There’s The Phil Dando Big Band but, sadly, that’s a different Dando. Anyway, one way and another, our Dando has been training since the 1990s, small numbers of horses, having winners some years and not others.

One of the things that most of these dedicated, passionate, indefatigable trainers have in common is that if you click “Big-Race Wins” on the pages devoted to them on the Racing Post website the message that comes up reads “No data found.”

Yet every stable has its stable star and although the stars are smaller and cast their light less widely than the likes of Cue Card or Faugheen they brighten the lives of those connected with them.

For Dando, the star has been Bella Haze, who won eight races for him, five of them in 2010, highlighted by a £15,000 handicap hurdle at Uttoxeter. For Mullineaux, it was Talbot Avenue. At York in 2002, having finished runner-up in a 20 runner Class 4 handicap, Talbot Avenue ran again the next day and won a £25,000 Class 2 handicap.

They were in the past but for Groucott, there is Truckers Highway, who won three chases in a row last month. The handicapper has had his unpleasant say and Truckers Highway has a long way to go to match stablemate Pret A Thou’s achievements. Now 13, he has won nine times for the yard, once a race worth almost £10,000 and is still racing.

Running small, often struggling businesses is hard work and although none of the trainers I’ve mentioned are likely to enter the winner’s enclosure today, they will have their days. They will be days for all of us to celebrate and, one day, that one good horse may yet appear.

 

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