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Ashforth's Angles: Tally Ho! It's hunter chase time

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Taunton racecourse on December 30

Taunton: stages the alarmingly named Geoffrey Bosley “Tally Ho” Chase

  PICTURE: Getty Images  

 By David Ashforth 6:24PM 12 JAN 2016 

Wednesday’s racing: Taunton, Chelmsford and Kempton

It’s a nice card at Taunton and tucked away after a £13,000 guaranted handicap chase and a £10,000 guaranteed hurdle is a £3,000 guaranteed hunter chase, so let’s concentrate on that.

There’s something appealing about hunter chases although quite a lot of the something is nostalgia for the days when a lot of the riders had studied the art of race-riding but failed the exam. Nowadays amateurs are more professional. The stirrup leathers are shorter and there’s a lot less flapping and bouncing about than there used to be. I suppose it’s for the best.

Broderick Munro-Wilson’s eye-catching style used to attract a lot of attention although he didn’t lack for bravery and won the Grand Military Gold Cup at Sandown twice, on Beeno in 1980 and on The Drunken Duck the following year. The Drunken Duck was his signature horse. In 1982, Munro-Wilson won the Foxhunter Chase at Cheltenham on him. It was fun to watch and made me wonder if it was worthwhile having a go myself.

You probably weren’t even born then but it’s difficult for the elderly to resist the temptation to return to the past, if they can still remember it. I can only apologise and move on to today’s offering, the rather alarming sounding Geoffrey Bosley “Tally Ho” Open Hunters Chase (3.40).

My attention will be focused on Allerton. Not because he’s going to win (I fear he’s not) but because Miss Lilly Pinchin is riding him. I’d never heard of her either but it turns out that she’s only 16, made her debut in point-to-points last year and rode in colours designed especially to signal support for Maddie Hems. Hems is a 12 year old friend of Pinchin’s who has clearly gone through hell since being diagnosed with cancer when she was only eight. There’s a fighting fund to raise money for specialist treatment for her.

So good luck to Miss Pinchin, who works for Fergal O’Brien, and good luck to the much more experienced Miss Bryony Frost, who might well win the race on Join Together, trained by Rose Laxton, who works for Paul Nicholls. Join Together ran well at Larkhill last month after a long absence.

Followers of the genre will notice that point-to-point champion and prolific winner Mr Will Biddick is teaming up with Viking Blond. Unfortunately, Biddick is rather better than his mount. Anyway, it’s nice for someone else to win.

Pinchin is one of three riders in the race having their first ride under rules and, in the amateur riders’ race at Kempton (5.40) there are two more, Mr C Jewell and Miss Isabel Williams. The splendidly named Miss Molly Nash-Steer is having her second ride.

So Serena Brotherton (loads of rides and loads of winners) and Patrick Millman (fewer but still a lot) provide stiff competition on Cotton Club and Phyllis Maud. Even so, Cotton Club has been racing over further and will want a strong pace while Phyllis Maud needs to refind her form. She’s lost it.

 

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