Nick Luck: Lee’s exceeded all expectations

Monday 2 July 2012

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Lee’s form during the Flat season has exceeded even loftiest expectations

Festivals aside, you would struggle to open your curtains if midweek racing was taking place in your back garden
nowadays.

With that in mind, it is altogether a pleasant surprise when a racecourse makes the effort to stage something beyond the utterly pedestrian.

Step forward Carlisle, who once again put on a proper show for punters with their Bell and Plate day last Wednesday.

The most notable feature of the card was that the big races – the Carlisle Bell and Cumberland Plate – were dominated by names more associated with November
than June; appropriately enough, you might think, given the recent weather.

Few doubted the talent of Graham Lee, who steered Donald McCain’s Lexi’s Boy to a runaway success in the Plate. But, at the same time, even fewer can have
anticipated how quickly he would make such a stylish impact within the Flat racing firmament.

With 22 winners from 200 rides so far, Lee is already well on his way to bettering his totals of the last three jumps seasons.

Willy Twiston-Davies has always had the pedigree and talent to suggest he would make it, but his ride on Levitate in the Bell showed a cool-headedness that gave lie to his relative inexperience, and he is making a real fist of the summer game.

And there’s more. Take Michael O’Connell, for example. No more than an average jumps jockey for Sue Smith and Ferdy Murphy, O’Connell currently heads the
apprentice championship, despite being unable to claim an allowance.

He has notched up 27 successes this campaign at an impressive 16%, forging a particularly fruitful alliance with John Quinn, for whom he has ridden 15 winners at 23 per cent, with a healthy level stake profit.

And further down the food chain comes Gary Whillans, chipping away in single figures over jumps for some time, and with eight successes on the Flat to date
in 2012 from very limited opportunities.

The emergence of jumps experience as a pointer to winners on the level is a function of several factors.

First, the competition is arguably a little less intense in the North: a good rider may be more likely to stand out in this colony than against southern counterparts.

In addition, the demise of Northern jump racing is in sharp contrast to the volume of rides available in the corresponding area: a Flat career just makes better business sense.

Secondly, the compacted nature of most handicaps has largely negated the necessity for jockeys to be extremely small and light. Thus, the typical physique
of the National Hunt rider is more easily adaptable to the Flat, given that he is unlikely to be required to be riding much below 8st 10lb with regularity.

And finally, the long held belief that superior ability to judge pace gives a Flat jockey an edge may no longer be true.

The two codes are now much closer together: the horses come from a far more closely aligned gene pool, jumps horses are trained more effectively than before, and the pace in British jumps races is far less relenting, requiring as much fine judgement of speed and ground saving.

Trainers of considerable repute such as Quinn, Jim Goldie and Tim Easterby are cottoning on, and it surely won’t be long before other jockeys start to realise that the grass really is greener.

Tribute to Campbell

The life of Campbell Gillies was heartbreakingly curtailed this week, but my own brief encounters with the young
rider left me in no doubt as to why his loss would be felt so deeply among his peers.

Persuading jockeys – particularly those early in their careers – to appear on the Morning Line is never an easy task. To then expect them to engage in front of camera in the same way they might at home or in the weighing room is often to ask the impossible.

Campbell was the exception that proved the rule. When the crew arrived in the small hours to set up the show for the Scottish National meeting at Ayr, our young guest was already in situ, immaculately turned out, chatting away nineteen to the dozen, and utterly comfortable in his own skin.

When the cameras rolled, he was entirely at ease: bright, breezy and with a ready wit that belied his years. He had received the disappointing news that his long standing buddy Lie Forrit – the horse that had advanced his career significantly – would not make the big race, but he showed no trace of self-pity.

Instead, he spoke warmly of his relationship with Lucinda Russell and Peter Scudamore, looked back on his Cheltenham triumph aboard Brindisi Breeze, and showed his impressive knowledge of the form book; not just those horses with which he was associated.

With a notable glint in his eye, he charmed the production team and charmed all of us.

Get Nick Luck's weekly column in Racing Plus every Saturday!