Countdown Continues as Entries are Revealed

11 November 2009

Well the entries for the WBX.COM Fighting Fifth Hurdle are in and with less than three weeks to go, I’ll have to remind owner Raymond Tooth that the perpetual trophy depicting a fusilier of the famed “Fighting Fifth” will have to make what we hope will be a temporary time away from his sideboard.

Raymond obviously was thrilled by Punjabi’s exploits and while like everyone else connected with the horse, was left to rue what might have been had he stood up at Kempton, he and the Henderson team all accepted the Champion Hurdle win as recompense enough.

When there is a £1 million bonus with the largest chunk deservedly going to the winning owner, it is hard not to be disappointed. But racing’s rhythms, especially with regard to the weather in the winter and the ground in the summer make it all a perennial game of fortune as much as ability.

For example, we were all convinced that Barry Geraghty had not begun to ask Punjabi to go past Snap Tie when he fell at Kempton. But we’d already had a bit of luck in the first leg, the WBX.COM Fighting Fifth having been delayed a week and switched from Newcastle to Wetherby, enabling the trainer to get more work into him.

He needed them too, for it was only by a tiny margin that Punjabi got back to pip the brave Sublimity. Then later in the year, while Binocular was serenely waiting for Cheltenham in a calculated programme by Henderson because second-season hurdlers need to be carefully handled, the weather turned.

Before that it was a recovering Punjabi, assailed by the lumps and bumps of a heavy fall, who had needed kid gloves. It was therefore vital that he got a run in between at Wincanton. Had he not fallen at Kempton and won, it would have been hard for Nicky to run him again before with so much at stake. He might well have been even more inconvenienced by the halt to activity caused by February’s snow.

I saw Nicky at Sandown on Saturday and he told me with a great smile that Punjabi “had his second go up the grass”, that surface happily re-habilitated after a summer version of last winter’s great snow white-out.

“He went up with My Petra (runs in the Paddy Power Gold Cup) and while he gave a big blow afterwards, he went very well. There’s plenty of time to get him ready”, he said.

So all we have to wait for is to see which of the stars will take him on at Newcastle, a track that should suit him, given he’s won at Cheltenham, Punchestown and Newmarket in the past year and a bit. One who won’t is Celestial Halo, so impressive at Wincanton the other day, as he’s not among the entries.

We fully endorse the fact that Binocular and Zaynar also have every right to try for the big bonus, but they probably have alternative programmes. Punjabi’s plans, fitness permitting, are set in stone. Even if – God forbid – he does not repeat his WBX.COM Fighting Fifth Hurdle triumph, I’m sure he’ll still go to Kempton again on his way to Cheltenham, with Wincanton again before and Punchestown after. Makes it hard for my dream, to see him in a Chester Cup to be realised, but I might try to work on Raymond and Nicky to see whether a short break before next year’s Ebor could be fitted in.

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