Back to Kelso after the summer hiatus to discover marquees removed, buildings knocked down, temporary toilets banished and shiny new grassy areas in place. The backstage area feels more open now and is a big improvement, in my opinion, on the previous layout. We still don't get to see a horse though.
We felt we probably needed a slight relaxation of the training pants we wear at Kelso to give the book a bit of chance to breath and also reduce the number of actual losers we have in the book. This is a relatively quiet meeting so we felt that "half of what we take" would be about right for the day. How would this work at a course notorious for giving the results out in the racecard on the way in? Would we feel the same? We'll know for sure in May but here goes.
1) Betty's hotpot to start. Very little money fielded. We had the usual 4 losers out of 6 with the jolly a small winner along with the million to one shot Ivynator. We don't automatically lay on the machine if we can't get the fav in so they are often running for us when they're this short. Small win wiped out by laying the obvious forecast meaning we were 4p short of a cup of coffee after the first. £1.96... Expenses for the day, with the ubiquitous marketing fee, coming in at £255 so scrub the coffee for now.
2) Lovely book given the modest take. Laid the drifting Latino Fling and The Navigator, the smashed up Solo Saxophone (cue in ring round of mucky jokes) a nice winner along with Kaizer and Caius Marcius. Drifters don't mean a thing at Kelso and we were left unable to eat value as The Navigator completed a last to first job for a tidy win, confirmed when Sax hit the wrong note by flattening the last. It might be me but well bet (on course) drifters seem to win with alarming regularity here.
3) Great book followed by shocking book, though with same outcome. Raecius Felix collapsing from around 6/4 to around evens in about 20 seconds and we had the chance to "red up" shortly afterwards. As usual, they knew, and, despite Sword of Fate getting alongside on about 11 occasions it steadfastly refused to go past and the jolly won with barely a nudge. We ended up standing it for more than we planned with the collapse stripping all value from the book and we were in a hole. A hole that taking 500 quid a race was unlikely to fill. As an aside, we don't automatically back anything back (other than to get into our max liability) so it is impossible for us to win more than we take. Fielding 500 quid a race meant a few skinners needed- a rare bird indeed.
4) Kelso had already obliged us with the drifting winner they were all on and the absolute smash up they were all on so the holy trinity of "fav that couldn't win and hit a million in running" was the inevitable entree in our menu of excrement. Two losers, Genever Dragon and Strong Team. Genever defied convention- leading with 2 to go, passed by most of the field approaching the last (all winners for us), must have hit 50s in running, gets back up. 4 races in and I was wondering who wanted to buy our pitch. And possibly my car. And Kev's
5) We, literally, couldn't get a profit on the day unless our take doubled (and we knew it wouldn't) and that's pretty dispiriting. Pinno kept our spirits up with a series of weak puns and enthusiastic tic-tac-ing but he was probably in a similar hole to us. I wasn't sure how I was going to break it to the wife...
4 runners unlikely to get us the jackpot but our fortunes turned as we had the 2 v 2 book- our two being Gold Des Bois and Bob's Bar. We didn't exactly hit the motherlode with Gold but a win's a win despite laying the forecast and our, nearly 4 figure hole (including expenses), was whittled down to a slightly less depressing 700 quid hole. Small acorns, mighty oaks and all that.
6) No chance of a jackpot here. Tedious book alert. Untouched we were coppers either way on the top 3 in the market with a decent winner with outsider Deerfoot who was never in it. Small wins on jolly and forecast (yes Pinno that's f-o-r-E-c-a-s-t) and we'd won 50 quid or so,
7) Many of our colleagues, understandably, wanted to get the top two in the market in, using the machine if necessary to get some chunky winners in on the other side of the ledger. As we have previously, we don't do this, but we did have 4 of the 6 in which gave us decent winners on the other 2. Fortunately these were the two battling it out. Bridget Breeze was about 12s overnight and went off virtually favourite- finally we felt we had a live one on our side and so it proved with a nice win in the last getting us back to all square in the book (after pie and chips) and expenses lost. Including said marketing fee.
Another reminder, if needed, that winter (despite it only being September) jumps racing is a significantly harder beast to tame that summer flat racing. We did ok last winter though and we'll plug away for another 6 months until Cheltenham comes around again with the odd day of respite in the form of big events at Fighting Fifth and New Year's Day.
Best of luck to our friends and colleagues at Ayr for the weekend. Flat racing at Ayr doesn't really fit our calendar so we sold up and ducked out a few years back.
Perth double header next up for us next week- another notoriously difficult meeting to win at but we'll do our best to eke out a few quid. Until then...
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