TRAINING racehorses requires an eclectic range of skills, one of which should be the deductive powers of Sherlock Holmes.
Give most trainers three wishes and one would likely be that horses could talk rather than leaving those in charge to fathom the reasons for a loss of form.
James Ewart plans to run Aristo du Plessis in the totepool Hogmaneigh Handicap Hurdle at Musselburgh tomorrow. The New Year brings to us all, however fleetingly, the promise of a fresh start but Ewart would quite probably settle for getting back to where he once was with this horse.
Two years ago Aristo du Plessis won this race as part of a sequence of six wins out of seven starts. A poor run in the Scottish County Hurdle at Musselburgh the following month was found to be because of a fetlock injury and he was also treated for a back condition known as kissing spine, when the vertebrae are too close together and impinge upon each other.
Aristo du Plessis had then schooled well over fences and Ewart, who trains near Langholm in Dumfriesshire, headed to Cheltenham in October last year for a novice chase with Richard Johnson, the champion jockey, booked to ride.
Ewart could only watch as his plans unravelled in the four minutes it took Aristo du Plessis to trail in last and it would be over a year before the horse would win again.
“You have windows where things go to plan with horses and windows that don’t,” Ewart said. “And given hindsight, he’d had major back surgery and he hadn’t fully recovered. So we don’t know if that poor performance at Cheltenham was because of his back or that he didn’t like fences.”
Ewart kept Aristo du Plessis to hurdling but there was no immediate improvement and even a trainer with a painstaking mindset was left searching for answers.
“Unfortunately horses can’t talk,” he said ruefully. “We just have to try and judge things along with the vets, chiropractors and physios. And sometimes we get it right and sometimes we get it wrong. He was showing all the right signs but he needed more time to recover.
“We assumed when he came back that the reason he wasn’t showing more bounce and sparkle at home was just because he’d grown up a bit and he wasn’t as daft as he used to be. He’s trained well since he came back from his summer holidays this time and he started showing more va-va-voom. I think he’s still a little quieter than he used to be but he’s showing us plenty in his work now.”
The only upside was that the horse’s rapid rise up the handicap had been put into reverse to the point where he was running at Wetherby last month on a mark 25lbs lower than his peak. He bolted up by nine lengths and did the same again there three weeks ago.
Unlike celebrity, increased ratings simply mean more weight to carry and Ewart feels the handicapper had begun to win the argument regardless of the horse’s physical problems.
“It’s a queer old sport where a horse, generally, in a trend of going up will surpass their winnable mark and then they have to race to come down and are uncompetitive until they reach the threshold at which they can be compet-itive again. It’s bizarre.”
While Ewart might question the handicapper’s assessment the mathematics point out that Aristo de Plessis is still 7lbs lower in the ratings now than two years ago.
That could prove a most telling clue.
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