PETER THOMAS

Weblog: Wandering the world wide web

Failure of the 'carrot and cattle-prod' method

THERE was a lot of memorable stuff to come out of last week's three-dayer at Aintree, not all of it for the best of reasons.

Leaving aside the falls and fatalities, I was least impressed by the reactions of trainer Caroline Bailey and her hubby in the wake of the recalcitrant display of their Doctor David in the Maghull Chase.

I say 'in' the Maghull Chase, when what I obviously mean is 'before' the Maghull Chase, as the aforementioned beast refused resolutely to take part in the contest, despite the best efforts of jockey Andrew Thornton to change his mind (which efforts, incidentally, got just about the biggest laugh of the day from the crowd of happy-go-lucky Scousers).

But if the crowd saw the humour in this hopeless situation, the Baileys clearly missed it and chose instead to blame both the TV schedulers and the starter for their misfortune - the TV people for insisting on getting the hors d'oeuvres out of the way in good time for the main course of the Grand National, the starter for, apparently, refusing to insist that after, all else had failed, all the other horses should come round ina big, friendly circle, clutch the hapless Doctor David to their collective bosom and sweep him along on their communal tide of sporting goodwill.

I suspect if the Baileys managed a football team, they'd want to borrow the opposition centre-forward because theirs had been out on the razz the night before, overslept and wouldn't be able to make it before half-time at the earliest.

Wouldn't it have been better to accept that their horse was behaving like a mule (and this wasn't a first offence - he has 'previous'), that it was no responsibility of anybody's but their own and that nobody else should be expected to offer him equine psychotherapy 30 seconds before the start of a race.

I've nothing against the Baileys or their horse - in fact I hope A Thornton cajoles him through the tape and to victory next time out - but on Saturday it looked as though even a carrot at one end and 30,000 volts at the other wouldn't have convinced him that racing wasa good idea. Nobody's fault.