Further Flight and Savill bring the memories flooding back

Memories will be stirred on Wednesday afternoon at Nottingham by the Totepool Barry Hills Further Flight Stakes (3.20), named after Hills' notably popular stayer.

Further Flight raced for long enough and successfully enough to attract a strong following. Between 1989 and 1998 he won 24 races including, famously, five successive runnings (1991 to 1995) of the Group Three Jockey Club Cup. That was at Newmarket and only two of Further Flight's successes were at Nottingham but never mind, it's nice to have our memory jogged.

It's jogged again by one of Wednesday's contestants. Moonrise Landing carries Peter Savill's once familiar but now rarely seen colours. The six-year-old is Savill's first runner of the year and was one of only two horses to race for him in Britain in 2016.

It was once very different. In 1993 50 horses, trained by 14 different trainers, ran over 300 times for Savill, winning 48 races. That year River North won a Group One race in Germany and the following year Celtic Swing won the Group One Racing Post Trophy and in 1995 the French Derby. A few years later Royal Rebel won successive runnings of the Ascot Gold Cup (2001 and 2002).

By then Savill had turned his considerable energies to racing politics, becoming President of the Racehorse Owners' Association in 1997 and chairman of the BHB the year after. Six rumbustious and fractious years followed, climaxed by an adverse European Court decision on data rights that scuppered the BHB's chosen path towards improved funding.

After leaving the BHB Savill gradually reduced his racing interests, although at his Oak Hill Stud in Ireland he bred Rainbow Peak, who won a Group One race in Italy in 2010.

There is another lasting involvement. Through Inchailloch Limited, Savill owns almost all of Plumpton racecourse. The racecourse now makes a modest annual profit - £104,000 in 2015 - but that year, the latest for which figures are available, Savill also benefitted from the £100,000 annual rent paid to the Jersey-registered Inchailloch, £96,000 paid in consultancy fees to Savill's PDS Enterprises Ltd, based in the Cayman Islands, and £75,000 in interest payments at a rate of 19 per cent on a loan of £396,200 to Plumpton racecourse.

It is an interesting arrangement. Savill, resident in Ireland, is now 69 and I wonder (I have for a while) whether Arena, which already controls nearby Fontwell as well as Brighton and Lingfield, will eventually make a bid for Plumpton. It would seem to make sense.

But I digress. It is interesting that Savill has kept Moonrise Landing in training. Very lightly raced, the mare may well improve further. She has won her last five races, culminating in victories in the All-Weather Marathon Championship at Lingfield and a Listed race at York. That was almost a year ago.

It will be hoped that Moonrise Landing proves good enough to win a Group race and perhaps even run in the Ascot Gold Cup.