Saturday Spotlight: Kalahari King can be Queen Mother ace

IF you think you’ve had it tough in this harshest of winters, spare a thought for North Yorkshire trainer Ferdy Murphy.

While the rest of the country ground to a halt as temperatures dropped and snowfall levels increased, the job of looking after a string of more than 100 horses in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales continued.

Each morning, Murphy trekked through the snow to inspect his state-of-the-art gallops. Each morning, he was forced to admit that the ‘allweather’ surface was not so all-weather after all.

Improvisations were made, with the indoor barn at his Wynbury Stables doubling up as a multi-purpose schooling centre and the beach at Redcar becoming the galloping ground of choice for the best part of a month.

But all the while, the clock on the wall was ticking.

Cheltenham, the Blue Riband event of the jumps racing world, was approaching rapidly. And every day lost represented a setback in the final furlong of the Festival run-in.

“It’s been the hardest winter I’ve known training over here,” said Murphy, who took up a licence at Oakwood Stables in Middleham in 1994 before moving to his current base at West Witton in 2000.

“January was dreadful.

There was a three-week period where it snowed every day, and at its worst, there was 16 inches of snow on the gallops.

That obviously stops you from doing pretty much everything.

“We tried to keep the wheels moving by using Redcar beach, and in the three weeks when the snow was heaviest, we were down there 14 times.

But we’ve got getting on for 100 horses that need exercise every day, and you can’t afford to take all of them to the coast.

“There have been some upsides to it, namely that we have a lot more sound horses than we would normally have at this time of year because they haven’t been picking up injuries through racing.

“But it’s been tough, really tough, and Cheltenham has been the light at the end of the tunnel that’s kept us going.”

That light will come into full glow on Tuesday when the four-day Festival begins.

Murphy’s tally of nine previous winners marks him out as one of the most successful Northern raiders of the last 15 years, and this year’s string of 12 entries includes at least half-a-dozen with realistic chances of adding to the list.

“Cheltenham is the Olympics of the horse racing world,” said the Irishman, who saddled his first Cheltenham winner in 1980 while serving his training apprenticeship in Ireland. “It’s like the World Cup and Wimbledon all rolled into one.

“For a yard like ours, the prize money is obviously important. It doesn’t make or break a season, but it can certainly help.

“But it’s the prestige more than anything that counts. It’s the pride of being able to walk into that winners’ enclosure and say, ‘I’ve just had a winner at the Cheltenham Festival’.

For everyone – owners, trainers, jockeys, stable staff – you can’t buy a feeling like that.”

Or at least you can’t if you’re based in the Yorkshire Dales. While jumps racing remains much more of a level playing field than its counterpart on the flat, the days of a farmer-owner shelling out a few thousand guineas to take on the big boys are long gone.

A handful of major operations based in the south have changed the National Hunt landscape, with the likes of Paul Nicholls, Alan King and Nicky Henderson benefiting from the patronage of owners who think nothing of spending up to half-amillion pounds on a potential Cheltenham champion.

To make matters worse, there is a body of opinion that claims the British Horseracing Authority, the sport’s governing body, is institutionally biased towards the south, thereby tilting the scales even further in that direction.

“It feels like that sometimes,” said Murphy. “For example, I’ve never understood why we have to have the headquarters of the BHA in London. Everything seems to revolve around the south.

“It could be a level playing field, but there’s less racing in the north of England now than there was ten years ago, and some of the prize money on offer is embarrassing. If I was an owner, there are races I wouldn’t run a horse in myself.

“It’s no surprise that the big owners tend to base themselves in the south, because that’s where the money is. Paul Nicholls would think nothing of spending £300,000 on a horse – I couldn’t go anywhere near that.

“But that just adds to the competition and, ultimately, competition is what you’re in racing for. If we can get just one horse to beat the big boys, it’s that much more special.”

And in Queen Mother Champion Chase second favourite Kalahari King, Murphy believes he has just that horse.

Edged into second in last year’s Arkle, the nine-year-old underlined his ability when he bounced back to win a leading novices’ chase at Aintree four weeks later.

His final race of last season ended in a narrow defeat to Twist Magic, but his only outing this year – an imperious performance in which he defied top weight to land the Blue Square Handicap Chase at Doncaster – oozed ability.

“When you get up on a morning, you need to have one horse like him in your yard,”

said Murphy. “He’s class, pure class, and he’s a dream to prepare and train.

“From the moment we bought him in February 2008, he always looked like he was going to be something special.

Because he was so good, we decided to take things easy, and we had him for eight months before we took him to a racecourse.

“That’s not always easy, because the temptation is to get him out there to see what he can do, but I think his development has confirmed the value of taking things slowly.

“He ran a cracking race to be beaten a short head in last year’s Arkle, and has come on in leaps and bounds since then.

“He won very easily at Doncaster, despite giving away a huge amount of weight, and that was probably the best of all the trials.”

The elephant in the room, though, is two-time Champion Chase winner Master Minded.

Last year, the two-mile specialist was the shortestpriced winner at the Festival, landing odds of 4-11 as he thrashed the highly-rated Well Chief by seven lengths.

This time around, he is trading at 4-5, but while his warm-up run at Newbury ended in a typically effortless victory, Murphy claims an interrupted preparation, which included a shock Cheltenham defeat attributed to a cracked rib, could yet make Master Minded beatable.

“No horse is infallible,” he said. “Master Minded will start as favourite and rightly so, but he maybe doesn’t have quite the same air of invincibility that he’s had in previous years.

“He went to Newbury and looked to be back to his best, but no-one can really know how good he still is until he’s pushed to the limit.

“I don’t think that happened in that race, but it’ll happen if my boy gets the wind in his sails.”

Kalahari King runs in the feature race on Wednesday, but Murphy boasts a viable contender on each day of the Festival.

Galant Nuit will start at about 14-1 in the William Hill Trophy Handicap Chase on Tuesday, and having been well backed to win the Eider at Newcastle before the meeting was called off last month, the six-year-old boasts solid claims.

Thursday could be a real red letter day, with leading novice The Hollinwell currently trading as second favourite for the Jewson Chase and Watch My Back vying for favouritism in the Byrne Group Plate, having swerved the Ryanair Chase to take his chance in handicap company.

Friday’s hopes are outsiders in the betting, but King Of Confusion could spring a surprise at long odds in the Martin Pipe Handicap Hurdle.

“Cheltenham’s been a happy hunting ground for us in the past,” said Murphy. “And I’m confident we have the horses to get in amongst the winners again.

“That said though, you can never go to Cheltenham with too much confidence because there are so many variables on the day.

“The ground, the fences, the opposition – the whole thing can change in the blink of an eye.

“But you have to be in it to win it, and we’ll be heading there with a fighting chance.”

And after the travails of the winter, that is surely cause for celebration in itself.